John Carey

A wonderfully readable anthology of our greatest poetry, chosen by the author of A Little History of Poetry "Does anyone know more about poetry than John Carey? Almost certainly not."—The Times A poem seems a fragile thing. Change a word and it is broken. But poems outlive empires and survive the devastation of conquests. Celebrated author John Carey here presents...

A vital guide to poetry from ancient times to the present "[A] fizzing, exhilarating book."—Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times, London "Delightful.'"—New York Times Book Review Poetry is language made special, so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work – over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This Little History is about some that...

A collection of John Carey’s greatest, wisest, and wittiest reviews—amassed over a lifetime of writing   In 1977, newly installed as a professor of English at Oxford, John Carey took the position of chief reviewer for the Sunday Times. In a career spanning over 40 years and upwards of 1,000 reviews, Carey has kept abreast of the brightest and best...

John Carey possesses a wicked, intelligent sense of humour and a deft feel for the play of language. His poetry is a finely calibrated device for detecting and skewering absurdity, cant, hypocrisy, humbug, mendacity, and institutional cruelty. Underlying the fun is the humanist's lament that we should and could be better than this. Though overshadowed by his satires, this New...

Bert Williams—a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay—an entertainer with the signature song "I Don't Care" who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge—a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth...

After its publication in 1667, John Milton’s Paradise Lost was celebrated throughout Europe as a supreme achievement of the human spirit. Now it is little read. To bring readers back to Milton’s masterpiece, John Carey has shortened it to a third of its original length. In this fascinating reinterpretation, Carey reveals new insights about Milton’s sources of inspiration, while exploring...

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature—selected as the literature book of the year by the London Times “[A] fizzing, exhilarating book.”—Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times, London “Delightful.”—New York Times Book Review What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry...