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A Little History of Poetry
Series: Little Histories
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Brief Description
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...
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Description
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 have not.
John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly 4,000 years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our view of the world – such as Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats – and more recent poets like Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Marianne Moore who have started to question what makes a poem 'great' in the first place.
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A Little History of Poetry
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...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2599Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid November -
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300283426
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 08 April 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Illustration: 40 b-w illus.
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 127.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 320
About the Author
John Carey is Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. His books include The Essential Paradise Lost and What Good are the Arts?, studies of Donne and Dickens and a biography of William Golding. The Unexpected Professor, his memoir, was a Sunday Times Best Seller.
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100 Poets
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...Paperback$2399Elsewhere:$2899Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Sunday Best
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...Paperback$2599Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Dead Cat Bounce
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...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
A Revolution in Three Acts
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...Paperback$3799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Essential Paradise Lost
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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...PaperbackSold Out
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