Poetry

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings....

Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time....

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce....

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

The tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings....

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism....

A powerful and poignant translation of Vergil’s epic poem, newly equipped with introduction and notes....

In Paradise Lost, Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time....

The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a 12th-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families....

John Lithgow has compiled an outstanding collection of memorable poems and has gathered his famous friends to read them....

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles....

This beautiful collection of 196 of his poems, previously unavailable in English and now translated by native Persian speakers Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, will appeal to Rumi lovers everywhere who want a guidebook for their inner journey....

Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid....

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope....

"150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Many More" is a timeless anthology that brings together some of the most celebrated and influential poems in the English language.

The Divine Comedy was born in a time of troubling transition, which is why it still speaks today. In this narrative retelling and guide, Mark Vernon offers a vivid introduction and interpretation of a book that, 700 years on, continues to open minds and change lives....

Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Περὶ ποιητικῆς; Latin: De Poetica) is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise...

A selection of the very best of Chinese poetry over the course of a thousand years, from 100 years before Christ was born up of the middle ages.

Composed during the 14th century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter....

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful"....

Homer is one of the most important figures in ancient Greek literature, believed to have lived in the 8th century BC. He is most famous for his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are considered to be the founding works of Western literature....

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of...

The oldest long poem in Old English, written about AD 1,000, Beowulf tells the story of a great warrior of southern Scandinavia, in both youth and maturity....