Penguin Classics: Arts & Culture

After Inferno and Purgatorio, here is the last cantica (part) of the Divine Comedy, in a new translation by acclaimed translator Robin Kirkpatrick. Having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory in parts one and two of the Divine Comedy, Dante ascends to Heaven in this third and final part, continuing his soul's search...

New translation of Dante's masterpiece by acclaimed Robin Kirkpatrick In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise...

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalised its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Banishing his cousin, Bolingbroke, King Richard II prevents a dispute from turning bloody. But Richard is an arrogant and despotic ruler, prone to tyranny and vanity, who listens only to his flatterers. As favour turns against him and Bolingbroke returns to reclaim his...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of...

A generous selection from the most charismatic and infamous of the Romantic poets. Described as 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron was the quintessential Romantic. Flamboyant, charismatic and brilliant, he remains almost as notorious for his life—as a political revolutionary, sexual adventurer and traveller—as he does for his literary work....

A collectible new Penguin Classics series: beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is one of the best-loved poetry collections of all time, an innovative and groundbreaking experiment in which Blake intertwined text and image to dazzling effect. The volume, published sometimes as two separate collections, juxtaposes the innocent world of childhood with...

For the first time in Penguin Classics, a new translation of Sappho's complete poetry. More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of what is present-day Turkey. Little remains today of her writings, which are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some...

One of the great masterworks of English literature, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature,...

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. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of...

Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante plunges to the very depths of Hell and embarks on his arduous journey towards God. Together they descend through the twenty-four circles of the underworld and encounter the tormented souls of the damned—from heretics and pagans to gluttons, criminals, and seducers—who tell of their sad fates and predict events still to come in Dante's...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Two sets of identical twins, separated at sea as children, find themselves in the same city for the first time as adults. Soon, their friends mistake the twins for one another and bewilderment abounds, as the wife of one man declares the other...

The Complete Fables provides a meticulous translation of the entire Aesopian collection of fables. This edition offers readers an insightful introduction that delves into the transmission of fable "stock" from Sanskrit to Aesop. The introduction also examines the precise nature of the animals featured within these fables. It aims to rescue the stories from a long-standing tradition of moralistic interpretation...

Keats' poetic genius was first seen in 1816 when he published the first of a series of great works. He was variously hailed as an important poetical figure, the natural heir to the Romantic throne and, like Shelley before him, criticised for his politics. In his short life, he proved to be one of the greatest and most original thinkers...

Between 58 and 50 BC, Caesar conquered most of the area now covered by France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and twice invaded Britain. This is the record of his campaigns. Caesar's narrative offers insights into his military strength and paints a picture of his encounters with the inhabitants of Gaul and Britain. It also offers lively portraits of key characters, such...

Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory — a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into the depths of the earth. As he travels through the first seven levels, Dante observes the sinners who are waiting for their release into Paradise, and...

'The most moving lines literature has achieved' – Jorge Luis Borges. In The Divine Comedy & Paradise, having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory, Dante ascends to Heaven, continuing his soul's search for God, guided by his beloved Beatrice. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise, he grows in understanding, until he...

A new translation of one of the literary wonders of the medieval world and the greatest source of knowledge of Viking lore in existence. Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era—the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Völsung...

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets deciphered only in the 19th century, the cycle of poems collected around the character of Gilgamesh, the great King of Uruk, tells of his long and arduous journey to the Spring of Youth, of his encounters with monsters and gods, and of his friendship with Enkidu, the wild man from the hills. Also included in...

Spenser's masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, is among the most influential poems in the English language. It was the first epic in English and established the possibilities of heroic poetry in the English tradition. The author's intention was to rival, or surpass, the epic romances of the Italian poets Ariosto and Tasso through the "darke conceit" of this poem, which unites...

A work of tremendous influence that has inspired writers from his ancient Greek contemporaries to modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot, Homer's epic poem The Iliad is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Penguin Classics. One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's The Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode...

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde is part of the Penguin Classics relaunch. Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. This collection includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A noble but impoverished Venetian asks a friend, Antonio, for a loan to impress an heiress. His friend agrees, but is forced to borrow the sum from a cynical Jewish moneylender, Shylock, and signs a chilling contract to honour the debt with a...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. In need of money, the fat and foolish Falstaff devises a scheme to seduce two married women and steal their husbands' wealth. By talking to each other, however, the wives soon discover his plan and begin to plot their own revenge. Relentlessly inventive,...

Golding makes Ovid both dreamy and robust. Here we can listen to the English language as it moves confidently into the highest eloquence - Tom Paulin Bringing together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends, Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant Metamorphoses describes a magical world in which men and women are transformed—often by love—into flowers, trees, animals, stones, and...

New translation by Alicia Stallings, with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius is a poem that blends scientific inquiry and philosophical exploration with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour, Lucretius seeks to show humanity that there is nothing to fear in death, as the soul is mortal and the...

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles. A Penguin Classic Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation. "Sing to me of the...

In The Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, its spirit of struggle and regeneration is eternal.

A collection of the beautiful, surprising poems of Catullus. One of the most versatile of Roman poets, Catullus wrote verse of an almost unparalleled diversity and stylistic agility, from the brevity of the epigram to the sustained elegance of the elegy. This collection contains all of Catullus' extant work and includes his lyrics to the notorious Clodia Metelli—married, seductive, and...

My all-time favourite collection of poems . . . Gibran's poetry always roots me in my humanity. --Rupi Kaur, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Home Body This stunning new hardcover edition features a full linen case, copper stamping, turquoise gilded edges, and coloured endpapers. It is one of the...

Writing in the eleventh century, Khayyam was one of the most accomplished masters of the new and increasingly popular ruba'i, or two-line stanza, that had been adopted by poets to help them shake off the artifice of conventional court poetry and express their personal feelings with wit and clarity. Khayyam ranges in his stanzas through the most fundamental aspects of...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The beautiful but sharp-tongued Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. And as he meets her own caustic words with...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as a ship carrying the royal family is wrecked. Miraculously, all on board survive. Plotting, mistaken identities, bewitching love, and drunkenness follow as the travellers explore the strange place of spirits...

A beautiful edition of Anne Brontë's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics. Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject...

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles (496-406 BC) to create a powerful trilogy about mankind's struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realise he has committed and who then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. With profound insights into the human condition, it is...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The jealous King of Sicily becomes convinced that his wife is carrying the child of his best friend. Imprisoned and put on trial, the Queen collapses when the King refuses to accept the divine confirmation of her innocence. The child is abandoned to...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. An embittered Roman General returns from war, having captured the Queen of the Goths and her three sons. Sacrificing the eldest in memory of his own sons killed in battle, he provokes the queen's unending hatred. And when she is made empress by...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. It is the seventh year of the Trojan War. The Greek army is camped outside Troy and Achilles — their military hero — refuses to fight. Inside the city, Troilus, the Trojan King's son, falls in love with Cressida, whose father has defected...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing a countess on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of his beloved's affections. With the arrival of...

Two of Virginia Woolf's most striking essays are published together in a new Black Classics edition. A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. It ranges in its themes from Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister, and the effects...

A collectible new Penguin series - beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at A. E. Housman's own expense. The collection of lyrical poems became hugely successful following the Second Boer War and World War I, with themes such as nostalgia for one's home and the patriotic celebration of the life...

Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse form. This collection brings together fantasy poems, such as Goblin Market, and terrifyingly vivid verses for children, love lyrics and sonnets, and the vast body of her devotional poetry. Rossetti's poems weave connections between love and death, triumph and loss,...

Xenophon's fascinating defence of Socratic thought. After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought,...

A new translation by David Raeburn, with introduction and notes by Pat Easterling Sophocles' innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother's lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but...

This revised edition features a new introduction by Robin Seager, putting the lives in the context of Plutarch's biography and literary career, discussing and comparing the individual lives, and analysing Plutarch's approach to his subject matter. Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series - beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Goblin Market and Other Poems was Christina Rossetti's first full volume of poetry, published in 1862. The collection received widespread critical praise and established Rossetti as the foremost female poet of her time. Tennyson, Hopkins, and Swinburne all admired her work. The title poem Goblin...

Edited and first published by William Caxton in 1485, Le Morte d'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's unique and splendid version of the Arthurian legend. Mordred's treason, the knightly exploits of Tristan, Lancelot's fatally divided loyalties and his love for Guenever, the quest for the Holy Grail; all the elements are there woven into a wonderful completeness by the magic of...

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned...

'The undisputed masterpiece of negritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism' - Guardian 'We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout.' This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the negritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonisation when it appeared in 1939. Following one man's return from Europe to his homeland of Martinique, Return to My Native Land...

A selection of Baudelaire's explicit and unsettling poems The poems of Charles Baudelaire are filled with explicit and unsettling imagery, depicting with intensity everyday subjects ignored by French literary conventions of his time. Tableaux parisiens portrays the brutal life of Paris's thieves, drunkards, and prostitutes amid the debris of factories and poorhouses. In love poems such as Le Beau Navire,...

With an introduction that discusses Blake's life and career, his reputation, and the major themes of his work, and explores the relationship between the poetry and the illustrations. Writer and religious rebel, William Blake (1757-1827) sowed the seeds for Romanticism in his innovative poems concerning faith and the visions that inspired him throughout his life. Whether describing his own spirituality,...

A new edition of the finest poems by Tennyson Tennyson's poetry epitomises the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous melancholy, as in Maud, or are chivalric, heroic and allegorical, as in The Lady of Shalott and Morte d'Arthur.

Lawyer, philosopher, statesman, and defender of Rome's Republic, Cicero was a master of eloquence. His pure literary and oratorical style, coupled with a strict sense of morality, have exerted a powerful influence on European literature and thought for over two thousand years, particularly in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith. Selected Works showcases the diversity of Cicero's writings. It includes...

Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume). John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired...

Available for the first time in Black Classics Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec showcases some of the most entertaining and spirited essays of his age. Perec's literary output was remarkably varied in form and style. This generous selection of his non-fictional work also demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour, and accessibility.

Euripides (c.484-406 BC) was the most controversial of the three great Greek tragedians and the most modern. His major themes - religious scepticism, the injustices suffered by women, and the destructive folly of war - are issues still vitally important today. Ion, a play more concerned with character than ideas, deals with the problem of reconciling religious faith with the...

The complete collection of Donne's poems, including his famous Holy Sonnets, 'The Flea' and 'The Sun Rising'. No poet has been more wilfully contradictory than John Donne, whose works forge unforgettable connections between extremes of passion and mental energy. From satire to tender elegy, from sacred devotion to lust, he conveys an astonishing range of emotions and poetic moods. Constant...

This is a definitive collection of Christopher Marlowe's plays. His seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, religious, occult and erotic. In the victories of Tamburlaine, Faustus's encounters with the demonic, the irreverence of Barabas, and the humiliation of Edward, Marlowe explores the shifting balance between power and helplessness, the sacred and its desecration. The Complete Plays offers...

One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic, and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience—which juxtapose poems such as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose'—to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton, and...

In her introduction, Janet Gezari discusses issues of dating and authenticity that arise with Brontë's poems, and the ways in which the Gondal poems relate to the lost prose narratives on the same subject. The poems of Emily Jane Brontë are passionate and powerful works that convey the vitality of the human spirit and of the natural world. Only twenty-one...

In 1855, Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work which defined him as one of America's most influential voices, and which he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful Song of Myself and I Sing the Body...

One of the great figures of English Romanticism, Coleridge's poems show diversity and imaginative genius. One of the major figures of English Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) created works of remarkable diversity and imaginative genius. The period of his creative friendship with William Wordsworth inspired some of Coleridge's best-known poems, from the nightmarish vision of the Rime of the Ancient...

The Erotic Poems by Ovid explores the multifaceted nature of sexual desire through a collection of poems that range from passionate declarations of eternal love to light-hearted justifications for promiscuity. In the Amores, Ovid expresses his feelings through a series of elegies dedicated to Corinna, his captivating and elusive mistress. These early poems reveal an intimate and vulnerable side of...

Composed for recitation at festivals, these 33 songs were written in honour of the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon. They recount the key episodes in the lives of the gods and dramatise the moments when they first appear before mortals. Together, they offer a vivid picture of the Greek view of the relationship between the divine and...

In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. These travel writings not only chronicle Basho's perilous journeys through Japan, but they also capture his vision of eternity in the transient world around him. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches showcases Basho's exceptional ability to portray...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The...

In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC – AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman...

A wonderful collection of Housman's much-loved poetry, new to Penguin Classics. A. E. Housman was one of the best-loved poets of his day, whose poems conjure up a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss. They are expressed in simple rhythms, yet show a fine ear for the subtleties of metre and alliteration. His scope...

Shakespeare's Four Tragedies - Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello - are presented in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition. The theme of the great Shakespearean tragedies is a hero's fall from grace due to a fatal character flaw. Whether it is the ruthless ambition of Macbeth or the folly of Lear, the irresolution of Hamlet or the suspicion of...

Revised edition The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, and stages a great debate to help him decide between the traditional wisdom of...

Greek Tragedy brings together the masterpieces of classical tragedy in one volume, making it the ideal single-volume introduction for theatre-goers, actors, general readers, and students of Classics, English Literature, and Drama. Agememnon is the first part of Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy, where the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan War only to be murdered by his treacherous wife,...

Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking and horrific of all the Greek tragedies. Dominating the play is Medea herself, a towering and powerful figure who demonstrates Euripides' unusual willingness to give voice to a woman's case. Alcestis, a tragicomedy, is based on a magical myth...

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each offers a new translation of the most widely known and popular collection of Japanese poetry. The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above all, love. Dating back to the seventh century, these elegant, precisely observed waka...

On Love and Barley by Matsuo Basho presents the work of one of the greatest Japanese poets, a master of haiku. Known not only for his literary genius, Basho was also a Buddhist monk and a lifelong traveller. His poems embody 'karumi', or lightness of touch, and embrace the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each verse beautifully evokes aspects...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series – beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Poems is Wilfred Owen's only volume of poetry, first published posthumously in 1920 and edited by his friend and mentor, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen is regarded as one of the best poets of World War I and composed nearly all of his poems in just over...

The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging...

Selected Poetry by Goethe marks the first verse translation of Goethe's poetry to be featured in Penguin Classics. This new translation replaces Luke's own 1964 prose translation, which has remained in print continuously, with life sales reaching 43,000 copies.

A collection of political speeches from the greatest orator of Rome Amid the corruption and power struggles of the collapse of the Roman Republic, Cicero (106-43BC) produced some of the most stirring and eloquent speeches in history. A statesman and lawyer, he was one of the only outsiders to penetrate the aristocratic circles that controlled the Roman state, and became...

The plays in this volume all contain Aristophanes' trademark bawdy comedy and dazzling verbal agility. In The Birds, two frustrated Athenians join the birds to build the utopian city of 'Much Cuckoo in the Clouds'. The Knights is a venomous satire on Cleon, a prominent Athenian demagogue, while The Assembly Women deals with the battle of the sexes as the...

First time in Black Classics Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils, wrote Edward Lear (1812-88), and this collection demonstrates the wonderfully varied ways in which he pursued his philosophy of life. He created an extraordinary world filled with bizarre creatures - from the Dong with a luminous nose to the Pobble who has no toes - who misbehave with...