Gift Books
The Nightingale in English Poetry
52 pages, 4 colour and 5 black and white illustrations
Dimensions: 148 x 105 mm
The nightingale, noted for its sweet singing but undistinguished looks, has a long relationship with poetry. This book explores this through some of the best known and loved poets in the English language. Taking their inspiration from classical mythology they often address the nightingale by its Greek name ‘Philomela’. Sir Philip Sidney calls the nightingale ‘Philomela fair’ and Shakespeare speaks of her ‘mournful hymns’. The nightingale’s song is linked with human creativity and expression; in the words of Shelley: ‘A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.’ In Keats’ celebrated Ode to a Nightingale the song of the nightingale opens a door for the poet to meditate on his sorrow following the death of his beloved brother, Tom. This volume also features the works of John Milton, John Clare and Christina Rossetti.
Love Poetry
52 pages, 9 colour illustrations
Dimensions: 148 x 105 mm
This volume combines iconic paintings such as The Kiss by Gustav Klimt with famous love poems including several much-loved sonnets. You will find here Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Shelley, Lord Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’ and the lyrical ‘O my Luve is like a red, red rose’ by Robert Burns – among many more.
This small volume is ideal for literature and art lovers, and as a gift for somebody special!
The Rose in Poetry
36 pages, 10 colour illustrations
Dimensions: 148 x 105 mm
We often think of the rose as a symbol of love but this collection reveals that it can be so much more. In contrast to its association with love, beauty, purity and perfection, it is also used to signify the loss of romantic hope, crushed dreams, the evocation of beloved places and the passing of time and withering of youth. Reflecting on the budding rose the great Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso wrote: ‘So, in the passing of a day, doth pass / The bud and blossom of the life of man’ (transl. Edward Fairfax).
Drawing on the works of poets as diverse as Horace and Shakespeare and the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and W.B. Yeats, this collection, rich in metaphor and allusion, brings together a wealth of images where the rose, in the words of Christina Rossetti ‘sets the world on fire’. If you mourn The Last Rose of Summer with Thomas Moore and can imagine throwing a rose at a Pierrot with Sara Teasdale, admire Waterhouse’s two popular paintings entitled Gather ye Rosebuds and the botanical precision of the art of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, this is the book for you.
