William Wordsworth

First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work. The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, it takes as its theme 'the growth of a poet's mind': leading the reader back to Wordsworth's formative moments of childhood and youth, and detailing his experiences as a radical undergraduate in France at the time of the Revolution. Initially inspired by Coleridge's exhortation...

"The wonder of birds has charmed and inspired poets down the centuries and across the globe. From Shakespeare's 'feathr'd king' to Ted Hughes 'butterfly lightness', of swifts, this is a collection to stir the soul of any nature lover. Our emotional and cultural connection to the bird world is captured in 60 of the best-loved poems, which include the work of Percy Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Longfellow and Keats. All of them accompanied by the beautiful...