Poetry & Plays

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems...

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...

A new edition of the finest poems by Tennyson Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous...

A fresh selection of Wordsworth's poetry from the poet's biographer. One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural...

A new selection of John Donne's endlessly innovative and fascinating verse, from the witty conceit of 'The Flea' to the instense spirituality of his divine poems. Regarded by many as...

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

The 'riotous, insanely readable' new novel from the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE The 'riotous, insanely readable' (Observer) retelling of The Tempest from the 2019 Booker Prize-winning author of THE...

'Frost was the first American poet who could honestly be reckoned a master-poet by world standards' Robert Graves A wonderful collection of Robert Frost's writing No poet is more emblematically...

'Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale... In sublimity and magnitude, it comes closer than anything in our language to the swollen red...

Now included in UQP's First Nations Classics series with an introduction from Tony Birch, Smoke Encrypted Whispers is a stunning collection of exhilarating poems, urban songlines and ancestral ties that...

Now included in UQP's First Nations Classics series with an introduction from Kirli Saunders, Dreaming in the Urban Areas is an unforgettable work of Indigenous poetry. Lisa Bellear (1961-2006) was...

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...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Leaving behind both home and beloved, a young man travels to Milan to...

A dazzling collection of poetry by the greatest Latin-American Poet of our time The perfect gift for Valentine's Day Selected Poems contains Neruda's resonant, exploratory, intensely individualistic verse, rooted in...

'Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled' William Blake 'Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by...

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....

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery In the Duke's absence from Vienna, his strict deputy Angelo revives an ancient...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. When young prince Hamlet is...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love....

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery An ageing king makes a capricious decision to divide his realm among his...

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...

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...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman...

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...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne,...

A new verse translation of one of the foundational ancient Greek works by the award-winning poet Alicia Stallings The ancient Greeks revered Hesiod, believing he had beaten Homer in a...

Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now in Penguin Classics At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a...

A spectacular verse translation of one the most foundational texts in world literature Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and...

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of...

"I think this version is terrific. The light enjambed English hexameters are a great success. The effect is properly propulsive." - Prof A D Nuttall, Oxford Ovid's deliciously witty and...

Penguin Classics Relaunch 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...

Introduced by Robin Waterfield First published in the 1920's, THE PROPHET an inspirational, allegorical guide to living, the book is perhaps the most famous work of religious fiction of the...

Basho's beautifully-written and closely observed descriptions of his travels in Japan In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When...

Dylan Thomas is one of most beloved British poets of all time. Richly melodious and vividly expressive, Thomas's poems strike to the heart of eternal themes of living and dying,...

Eclipse weaves reflections on Country with affirmation and cheek, fusing Beyonc with quantum physics. Through free verse, experimental and concrete poems, Kirli Saunders taps into the rhythm of Ancestral wisdom,...

Revel in the sumptuous language of Edgar Allan Poe's best works in this elegantly designed hardcover edition. The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe features the spine-chilling short...

Another Time was the first volume that Auden published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of...

Sylvia Plath was one of the defining voices of the twentieth-century, and one of the most appealing: few other poets have introduced as many new readers to poetry. The poems...

The startling originality of Emily Dickinson's style condemned her poetry to obscurity during her lifetime, but her bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual...

Both published posthumously in 1971, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees contain the poems written along with those that went to form Ariel , from the exceptionally creative period that...

Ariel , first published in 1965, contains many of Sylvia Plath's best-known poems, written in an extraordinary burst of creativity just before her death in 1963. Including poems such as...

'The whole performance is wonderfully intermediate - poised between the Bible and folk wisdom, between the Light Ages and the Dark Ages - and at the same time pulverisingly actual...

'To read [ Birthday Letters ] is to experience the psychic equivalent of the bends'. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the undertruths of sadness and endurance...

When Sylvia Plath's Ariel was published posthumously, A. Alvarez in the Observer wrote: 'If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to...

This volume contains all Sylvia Plath's mature poetry written from 1956 up to her death in 1963.The text is preceded by an introduction by Ted Hughes and followed by notes...

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain . . . Published in 1922, The Waste...

This selection, which was made by Eliot himself, is intended as an introduction to the main body of his poetry prior to Four Quartets, which is available separately in Faber...