Masterful Images The Art of Kiyoshi Saito presents the story of this idiosyncratic artists ascent to international success, whose rustic work possessed an immediacy far from the refinement of a Hiroshige or Hokusai. Travel and recognition brought new subjects, as the artist lingered in France, Tahiti, Mexico, and India to capture scenes that appealed to his sensibility. Encompassing the full range of Saitos oeuvre, the 90 prints reproduced here are complemented by an interpretive essay from Barry Till, curator of the museums Asian art collection.

For the past four decades Frank Kermode, critic and writer, has steadily established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. Questioning the public's harsh perception of 'the artist', Kermode at the same time gently pokes fun at artists' own, often inflated, self-image. He identifies what has become one of the defining characteristics of the Romantic tradition - the artist in isolation and the emerging power of the imagination. Back in print after an absence of over a decade, The Romantic Image is quintessential Kermode. Enlightenment has seldom been so enjoyable!

The Collected Critical Writings gathers more than forty years of Hill's published criticism, in a revised final form, and also adds much new work. It will serve as the canonical volume of criticism by Hill, the pre-eminent poet-critic whom A. N. Wilson has called "probably the best writer alive, in verse or in prose." In his criticism Hill ranges widely, investigating both poets (including Jonson, Dryden, Hopkins, Whitman, Eliot, and Yeats ) and prose writers (such as Tyndale, Clarendon, Hobbes, Burton, Emerson, and F. H. Bradley). He is also steeped in the historical context - political, poetic, and religious - of the writers he studies. Most importantly, he brings texts and contexts into new and telling relations, neither reducing texts to the circumstances of their utterance nor imagining that they can float free of them. A number of the essays have already established themselves as essential reading on particular subjects, such as his analysis of Vaughan's "The Night", his discussion of Gurney's poetry, and his critical account of The Oxford English Dictionary. Others confront the problems of language and the nature of value directly, as in "Our Word is Our Bond", "Language, Suffering, and Value", and "Poetry and Value". In all his criticism, Hill reveals literature to be an essential arena of civic intelligence.

Who were Shakespeare's 'Friend' and the 'Dark Lady'? Why did Donne risk his life and ruin his career for a seventeen-year-old girl? Why did Wordsworth's sister retire to her bed on his wedding day? Writing never takes place in a vacuum and much of the finest poetry in the English language has been inspired by particular people - patrons, spouses, lovers, friends, or just casual acquaintances. Whether relegated to an obscurity they do not deserve or thrust into prominence they did not seek, their importance to the creative process is inescapable. In Where All the Ladders Start, Julian Lovelock discusses with characteristic incisiveness and enthusiasm nine major British poets and the real lives behind some of their most personal and significant works. Along the way he shows how poetry has developed over the past four hundred years and provides suggestions for further reading, while for convenience all of the relevant poems and extracts are reproduced in full. Written for both the seasoned reader and the student encountering these poems for the first time, Lovelock's analysis will inspire and entertain in equal measure.

William Carlos Williams's place among the great poets of our century is firmly established. This anthology of selections drawn from the whole range of his work--poetry, fiction, autobiography, drama and essays--shows conclusively that his prose was also remarkably original, versatile and powerful. It has been edited by M. L. Rosenthal, literary critic and Professor of English at New York University.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.