This is a story-book, universal in its appeal and representative of a literary tradition from Chaucer to Auden. Its tales are of various kinds - romantic, humorous, ghostly, and gory, written over the past six hundred years.Here will be found Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' and Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'; the tale of John Gilpin and of the Idiot Boy; 'The Lady of Shalott', 'The Pied Piper', and Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark'. In the twentieth century the narrative tradition is exemplified by Chesterton andMasefield, Charles Causley and C. Day-Lewis, amongst others.Most of the fifty-nine poems in this collection are given in their entirety, but abridgements and extracts from book-length narratives such as 'The Faerie Queene' and 'Paradise Lost' add to the richness and variety.

This is a book of fiction written in verse, a book that contains interesting short tales and other writings that are told in a simple and light style. The tales include titles such as The Strange Disease, The Kleptomaniac, The Haunting etc. The writings in verse talk of clouds, incense, deserts, roads, paintings and suchlike, and weave them into stories, in poems such as Lies, Deja Vu etc. In all, this book is a journey through a world that it builds unto itself, a collection that takes you on a roller-coaster of old fashioned entertainment, through musings and stories and tall tales, with rhyme, rhythm, reason and style. Though bound between the covers of a poetry book, this one doesn't really fall into any specific literary category. It is meant to speak to everyone and meant to regale everyone, in all situations.

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