Examining every aspect of the culture from antiquity to the founding of Constantinople in the early Byzantine era, this thoroughly cross-referenced and fully indexed work is written by an international group of scholars. This Encyclopedia is derived from the more broadly focused Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, the highly praised two-volume work. Newly edited by Nigel Wilson, this single-volume reference provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the political, cultural, and social life of the people and to the places, ideas, periods, and events that defined ancient Greece.

Lush Diodorus sets the lads on fire, But now another has him in his net - Timarion, the boy with wanton eyes . . . Meleager, AP 12.109 Encompassing four thousand short poems and more, the ramshackle classic we call the Greek Anthology gathers up a millennium of snapshots from ancient daily life. Its influence echoes not merely in the classic tradition of the English epigram (Pope, Dryden) but in Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, H.D., and the poets of the First World War. Its variety is almost infinite. Victorious armies, ruined cities, and Olympic champions share space with lovers' quarrels and laments for the untimely dead - but also with jokes and riddles, art appreciation, potted biographies of authors, and scenes from country life and the workplace. This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology's books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, and with extensive notes on the history and myth that lie behind them.

John Donne (1572-1631) is firmly fixed in the canon of English literature. "No man is an island" and "For whom the bell tolls" are just two of his phrases known by virtually everyone. The Poems of John Donne is a two volume edition of Donnes poems based on a comprehensive re-evaluation of his work from composition to circulation and reception. Donnes output is tremendously varied in style and form and demonstrates his ability to change his writing according to context and occasion. This edition presents the text of all his known poems, from the epigrams, songs and satires written for fellow young men about town, to the more mature verse-epistles and memorial elegies written for his patrons. Volume One contains the Epigrams, Verse Letters to Friends, Love Lyrics, Love Elegies and Satires.

The Poems of John Donne is one volume paperback edition of the poems of John Donne (1572-1631) based on a comprehensive re-evaluation of his work from composition to circulation and reception. Donne’s output is tremendously varied in style and form and demonstrates his ability to exercise his rhetorical capabilities according to context and occasion. This edition aims to present the text of all his known poems, from the epigrams, songs and satires written for fellow young men about town, to the more mature verse-epistles and memorial elegies written for his patrons. The Longman Annotated English Poets series traditionally aims to present poems in chronological order; in this edition, however, the principle has been observed only within generic sections. This organisation reproduces the manner in which Donne’s original readers first encountered the poems in the various manuscripts of his elegies and satires that circulated in Donne’s lifetime. Volume One contains the Epigrams, Verse Letters to Friends, Love Lyrics, Love Elegies and Satires; Volume Two contains the religious poems, Wedding Celebrations, Verse Epistles to Patronesses, Commemorations, and the Anniversaries. The lyrics have been arranged alphabetically for ease of reference and because, in all but a few cases, precise date of composition is impossible to determine. Each poem has extensive editorial commentary designed to put the twenty-first century reader in possession of all that is necessary fully to appreciate Donne’s work. A substantial headnote sets each poem in its historical and literary context, while the annotations give detailed guidance on the wealth of classical and religious allusions and give full representation to the literary, historical and philosophical culture out of which the poems grew. In keeping with the traditions of the series, Donne’s own text has been modernised in punctuation and spelling except where to do so would alter or disrupt a rhyme.

Though printer Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes (1557) remains the most influential poetic collection printed in the sixteenth century, the compiliation has long been ignored or misundertood by scholars of early modern English culture. Embracing a broad range of critical and historical perspectives, the eight essays within this volume offer the first sustained analysis of the many ways that consumers read and understood Songes and Sonettes as an anthology over the course of the early modern period. Copied by a monarch, set to music, sung, carried overseas, studied, appropriated, rejected, edited by consumers, transferred to manuscript, and gifted by Shakespeare, this muti-author verse anthology of 280 poems transformed sixteenth-century English language and culture. With at least eleven printings before the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, Tottel’s ground-breaking text greatly influenced the poetic publications that followed, including individual and multi-author miscellanies. Contributors to this essay collection explore how, in addition to offering a radically new kind of English verse, ’Tottel’s Miscellany’ engaged politics, friendship, religion, sexuality, gender, morality and commerce in complex-and at times, contradictory-ways.

What became of Erasmus’ books? The most famous scholar of his day died in peaceful prosperity and in the company of celebrated and responsible friends. His zeal for useful books was insatiable. Indeed, he had taken care to insure that after his death they would pass to an appreciative noble owner, yet after his death their fate was unknown. Erasmus and His Books provides the most comprehensive evidence available about the books of Erasmus of Rotterdam – the books he owned and his attitude towards them, when and how he acquired them, how he housed, used, and cared for them, and how, from time to time, he disposed of them. Part 1 details the formation, growth, scope, and arrangement of Erasmus’ library and opens the door to a new understanding of the more intimate side of his daily life as a scholar at home with his books, friends, publishers, and booksellers. Part 2 presents a carefully annotated catalogue, the Versandliste, of the more than 400 books in Erasmus’ possession at one point. Drawing upon his command of bibliographical data and his extensive knowledge of Erasmus’ correspondence and related records Egbertus van Gulik proposes as precise an identification of each of the titles as the evidence will allow. Van Gulik’s insightful discoveries tell us what can be known of books in Erasmus’ working library and how he used them and will be of interest to students of the northern Renaissance, the history of the book, and the history of learning.