This is a systematically arranged, annotated collection of outstanding literary works dealing with drink. It centers on some of the most enduring themes in both literary depictions of drinking and alcohol research: causes of drinking; effects of drinking; the tavern; drinking and family life; drinking and gender; and the spiritual dimension of drinking. Organized into chapters reflecting these themes, it encourages readers to think about drinking alcohol as a practice that is deeply cultural as well as biochemical. After a comprehensive introduction, the anthology provides informative headnotes to each selection, and ranges broadly across different cultures and periods, thus providing insights into patterns of similarity and difference in literature's treatment of a controversial, pervasive aspect of human experience. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

After more than a century of study, we know more about Keats than we do about most writers of the past, but we still cannot frilly grasp the magical processes by which he created some of the most celebrated poems in all of English literature. This volume, containing 140 photographs of Keats's own manuscripts, offers the most concrete evidence we have of the way in which his thoughts and feelings were transmuted into art. The rough first drafts in particular are frill of information about what occurred, if not in Keats's mind, at least on paper when he had pen in hand: the headlong rush of ideas coming so fast that he had no time to punctuate or even form the letters of his words; the stumbling places where he had to begin again several times before the words resumed their flow; the efforts to integrate story, character, and theme with the formal requirements of rhyme and meter. Each revision teaches the inquiring reader something about Keats's poetic practice. Several of the manuscripts are unique authoritative sources, while others constitute our best texts among multiple existing versions. They reveal much about the maturation of the poet's creativity during four years of his brief life, between "On Receiving a Curious Shell" (1815) and "To Autumn" (1819). Above all, they show us what is lost when penmanship yields to the printed page: what Helen Vendler, in her insightfiul essay on the manuscripts, calls "the living hand of Keats." These sharply reproduced facsimiles provide compelling visual evidence of a mortal author in the act ofcomposing immortal works.