Faber Paperbacks

"Livia (58 B.C. - A.D. 29) - wife of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, and mother of the second, Tiberius - wielded power at the center of Roman politics for most of her long life. Livia has been portrayed as a cunning and sinister schemer who eliminated her opponents, both within her own family and outside of it. In this biography (the first in English devoted to her), Livia emerges as a much more complex individual - a woman who skillfully won the support and even affection of her contemporaries, and who was widely revered after her death." "Barrett here examines Livia's life and her role in Roman politics. He recounts her marriage to Augustus at the age of nineteen; her essential contributions to Augustus' initially tenuous position as ruler; her unprecedented authority during his reign; and her conflicts with Tiberius, who was unwilling to concede to his mother the kind of authority that Augustus had intended for her. Livia's remarkable life spanned two reigns that established the pattern of government for the Roman empire over the next four centuries."--BOOK JACKET.

Essays by the distinguished poet illuminate his philosophical beliefs as well as the principal themes found in the Cantos.

De Schorpioengod van Wiklliam Golding bevat drie verhalen - door de schrijver als 'short novels' aangeduid - die blijk geven van Goldings veelzijdig en ironisch vernuft. In het titelverhaal 'De Schorpioengod', dat zich afspeelt in het oude Egypte, poogt een in hofkringen verkerende buitenstaander de sinds eeuwen vaststaande riten te weerstreven; door zijn gedrag krijgen enkelen in deze gesloten gemeenschap de kans hun blik op de wereld te verruimen. Een andere wereldbeschouwing bezit ook een der hoofdpersonen in het tweede verhaal 'Klink, klink'. In de hier weergegeven prehistorische samenleving staat de individuele, relativerende kijk die de vrouw Palm eigen is, in scherpe tegenstelling tot de redeloze vlucht in de collectiviteit welke de mannenwereld kenschetst. Een aanvaardbare wijze van samenleven blijkt tenslotte toch mogelijk. In 'Buitengewoon Gezand' wordt de Romeinse keizertijd geschetst. Een buiten de maatschappij staande uitvinder biedt zijn wereldschokkende vindingen aan het keizerlijke hof aan en wenst ze daar te testen. De uitwerkingen van deze revolutionaire machinens worden hem niet in dank afgenomen. Zijn benoeming tot buitengewoon gezant in China brengt de keizer uitkomst. (flaptekst)

Tragicomedy set in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Philandering husband shocked to discover that his wife has acquired a young lover, and he feels honor-bound to challenge him to a duel.

In words worth a thousand pictures, Light Years makes a palpable reality of an elusive and vivid way of seeing the world - and of a way of life equally intense and unpredictable. Unlike any other writer on the craft of film, Tom McDonough illuminates not only the mysterious alchemy that transmutes light into feelings, but also the passions of the movie industry's dreamers and the deft, sometimes daft, technicians who make the dreams come true. \Uniquely expert as both a cameraman and a writer, McDonough tells us how the masters leave their indelible mark on movies - Gordon Willis on Woody Allen's, Allen Davideau on Spielberg's, Nestor Almendros on Sophie's Choice. More importantly, with his experience with the day-to-day complexities of a cinematographer's life - with its disruptive, exhilarating dislocations and brief but lifeboat-intense relationships - transforms Light Years into a very human and compelling portrait of the world of moviemaking. \Traditionally the silent man in a garrulous entertainment, the invisible vicar of a stunningly visual art, the cinematographer at last acquires in these pages an expressive voice and an unforgettable face. Written on the set and on the road, Light Years is in authentic inside look at a profession whose story hsa never been told with such eloquence or passion.

"Through the Night ... a hospital provides the most pathetic spectacle of people being bullied into abandoning their free will ... a young woman who goes into hospital for what she believes to be a routine cancer test, and...wakes up from the operating table to find she is minus a breast. It was not the necessity of removing the breast which was in question, but the unwillingness of the hospital staff to engage personally with a patient faced with, and then adjusting to, such a traumatic experience." ... "Such Impossibilities ... Set in 1911, it show Tom Mann, Secretary of the Transport Workers' Federation, at the head of the Committee directing a strike of the Seamen's Unions in Liverpool."--Back cover.

Four months after Cummings's death in September 1962, his widow, the photographer Marion Morehouse, collected the typescripts of 29 new poems. These poems, as well as uncollected poems published only in periodicals up to that time, make up 73 Poems. This is the final volume in Liveright's reissue of Cummings's individual volumes of poetry, with texts and settings based on E.E. Cummings: The Complete Poems 1904-1962.

Prufrock: 1917 : The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock ; Portrait of a lady ; Preludes ; Rhapsody on a windy night ; Morning at the window ; The Boston Evening Transcript ; Aunt Helen ; Cousin Nancy ; Mr. Apollinax ; Hysteria ; Conversation Galante ; La Figlia che Piange -- Poems: 1920. Gerontion ; Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a cigar ; Sweeney erect ; A cooking egg ; Le directeur ; Mélange adultère de tout ; Lune de Miel ; The hippopotamus ; Dans le restaurant ; Whispers of immortality ; Mr. Eliot's Sunday morning service ; Sweeney among the nightingales -- The Waste Land: 1922 : The burial of the dead ; A game of chess ; The fire sermon ; Death by water ; What the thunder said ; Notes on 'The Waste Land' -- The hollow men: 1925 -- Ash Wednesday: 1930 : Because I do not hope to turn again ; Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree ; At the first turning of the second stair ; Who walked between the violet and the violet ; If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent ; Although I do not hope to turn again -- Ariel poems : Journey of the Magi, 1927 ; A song for Simeon, 1928 ; Animula, 1929 ; Marina, 1930 ; The cultivation of Christmas trees, 1954 -- Unfinished poems : Sweeney Agonistes ; Fragment of a prologue ; Fragment of an agon ; Coriolan ; Triumphal march, 1931 ; Difficulties of a statesman -- Minor poems : Eyes that last I saw in tears ; The wind sprang up at four o'clock ; Five-finger exercises ; Lines to a Persian cat ; Lines to a Yorkshire terrier ; Lines to a duck in the park ; Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre. ; Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg ; Landscapes ; New Hampshire ; Virginia ; Usk ; Rannoch, by Glencoe ; Cape Ann ; Lines for an old man -- Choruses from "The Rock": 1934 : The eagle soars in the summit of heaven ; Thus your fathers were made ; The word of the Lord came unto me, saying ; There are those who would build the temple ; O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart ; It is hard for those who have never known persecution ; In the beginning God created the world ; O Father we welcome your words ; Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears ; You have seen the house build, you have seen it adorned -- Four quartets : Burnt Norton, 1935 ; East Coker, 1940 ; The dry salvages, 1941 ; Little Gidding, 1942 -- Occasional verses : Defense of the islands ; A note on war poetry ; To the Indians who died in Africa ; To Walter de la Mare ; A dedication to my wife.

Marlene Dietrich and the British military seem an unlikely marriage, but Peter Nichols achieves their seamless union in 'Privates on Parade'. In post-war Malaysia, Terri Dennis presides over the Song and Dance Unit South East Asia, a unit tasked with entertaining their fellow troops. The vaudevillian tone of this play facilitates its raucous story about soldiers, drag-artistry, and post-war colonial politics. 'Privates on Parade' was first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977, when it won the Olivier award for Best New Play.

Not much has changed in the days since Maud's husband, Victor, died, except for the addition of the casket in the music room. She and her son Maurice are still pottering around the house, watching television and enjoying their eccentric hobbies. Everything becomes much less comfortable, however, when her other children arrive for the funeral. Quirky, dark, and hilarious, 'Born in the Gardens' combines a commentary on Thatcherite politics with an examination of a family in transition. It was written for the bicentennial anniversary of the Theatre Royal, now the Bristol Old Vic, in 1979.

Shows by explanation and example how modern poets such as Dickinson, Lawrence, Welty, Roethke, Plath, and Larkin captured pictures with words.