University paperbacks

The Sacred Wood is a collection of 20 essays by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1920. Topics include Eliot's opinions of many literary works and authors, including Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and the poets Dante and Blake.One of his most important prose works, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" which was originally published in two parts in The Egoist, is a part of the The Sacred Wood collection. Contents. The perfect critic -- Imperfect critics: Swinburne as critic. A romantic aristocrat [George Wyndham] The local flavour. A note on the American critic. The French intelligence -- Tradition and the individual talent -- The possibility of a poetic drama -- Euripides and professor Murray -- "Rhetoric" and poetic drama -- Notes on the blank verse of Christopher Marlowe -- Hamlet and his problems -- Ben Jonson -- Philip Massinger -- Swinburne as poet -- Blake -- Dante

|This book is essential reading for whoever wants to understand Spain today and its protagonists, both individual and collective. In the best British tradition, recent politics here becomes history.' - TLS.

Countless books have been written about Elizabeth I of England, but rarely has Elizabeth the woman been presented with the vividness, authority, and perception which inform this fascinating and important work. Miss Jenkins brings the great queen, her court, and the whole exciting age to which she gave her name brilliantly to life. There was something almost bewitched in Elizabeth, as though she came from a changeling world, cold, passionate and peculiar. She was only two when the head of her mother, Anne Boleyn, was cut off and at eight she said, "I will never marry." Prince Edward's letter to his dear sister Elizabeth, after they had been ruthlessly separated, shows that both children early knew their dangers; he wrote: "I hope to visit you soon, if nothing happens to us in the meantime." The young Elizabeth was never entirely safe, her position rarely secure. The advisers of her Catholic sister, Mary Tudor, urged that she be put to death, saying, "The Princess Elizabeth is greatly to be feared, she has a spirit full of incantations." But Elizabeth outlived Bloody Mary and came to the throne—even though at her coronation no bishop could be found to put the crown on her head. Queen at last, Elizabeth brought with her to the throne extraordinary gifts which were manifest from the very beginning of her reign: an unfailing instinct choosing her advisers, the great personal magnetism which made her an object of adoration to her subjects, the financial genius which contributed so largely in the later prosperity of her realm, and the apparent vacillation which was to be such a strong weapon in her diplomacy. Elizabeth must surely have been one of the most remarkable women who have ever lived. Her fierce and consuming passion to play her role as Queen of England, her great physical energy, her fantastic vanity, her strange mixture of personal cowardice and extreme bravery, her steadfast loyalty to her trusted friends and her brutal treatment of those who offended her—everything about her is interesting. Miss Jenkins has done much to bring us closer to this woman who was as great as she was complex. Elizabeth the Great is enthralling reading from the first page to the last.

The breakdown of democracy in Spain in the 1930s resulted in a torrent of political and military violence. In this thoroughly revised edition of his classic text, Paul Preston provides a deeply disturbing explanation of the democratic collapse, coherently and excitingly outlining the social and economic background. Since the first edition of this book was completed more than fifteen years ago, archives have been opened up, the diaries, letters and memoirs of major protagonists have been published and there have been innumerable studies of the politics of the Republic, of parties, unions, elections and social conflict, national and provincial. This new edition updates the original text as exhaustively as possible to take account of the new material.