19TH CENTURY AND ROMANTIC STUDIES           

---

The Crescent Moon Book of Romantic Poetry

Shelley: Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats: Selected Poems

German Romantic Poetry: Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, Schlegel, Schiller

Hölderlin's Songs of Light: Selected Poems

Rimbaud: Arthur Rimbaud and the Magic of Poetry

Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season in Hell

Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems

Emily Bronte: Poems

Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure: A Critical Study

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Critical Study

Love and Tragedy: A Study of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems

Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys: Wessex Revisited

Thomas Hardy: The Tragic Novels

The Poetry of Landscape in Thomas Hardy

Rilke: Space, Essence and Angels in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems

Andre Gide: Fiction and Fervour in the Novels

The Crescent Moon Book of Love Poetry

The Crescent Moon Book of Nature Poetry

The Crescent Moon Book of Mystical Poetry

Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews

 

 
 
 

The great Romantics poets - Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Brontë, Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Clare - as well as many lesser known women poets
 
 

British Poets Series  Bibliography, notes  89pp  ISBN 1-898283-39-7     £7.99 / $12.50  NEW
 
 
 

Fresh from the dewy hill, the merry year
Smiles on my head, and mounts his flaming car,
Round my young brows the laurel wreathes a shade,
And rising glories beam around my head.

My feet are wingíd, while oíer the dewy lawn,
I meet my maiden, risen like the morn:
Oh bless those holy feet, like angelsí feet;
Oh bless those limbs, beaming with heavínly light!

(William Blake, from 'Song')

SHELLEY

A selection of the odes, hymns and pæans of England's breathless, angelic, anarchic poet. Famous poems, such as 'Ode to the West Wind' and ëThe Cloud', are set beside extracts from Prometheus Unbound and Epipsychidion.
 
 

British Poets Series  Bibliography, notes  81pp  ISBN 1-898283-17-6    £5.99 / $9.50
 
 
 
 

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet benediction in the eternal Curse!
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Epipsychidion)

This book gathers the most potent passages from Keats together, including the famous ëOdes', the sonnets, the luxuriously sensuous ëEve of St Agnes', the mysterious and atmospheric ëLa Belle Dame Sans Merci', and extracts from ëLamia', Endymion and Hyperion.
 
 

British Poets Series Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1-898283-09-5 65pp    £5.99 / $9.50
 
 

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art -
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
 Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

(John Keats, "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art")
 
 

GERMAN ROMANTICISM

This critical literary study looks at the chief poets and philosophers of the Romantic era who, between them, forged a new cult of mystical, lyrical poetry. After a discussion of the key ideas of German Romanticism (infinity, eternity, nostalgia, mythology, Hellenism, extremity, sensuality), Appleby concentrates on the poets: from Goethe, 'the last Renaissance man', as he is sometimes called, to the shamanic, Neoplatonic poet Novalis and his Hymen an die Nacht.
 
 

With bibliography, notes 90pp  ISBN 1-898283-03-6  £10.99 / $17.00
 
 
 

In meine Stille kamst du liese wandelnd,
Fandst drinnen in der Halle Dunkel mich aus,
Du Freundlicher! du kanst nicht unverhoft
Und fernher, wirkend über der Erde vernahm
Ich wohl dein Wiederkehren, schöner Tag
Und meine Vertrauten euch, ihr schnellgeschäftgen
Kräfte der Höh! -und nahe seid auch ihr
Mir wieder, seid wie sonst ihr Glüklichen
Ihr irrelosen Bäume meines Hains!
Ihr ruhetet und wuchíst und täglich tränkte
Des Himmels Quelle die Bescheidenen
Mit Licht und Lebensfunken säte
Befruhtend auf die Blühenden der Aether. -
O innige Natur! ich habe dich
Vor Augen, kennest du den Freund noch
Den Hochgeliebten kennest du mich nimmer-
Den Priester, der lebendigen Gesang,
Wie frohvergoßnes Opferblut, dir brachte?
 

(You movement hushed, you came into my stillness,
Deep in the gloomy hall you sought me out,
You kindly light; and not unhoped for came,
But from afar, at work above the earth,
Well I could hear you come again, bright Day!
And my familiars, you the quick and bust
Powers of the heights - now you are close to me
Once more, as once you were, the joyous,
Trees of my grove that neither stray nor falter!
You rested there and grew there well-contented
Since daily Heavenís own well-springs watered you
With light, and Aether on the flowering scattered
Sparks of pure life that fertilized their bloom.
O intimate Nature, close again to my eyes,
Do you still know your friend, the fondly loved,
Or never again will you acknowledge me,
The priest who brought you gifts of living song,
Offered it up like life-blood gladly shed?)

(Friedrich Hölderlin, from The Death of Empedocles)
 
 

translated by Michael Hamburger and edited  by Jeremy Robinson

The German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is one of the very greatest poets of any era. Hölderlin's poetry is airy, radiant and incredibly lyrical. This selection features many of his best odes, poems and hymns, from the whole span of his career. Michael Hamburger is a respected poet and critic. He has translated Rilke, Celan and Goethe, among others, as well the whole of Hölderlin's poetry. Hamburger's awards include The Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Goethe Medal and the European Translation Prize.

'Few can have done more to enhance (and in many cases create) the appreciation of German poetry among an Anglophone audience' (Times Literary Supplement)
 
 

European Writers Series  Notes & bibliography. 88pp  ISBN 1-86171-027-5     £7.99 / $12.50  forthcoming
 
 
 

HYPERION'S SONG OF FATE

You walk above in the light,
 Weightless tread a soft floor, blessed genii!
  Radiant the gods' mild breezes
   Gently play on you
    As the girl artist's fingers
     On holy strings.

Fateless the Heavenly breathe
 Like an unweaned infant asleep;
  Chastely preserved
   In modest bud
    For ever their minds
     Are in flower
      And their blissful eyes
       Eternally tranquil gaze,
        Eternally clear.

But we are fated
 To find no foothold, no rest,
  And suffering mortals
   Dwindle and fall
    Headlong from one
     Hour to the next,
      Hurled like water
       From ledge to ledge
        Downward for years to the vague abyss.

A new study of France's extraordinary 16 year-old genius poet, the ever-rebel who ran away from home, had a debauched, Bohemian relationship with Paul Verlaine, gave up writing poetry at 19, and ended up in Aden gun-running and slave-trading. This book looks at Rimbaud's theory of poetics; his famous 'seer letter'; his ecstatic lyrical voice; his early works; the famous 'Le Bateau ivre'; and his two amazing mythopúic statements: Illuminations and A Season in Hell.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

European Writers Series  With notes and bibliography  115pp  ISBN 1-871846-56-0    £14.99 / $23.50
 

These new versions of searing lyricism will delight lovers of poetry. Jary has selected the most representative pieces by the whirlwind poet, including 'The Drunken Boat', 'Memory', and healthy chunks of A Season in Hell and Illuminations. Jary has produced clear, unfussy translations of Rimbaud's fiery verse. With the French text.
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1-898283-14-1 74pp     £6.99 / $11.00
 
 
 

Sur la pente du talus, les anges tournent leurs robes de laine dans les herbages díacier et díèmeraude.
 Des prés de flames bondissent jusquíau sommet du mamelon. A gauche le terreau de líarête est piétiné par tous les homicides et toutes les batailles, et tous les bruit désastreux filent leur courbre. Derriére líarête de droite la ligne des orients, des progrès.
 Et, tandis que la bande en haunt du tableau est formée de la rumeur tournante et bondissante des conques des mers et des nuits humaines,
 La douceur fleurie des étoiles et du ciel et du reste descend en face du talus, comme un panier, - contre notre face, et fait líabîme fleurant et bleu là-dessus.

(On the side of the slope, the angels spin their woollen robes in the meadows of steel and emerald.
 Fields of flame fly up to the top of the summit. To the left, the soil is trampled by all the murders and all the battles, and all the sounds of disaster turning in their curve. Behind the summit on the right is the line of the Orient, the progress.
 And while the band of the top of the tableau is formed of the whirling rumour and leaping sounds of sea shells and human nights,
 The flowery softness of the star and the sky and all the rest moves down opposite the slope, like a basket, - against our face, and makes the abyss below flowery and blue.)

(Arthur Rimbaud, 'Mystic', from Illuminations)

A new translation of Rimbaud's extraordinary poetic statement, written in 1873. The sensual, violent and anguished emotion in Rimbaud's visionary 'alchemy of the word' remains startling, and continues to inspire poets. Printed with the French text facing the translation.
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography, notes   85pp  ISBN 1-86171-042-9      £6.99 / $11.00
 
 

A moi. Líhistoire díune de mes folies.
Depuis longtemps je me vantais de posséder tous les paysages possibles, et trouvais dérisoires les célébrités de la peinture et de la poésie moderne.
Jíaimais les peintures idiotes, dessus de portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures, populaires; la littérature démodée, latin díéglise, livres érotiques sans orthographe, romans de nos aïeules, contes de fées, petits livres de líenfance, opéras vieux, refrains niais, rhythmes naïfs.
Je rêvais croisades, voyages de découvertes dont on nía pas de relations, républiques sans histoires, guerres de religion étouffées, révolutions de múurs, déplacements de races et de continents: je croyais à tous les enchantements.
Jíinventai la couleur des voyelles! - A noir, E blanc, I rouge, O bleu, U vert. - Je réglai la forme et le mouvement de chaque consonne, et, avec des rhythmes instinctifs, je me flattai díinventer un verbe poétique accessible, un jour ou líautre, à tous les sens. Je réservais la traduction.
Ce fut díabord une étude. Jíécrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais líinexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges.

(Now me. The story of one of my madnesses.
For a long time I bragged of possessing all possible landscapes, and I found stupid the celebrating of modern painting and poetry.
I liked idiot paintings, over doors, stage sets, backcloths for acrobats, signs, popular prints, old-fashioned literature, church latin, erotic books with misspellings, novels of our grandmothers, fairy tales, little childrenís books, old operas, foolish refrains, naive rhythms.
I dreamt of crusades, voyages of discovery which were unrecorded, republics without histories, hushed-up religious wars, revolutions of customs, displacements of races and continents: I believed in all enchantments.
I invented the colour of vowels! - A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. - I regulated the form and movement of each consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself by inventing a poetic speech accessible, some day or other, to all the senses. I reserved translation rights.
It began as a study. I wrote silences, and nights, I noted the inexpressible. I fastened down vertigos.)

(Arthur Rimbaud, from A Season in Hell)
 

One of the most extraordinary poets, of any era, Dickinson wrote a huge amount of poems (nearly 2,000). This new edition ranges from her early work to the late pieces.
 
 

Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1-898283-34-6  85pp    £5.99 / $9.50
 
 
 

'WILD NIGHTS - WILD NIGHTS!'

Wild Nights! - Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the Winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah, the sea!
Might I but moor - Tonight -
In Thee!'

(Emily  Dickinson, "WIld Nights! - Wild Nights!")

'Alone I sat; the summer day', 'High waving heather', 'O Dream, where art thou now?', 'Shall earth no more inspire thee' and 'No coward soul is mine' are among the heartfelt poems in this new collection.
 
 

British Poets Series  ISBN 1-898283-35-4  72pp    £5.99 / $9.50
 
 

High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forests lending
One might voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

(Emily Brontë, "High waving heather")

---

HARDY

There are surprisingly few feminist analyses of Hardy, and most do not get beyond vague notions of sexism and misogynism, in the Kate Millett manner. Elvy's book, however, uses up-to-date research in the fields of cultural studies, feminist poetics, gay, lesbian and queer theory. This new, postmodern and incisive exploration of Hardy offers an exciting and radical reappraisal of the discourses of gender, desire, class, economy, socialization, identity and patriarchy in his fiction and poetry.

Margaret Elvy is assistant professor, Dept of English, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has written books on George Eliot, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. She has three books on Thomas Hardy from Crescent Moon (Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism).
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies    Extensive bibliography and notes   195pp  ISBN 1-871846-93-5    £14.99 / $23.50
 

by Margaret Elvy

This new edition includes a new introduction and a new bibliography.
 
 

Extensive bibliography and notes  188pp  ISBN 1-86171-065-8  £15.99 / $25.00
 

Hardy's last, great novel is lucidly analyzed employing up-to-date developments in gender, feminist and cultural studies. Sue Bridehead is reinstated as central to the novel, and to Hardy's bitter, polemical attack on the institutions of marriage, religion, education, sexuality, identity, gender and politics.

Margaret Elvy is assistant professor, Dept of English, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has written books on George Eliot, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. She has three books on Thomas Hardy from Crescent Moon (Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism).
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series   Bibliography and notes  143pp  ISBN 1-86171-007-0    £14.99 / $23.50
 

A detailed and incisive analysis of Hardy's classic novel, using the latest research in feminism, gay, lesbian and queer theory, and cultural studies. Elvy offers a thorough reappraisal of Hardy's favourite heroine. She incorporates much of recent Hardy criticism, in which Hardy has been reappraised in the light of materialist, psychoanalytic, gender, poststructuralist and feminist criticism.

Margaret Elvy is assistant professor, Dept of English, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has written books on George Eliot, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. She has three books on Thomas Hardy from Crescent Moon (Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism).
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series    Bibliography and notes  132pp  ISBN 1-86171-006-2    £14.99 / $23.50
 

The discourses of societal oppression, sexual repression, love, education, identity, pain and tragedy, myth and religion are Thomas Hardy's main themes. This lucid analysis of Hardy's ethics begins with the major novels and ends with an investigation of Hardy's philosophy. Not a pessimist or a 'negative' thinker, Hardy emerges as a socially committed realist, who saw that much of the pain of life is created by people, not necessarily by 'fate', time, circumstance, luck, chance or the world.
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series    Bibliography, notes, 121pp  ISBN 1-871846-40-4    £14.99 / $23.50
 

Many of Thomas Hardy's best poems are collected here, including 'The Darkling Thrush', 'In Tenebris', 'Wessex Heights' and 'Afterwards'. This selection includes many of Hardy's most poignant love poems, such as 'The Recalcitrants', 'The Picnic' and 'He Prefers Her Earthly'.
 
 

British Poets Series  Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1-898283-11-7 61pp    £5.99 / $9.50
 
 
 

THE SELF-UNSEEING

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

(Thomas Hardy, 'The Self-Unseeing')

Both Hardy and Powys created a poetic Wessex landscape. Hardy's Wessex has entered popular folklore and myth, and is used in the promotion of holidays, walks, tours, museums, hotels, even town councils. John Cowper Powys's Wessex, in A Glastonbury Romance and Weymouth Sands, among other novels, is less well-known: a place of secret corners, mossy walls, ancient earthworks, Somerset wetlands and ferny hollows. Both writers are discussed thematically for their sense of nature, mythology, philosophy, painting, sensualism, labour, folklore and the family. D.H.Lawrence is referenced throughout as a bridge between Hardy and Powys. Finally Robinson considers the film versions of Hardy's novels. This is a valuable addition to the criticism of Hardy and Powys.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series    Bibliography, notes, index and illustrations  151pp. ISBN 1-871846-67-6    £14.99 / $23.50
 

Love, sexuality, gender, identity, politics, marriage and tragedy are the main discourses analyzed here, from a feminist perspective. Spenser reappraises Hardy's key texts (the five novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native) and employs the latest methodologies of feminist and cultural theory.

Tom Spenser is a poet and critic. His poetry books include Borderlands (1994) and Be-coming (1991). He has written a biography of John Keats (1986) and a collection of essays on poets such as Sappho, Catullus, Tasso and Neruda (Romantic Configurations, 1984). He lives near Abbotsbury, Dorset.
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series   Index, bibliography, notes. 160pp  ISBN  1-871846-07-2    £14.99 / $23.50
 

A short essay on Hardy's Wessex and his poetic vision of landscape and social múurs.
 
 

Thomas Hardy Studies Series   15pp  With Notes  ISBN 1-871846-65-X  £3.00
 

RILKE

Rainer Maria Rilke is probably the great 20th century poet, certainly one of the richest, most potent and lyrically beautiful of all poets. This book looks at many of Rilke's curious notions: of the 'Open', which is identified with death; of innerness or 'Kunst-Ding' in the New Poems (derived from Rilke's time with Rodin); of the Nietzschean Angel in the Duino Elegies; and of love and death in the late Sonnets to Orpheus.

B.D. Barnacle taught English in Paris until 1980. He now teaches in Oxford. His books include John Donne (1978), The Victorian Novel: Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy (1984), Shakespeare (Crescent Moon, 1992) and Rilke (Crescent Moon, 1993).
 
 

European Writers Series   Bibliography, notes  76pp  ISBN 1-871846-76-5     £7.99 / $12.50
 

This new collection includes poems taken from the time of the great German poet's New Poems through the Duino Elegies to the last pieces. These are some of Rilke's best works; though fragmentary, they are intense, compact, lyrical and lucid, by turns erotic, heartfelt and mystical. Hamburger's excellent translations have the German original facing each poem.
 
 

European Writers Series  Notes & bibliography. 88pp  ISBN 1-86171-031-3     £7.99 / $12.50   forthcoming
 
 
 

SONNET II, 4

from Sonnet to Orpheus

This is the non-existent animal.
Not knowing that, they loved it, loved its ways,
its neck, its posture, loved its quiet gaze
down to the light within it, loved it all.

True, it was not. But, because loved, a pure
beast came to be. A space was kept, conceded.
And in that space, left blank for it, secure,
it gently raised its head and hardly needed

to be. They fed it on no kind of corn,
but always only with the right to be.
And on the beast such power this could confer,

its brow put forth new growth. A single horn.
White, it sought out a virgin's company -
and was inside the mirror and in her.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnet to Orpheus)
 

GIDE

André Gide is the acclaimed literary giant of modern French literature. Throughout his career Gide exalted the role of the writer: as he wrote his letters and Journals he was always conscious of being a writer, of being read. This self-reflexivity and mise-en-abyme is found in the early works, Paludes, the mid-period novels, Strait is the Gate and The Vatican Cellars, and the modernist The Counterfeiters, in which the writing of the novel becomes more interesting (to the writer) than the story itself. There are detailed chapters on the early, ecstatic work Fruits of the Earth, and the proto-Existentialist novel The Immoralist.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of America poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes  110pp  ISBN 1-86171-030-5    £14.99 / $23.50  NEW
 

LOVE POETRY

The great love poets collected here include Jonson, Skelton, Marlowe, Campion, Sidney, Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Donne, Spenser, Wyatt, Anne Bradsheet, Emily Brontë, Hardy, Christina Rossetti, Herrick, John Clare, Emily Dickinson and Queen Elizabeth I.
 
 

Bibliography, notes  112pp  ISBN 1-871846-97-8     £7.99 / $12.50
 
 
 

Fair is my Love, and cruel as sheís fair
 Her brow shades frowns, although her eyes are sunny;
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair;
 And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.
A modest maid, decked with a blush of honour,
 Whose feet to tread green paths of youth and love,
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,
 Sacred on earth, designed a saint above!
Chastity and Beauty, which were deadly foes,
 Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had the Pity to conjoin with those,
 Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?
  For had she not been fair, and thus unkind,
  My Muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

(Samuel Daniel, from Sonnets to Delia)
 
 
 

An anthology of great nature poems, including the Elizabethan pastorals of Spenser, Shakespeare, Raleigh and Drayton, and classics of nature mysticism by Chaucer, Langland, Thomson, Blake and Wordsworth, among others. Famous anthology pieces nestle amongst lesser known poems, including some neglected women poets, and American poets such as Lowell and Dickinson.

Margaret Elvy is assistant professor, Dept of English, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. She has written books on George Eliot, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. She has three books on Thomas Hardy from Crescent Moon (Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism).
 
 

Bibliography, notes  96pp  ISBN 1-86171-054-2     £7.99 / $12.50
 
 
 

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities, that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

(Walt Whitman, 'On the Beach at Night Alone')
 
 
 

Mystical poets featured here include Blake, Whitman, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Crashaw, Shelley, Emerson, Herbert, Longfellow, Hopkins, Traherne, Shakespeare, Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Lawrence and anonymous mediæval works,  such as The Cloud of Unknowing.
 
 

British Poets Series Bibliography, notes  96pp  ISBN 1-86171-055-0      £7.99 / $12.50
 
 
 

                            And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

(William Wordsworth, from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey)
 
 

WOLFGANG ISER

New, unpublished pieces on reader theory; Tom Jones; fictionalizing; and cultural studies, among others. Iser is a leading exponent of 'reception theory'.

Wolfgang Iser's books include The Implied Reader (1974), The Act of Reading (1978), Prospecting (1989) and The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993). He has written books on Laurence Sterne (1988) and Walter Pater (1987). He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Constance in Germany.
 
 

75pp  ISBN 1-86171-035-6     £7.99 / $12.50
 

The Crescent Moon Book of Romantic Poetry

Shelley: Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats: Selected Poems

German Romantic Poetry: Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, Schlegel, Schiller

Hölderlin's Songs of Light: Selected Poems

Rimbaud: Arthur Rimbaud and the Magic of Poetry

Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season in Hell

Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems

Emily Bronte: Poems

Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure: A Critical Study

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Critical Study

Love and Tragedy: A Study of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys: Wessex Revisited

Thomas Hardy: The Tragic Novels

The Poetry of Landscape in Thomas Hardy

Rilke: Space, Essence and Angels in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems

Andre Gide: Fiction and Fervour in the Novels

The Crescent Moon Book of Love Poetry

The Crescent Moon Book of Nature Poetry

The Crescent Moon Book of Mystical Poetry

Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews

• Harry Potter
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Art
• Art in Close-Up Series
• Sculpture
• Painters
• American Painters
• TV arts documentaries on DVD and video
• Renaissance Painters
• Renaissance Writers
• Media, Cinema, Culture, Feminism
• Cinema
• Feminism and Gender Studies
• Literature
• Poetry
• Contemporary Poetry
• Novelists
• 19th Century and Romantic Culture
• European Writers
• British Poets
• Shakespeare Studies
• Arthur Rimbaud Studies
• D.H. Lawrence Studies
• John Cowper Powys Studies
• Thomas Hardy Studies
• Journals
• Alchemy Records
• Index of Titles, ISBNs, Dates and Prices
• New Titles and Forthcoming Books

• You can order by telephone, post or e-mail.
• Please quote the title or ISBN of the book you want, and the quantity.
• Please write in block capitals.
• Please make cheques and monies payable to Crescent Moon (in GB pounds sterling, Eurocheques or International Money Orders). Please make US dollar cheques payable to J. Robinson.
• All titles can be ordered through your local bookseller.

BY E-MAIL: : <cresmopub@yahoo.co.uk>
 

BY MAIL: Crescent Moon Publishing, P.O. Box 393, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 5XU, U.K.
 

BY TELEPHONE:

        from the UK: 01622-729593
        from the US: 01144-1622-729593
        from other territories: 0044-1622-729593
 

ON THE INTERNET:

Crescent Moon titles can be ordered via all of the main internet booksellers:
 

Amazon.com, internet bookshop <www.amazon.com>

Amazon.co.uk, internet bookshop <www.amazon.co.uk>

Play.com www.play.com

Tesco www.tesco.com

The Internet Bookshop <www.internetbookshop.co.uk>

The Book Place <www.thebookplace.com>

W.H. Smith bookshop <www.whsmith.co.uk>

Waterstone's Booksellers <www.waterstones.co.uk>

Barnes and Noble internet bookshop <barnesandnoble.com (www.bn.com)>

Borders internet bookshop <www.borders.com>

Books Online <www.bol.com>

Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk sometimes say our books are either currently unavailable or delivered within 4-6 weeks. That's their system: ignore it: our books are available from Amazon and will be delivered in 2-3 days (try using the 'new & used' section).

Alternatively, play.com, tesco.com, and waterstones.co.uk (among others) will deliver in 3-5 days.