Composed towards the end of the first millennium of our era, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is a Northern epic and a classic of European literature. In this new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work that is true, line by line, to the original poem.

In The Canterbury Tales , Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This version of the text has been translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill.

Building on the formula of York Notes, this series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. This enbables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop critical thinking. This text covers The Aeneid by Virgil.

Written in verse, this was Vikram Seth's first novel. Set in the 1980s, in the affluence and sunshine of California's silicon valley, it is the story of twenty-somethings looking for love, pleasure and the meaning of life.

Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, this work depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all.

An epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must test his bravery and cunning to the full.

Tells the story of Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - although knowing this will ensure his own early death.

This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece .

Ovid's witty and exuberant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked Greek and Roman myths and legends in which men and women are transformed, often by love - into flowers, trees, stones and stars.

Described variously as the greatest poem of the European Middle Ages and, because of the author's evangelical purpose, the 'fifth Gospel', the Divine Comedy is central to the culture of the west. The poem is a spiritual autobiography in the form of a journey - the poet travels from the dark circles of the Inferno, up the mountain of Purgatory, where Virgil, his guide leaves him to encounter ...

A green knight on a green horse rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, and decapitates the intruder with his own axe.

A classic for children and adults alike since its first publication in 1939, this collection of poems is a book of moral instruction. Take heed from the lessons learnt by Matilda, Who told lies and was Burned to Death, Jim, Who ran away from his nurse wand was eaten by a Lion, and Rebecca, Who slammed doors for Fun and Perished Miserably.

Presents a poem that conjures up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting Satan and Adam and Eve at the center of this story, the author creates an intense human tragedy on the Fall of Man.

A ground-breaking novel about a boy's growing interest in poetry as he finds his voice and tells his own story.

This edition of Larkin's poems presents his four published books The North Ship , The Less Deceived , The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows in their original sequence. The text also includes an appendix of poems that Larkin published in other places, from his juvenilia to his final years.

Shel Silverstein is one of America's best loved poets, whose work is read by every child in the USA but is almost unknown in the UK. Think Spike Milligan meets Edward Lear: it's nonsense poetry that makes perfect sense.

Told in the voice of 14-year-old Billie Jo Kelby, this work takes the reader on a journey to the heart of a family caught in the Oklahoma dust-bowl. It is the story of Ma, who sees the idea of herself burn away with every parched day, until she herself is consumed by fire.