In this unusual selection, a poet-critic of the 20th century encounters a poet-critic of the 19th, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). William Empson, assisted by David Pirie, chooses from Coleridge's vast and uneven oeuvre the salient poems; he edits and annotates them.

In his enjoyable readings of ambiguity, puns and paradox, Empson draws on a variety of authors from Chaucer to Eliot, illuminating the strategies of individual writers and creating a brilliant general theory of poetic practice: wide ranging, witty and still controversial.

A collection of essays on Renaissance drama including work by Kyd, Jonson, Webster and Shakespeare.

A collection of poems that take a wide range of themes from metaphysics to melancholy, social climbing to political satire, and from love to loss.

A collection of essays on Shakespheare by the late poet and critic William Empson.

Some of William Empson's most passionate and controversial essays, including previously inaccessible pieces.

A collection of essays on Renaissance drama including work by Kyd, Jonson, Webster and Shakespeare.