Ancient, classical and medieval texts Books

InA Bird Called Elaeus, poet and translator David Constantine presents a selection of poems fromThe Greek Anthology, a collection of around 4500 poems composed over more than 1500 years by around 300 authors.The Greek Anthologyis a marvellous salvage...

Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom offers more than 300 bite-size quotes of inspiration and wisdom from one of the greatest females writers in the English language. Jane Austen is one of the most celebrated female writers in history, best known for her...

"There is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in misery." Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first Canticle in the epic poetic masterpiece The Divine Comedy, is now available in an exquisite hardcover edition featuring a foiled cover and...

‘A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter’ New York Times‘An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightly’Sunday Times From the creation of the first...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. The discourses of the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus are regarded as some of the most influential teachings of the ancient world. Born into slavery and sent...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Our life is what our thoughts make itThe extraordinary writings of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180), the only Roman emperor to have also been a stoic philosopher, have...

Myths, Muses and Mortals gives new insight into a multitude of life experiences in ancient Greece. The book introduces the lives of the ancient Greeks through extracts taken from a range of sources, including poems, plays, novels, histories, lawsuits,...

This Focus Classical Reprint of Selections from Ovid offers a classic reader on Ovid from Charles W. Dunmore, professor emeritus at New York University. The text contains extensive selections from Ovid's primary works, all in Latin, with commentary and a...

Horace has long been revered as the supreme lyric poet of the Augustan Age. In his perceptive introduction to this translation of Horace's Odes and Satires, Sidney Alexander engagingly spells out how the poet expresses values and traditions that remain...

A new critical biography of medieval England's most famous poet.For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales'lively and often risqu style have made his name more synonymous with...

I have this gem and it's looking for a beholderHafiz of Shiraz (also known as Hafez) remains the most beloved name in all of Persian literature. Indeed, his mystic, lyric poetry is cherished as one of the great achievements of world literature, on a par...

Navigating the uncertainty of a divided China wracked by warfare and corruption, Tao Yuanming's poetry-expertly translated by Red Pine-chooses the path walked by China's ancient sages, finding joy in living a simple life. The latest work in Red Pine's...

These seventy poems are masterpieces from over a thousand years of classical Chinese poetry. Beauty and simplicity meld to convey an astounding landscape with both enchanting details and breath-taking vastness. The poems constitute an anthology, given to...

Rachel Owen's hauntingly beautiful illustrations for Dante's Inferno take a radically new approach to representing the world of Dante's famous poem. The images combine the artist's deep cultural and historical understanding of 'The Divine...

This new comic-book version of Euripides' classic The Trojan Women follows the fates of Hekabe, Andromache and Kassandra after Troy has been sacked and all its men killed. Trojan Women is a wildly imaginative collaboration between the visual artist...

This lively retelling of the myth of the voyage of St Brendan from Ireland to America is illustrated with original linocuts by American artist Kathleen Neeley. Jackson's third poetry collection is an engaging and spirited interpretation of the tale,...

The Wanderer's Hvamal features Jackson Crawford's complete, carefully revised English translation of the Old Norse poem Hvaml, newly annotated for this volume, together with facing original Old Norse text sourced directly from the Codex...

Filled with portrayals of deception, love, murder, and revenge-yet defying traditional medieval epic conventions for representing character-the Nibelungenlied is the greatest and most unique epic in Middle High German. The Klage, its consistent companion...

This new edition of Anthology of Classical Myth offers selections from key Near Eastern texts-the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Epic of Creation (Enuma Elish), and Atrahasis; the Hittite Song of Emergence; and the flood story from the book of...

Nizami's Haft Paykar is a deep, enduring work of literature, one that can be appreciated as psychological bildungsroman, fairytale, spiritual quest, and adventure tale. Meisami is a leading scholar of the classical Persian literary...

One of the most entertaining short narratives of all time, the Achilleid is a stand-alone work of compelling contemporary interest that moves with great rapidity and clarity. Its compact narrative, which encompasses a brutish childhood,...

"The Paradiso concludes Simone's excellent translation of Dante's Commedia. Consistent with the previous two volumes, the translation is accurate and graceful, and Simone's introductions and apparatus provide a helpful entre to the text, especially for...

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness.However,...

From Madonna to Deepak Chopra, celebrities have been recording and embracing Rumi's poetry for the past two decades, creating a resurgence of interest in this 13th century Sufi mystic.Rumi's Little Book of Life is a beautiful collection of 196 poems by...

From Michael Bazzett, poet and translator ofThe Popol Vuh, a collection that explores the myth of Echo and Narcissus, offering a reboot, a remix, a reimagining."Narcissus was never one to see himself // in moving water. // He liked his image / still."...

"Farnsworth beautifully integrates his own observations with scores of quotations from Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and others. This isn't just a book to read-it's a book to return to, a book that will provide perspective and consolation...

T'ao Ch'ien, (365 - 427, C.E.), one of the most revered poets in classical Chinese literature, is presented in a lucid translation with an introduction. "David Hinton is one of the most impressive of the younger translators of classical Chinese poetry......

"This is a wonderful new edition of the Poetic Edda. It captures the language, vitality, and rhythms of the original."-Jesse Byock, PhD, UCLAGods, giants, the undead, dwarves, Valkyries, heroes, kidnapping, dragons, and a giant wolf are just some of the...

"The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and...

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass encompasses eleven chapters that recount Douglass's life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be...

Gripping tales that abound with fantastic characters and astonishing twists and turns, Greek myths confront what it means to be mortal in a world of powerful forces beyond human control. Little wonder that they continue to fascinate readers thousands of...

Framed in Spenser's distinctive, opulent stanza and in some of the trappings of epic, Book One of Spenser's The Faerie Queene consists of a chivalric romance that has been made to a typical recipe--fierce warres and faithfull loves--but that has been...

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction...

"It is hard to overstate the attractions of this translation. In a rhythm sinewy and flexible, with languagethat is precise, lyrical and fresh, Lombardo's Iliad pulses with all the power and luminosity of the Greek.He shows extraordinary sensitivity to...

Selections from both Iliad and Odyssey, made with an eye for those episodes that figure most prominently in the study of mythology.

Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a...

In this new translation of the Homeric Hymns, Sarah Ruden employs a melodious and flexible non-rhyming line of eleven syllables, offering a close approximation of Greek hexameter verse in natural English rhythms. The result is a Homeric Hymns marked by...

Is Cupid and Psyche a romance, a folktale, a Platonic allegory of the nature of the soul, a Jungian tale of individuation, or an archetypal dream? This volume provides Joel Relihan's lively translation of this best known section of Apuleius' Golden Ass,...

Heroines of Olympus retells the tales of 50 classic characters, plucking the threads of their lives from the myriad narratives in which they have appeared and weaving them together to create the full stories of these legendary women. Each story is...