First published in English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 from its original Farsi, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a collection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. Omar Khayyam's poetry, which received very little international notoriety in its own day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald over seven...

Les Fleurs du mal is a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire, encompassing almost all of his production in verse, from 1840 until his death at the end of August 1867. Flowers of Evil It is a major work of modern poetry. His pieces break with agreed style, in use until then and rejuvenate the structure of the verse by regular use of crossings, rejects and counter-rejects. This renovates the rigid form of the sonnet. He uses suggestive images by...

Purgatorio, by Dante Alighieri, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

The Aeneid, by Vergil, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

A collection of three modern plays by the master of the absurd and member of the French Academy.

Homer's Iliad describes the final year of the Trojan War, a legendary conflict between an alliance of Greek cities and the city of Troy in Anatolia. The greatest literary landmark of classical antiquity masterfully rendered by the most celebrated translator of our time. When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017 -- revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that "combines intellectual authority with addictive readability"...

First published between 1668 and 1693, the Fables of La Fontaine rank among the masterpieces of French literature. This volume contains 75 of the best, in the original French with new English line-for-line literal translations. "The Cicada and the Ant," "The City Rat and the Country Rat," "The Fox and the Grapes," many more.

A poet who hated an age of decadence, armed conflict, and departure from tradition, Aristophanes' comic genius influenced the political and social order of his own fifth-century Athens. But as Moses Hadas writes in his introduction to this volume, 'His true claim upon our attention is as the most brilliant and artistic and thoughtful wit our world has known.' Includes The Acharnians, The Birds, The Clouds, Ecclesiazusae, The Frogs, The Knights, Lysistrata,...