Best Selling Books by Ted Hughes

In this series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express, the selectors offer intriguing insight into their own work.

Ted Hughes wrote a series of stories for children from the early 1960s through until 1995 about how the world, and the creatures in it, came into being. They are collected together here in one volume for the first time. These are richly told tales of sparkling intensity about animals finding their form, and God''s struggle to understand what he has created. Meet the Polar Bear whose obsession with her snowy white fur is so great that she can only live in a landscape surrounded by her own reflection; the Whale, growing in God''s garden beside the carrots; King Leo, who began life because God was hungry for his sausages; poor Parrot''s painful defeat in the marriage-song contest at the wedding of Man and Woman; and Sparrow''s heroic battle against the bird-swallowing Black Hole. There are stories here to suit chidren from four to fourteen, whether for reading aloud or alone.

Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, is tired of being told that she doesn''t exist. In this crackling, lolloping story in verse, Ted Hughes describes how she sets out on the road to London for an audience with the Queen...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature.Emily Dickinson (1830-86) was born in Amherst, Massachussetts, where she lived most of her life as a recluse, seldom leaving the house or receiving visitors. She published just a handful of poems in her lifetime, her first collection appearing posthumously in 1890.

This beautiful book celebrates through the w ords of British writers and through its dramatic photographs, what riches the landscape of Britain has to offer now - an d, one hopes, for ever. ''

De klassieke, mythische dichtbundel van Ted Hughes Vijftig jaar na het eerste verschijnen van Kraai in Engeland in 1970 leidt de gitzwarte gedichtencyclus nog altijd tot verwoede discussies. Ted Hughes, voormalig Poet Laureate van Groot-Brittannië, begon de cyclus in de tweede helft van de jaren zestig, na de suïcide van zijn vrouw Sylvia Plath. Hij voltooide de gedichten in 1969, toen hij voor de tweede keer een partner aan zelfmoord verloor. De bundel Kraai was een stilistisch experiment waarin Hughes zijn rouw en verdriet probeerde vorm te geven. Het hoofdpersonage Kraai bevindt zich in een landschap dat de ene keer apocalyptisch is, en dan weer rechtstreeks uit Genesis lijkt te komen. God schept de wereld, Adam en Eva bevinden zich in het paradijs, waar achter elke boom een slang op hen wacht. De gedichten sidderen dan ook van angst, woede, geweld en verdriet. Kraai beziet dit alles vanuit het middelpunt met een mengeling van nieuwsgierigheid en een verlangen naar destructie. Tweetalige editie

Prospectus for "Howls & whispers," by Ted Hughes, with etchings by Leonard Baskin.

Forty years after it was first published, Ted Hughes''s Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders is presented in a beautifully redesigned edition with a new introduction by the nature writer Tim Dee. The sixteen poems gathered here brim and bristle with the life Hughes generates from the absolute attention he commits to whatever it is he is looking at. His knack for finding a language fitting to its subject, without a trace of sentiment or nostalgia, grants the poems their own distinct lives and singles out Hughes as one of the truly great poet-interpreters of the natural world. This edition gives full justice to the subtlety of the original watercolour illustrations, produced by Hughes''s long-term collaborator and friend, the American artist, Leonard Baskin.

The late Poet Laureate presents free-verse re-creations of 24 passages from Ovid''s "Metamorphoses", including the stories of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas, and Pyramus and Thisbe.

A collection of illustrated poems about animals.

In this collection, Ted Hughes has written 28 songs of the sea. Here is an eye-view account of what it is to be the small fry of the ocean - a shrimp, sandflea, a mussel or a whelk. The lobster laments his form and the limpet rejoices in her steadfast stand against the stormy surf.