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First published in 1963 and representing Burroughs’s literary breakthrough in the UK, Dead Fingers Talk is, in the words of Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, “a prophetic work of haunting power”, and i

Seduced by the chimerical world of the theatre and taking upon himself the grand ambition of becoming a successful performer and dramatist, the merchant’s son Wilhelm Meister embarks on a tumultuous q

While on a journey with his wife to Prague for the opening night of Don Giovanni, Mozart is caught picking an orange on the grounds of a stately home. But when the resident family find out who they are dealing with, they are delighted to be in the presence of the celebrated composer and invite him to their daughter's wedding. Moerike's vivid and imaginative depiction of a day in the life of Mozart captures both the humorous and the more fragile and pensive side of the Austrian genius.

Cecco Angiolieri, the enfant terrible of Italian literature, loved women, gambling, food and wine. It is said that he found comfort for his bad luck at the dice and with Becchina, his unreciprocating lover, only by pouring venomous scorn upon his miserly parents. Cecco's outbursts of rage against his fate and his earthly view of the world - poles apart from the Stil Novo of Cavalcanti and Dante, the target of some of his fiercest sonnets - are perfectly encapsulated in his poetry, which is presented here with the facing Italian text in the witty verse translation of C.H.Scott and Anthony Mortimer.

Set against the chequered background of Rome, the city of the six Ps - Pope, priests, princes, prostitutes, parasites and the poor - Belli's sometimes scandalous sonnets deal with life's elementals: love, death, sex, food, money, family, religion and politics. In his immense oeuvre, sampled here in a sizeable and varied selection of the best poems, people from every course and manner of life have their say - housewives, mothers, beggars, lovers, businessmen, popes, whores, doctors, thieves, lawyers, priests, pen-pushers, actresses, gossips and many more. Their voices and preoccupations are brilliantly and accurately rendered in this dual-language volume by prize-winning novelist and poet Mike Stocks, one of the finest sonneteers of our day.

Offers an account of the wanderings of a young man who leaves home after a row with his father, and who eventually finds love with the girl of his dreams.

Unsuccessful in his endeavours, the young and naive Peter Schlemihl seals a pact with the Devil in which he exchanges his shadow for the purse of Fortunatus, thereby gaining everlasting riches. But when he is ridiculed, persecuted and hated for being different from other men, he realizes that poverty is easier to bear than the loss of his peace of mind. Originally written as a cautionary tale for the children of Chamisso's patron, Peter Schlemihl was hailed by contemporaries as a masterpiece with a wide adult appeal, and continues to capture imaginations today.

The only available English edition of Fried's poetry—one of the most acclaimed and popular 20th-century German language poets Fried's writing holds some of the most tender lines of poetry in any lang

Atala', published in 1801, tells the tragic tale of the eponymous heroine: a mixed-race Christian daughter of a Native American chief. She saves the captured Chactas and tragically falls in love with

Dante’s best friend and a major exponent of the "dolce stil novo," Guido Cavalcanti has had a lasting influence upon Italian poetry and is best known to English readers through the e

When Sofia Behrs married Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of "War and Peace", husband and wife regularly exchanged diaries covering the years from 1862 to 1910. Sofia's life was not an easy one: she idea

First published in 1831, and here presented in a dual-language edition with annotations and additional reading material, Leopardi's poetical masterpiece is an unsurpassed anatomy of man's unhappiness