Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-1781) is a classic work of literary biography, covering 52 poets whom the author felt had the most influence on the English language. Now, John Sutherland follows in this great tradition with his sweeping and ambitious book, Lives of the Novelists:
Whether you’re traveling far and wide or relaxing in your favorite patio chair this summer, no one can deny that extra leisure time is wonderfully filled with books. Here at Yale University Press, we’re boasting an exciting year of literary studies, including Bernard Avishai’s Promiscuous, a biography of Philip Roth’s
When three heads are put together, the results can be shockingly revelatory. Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro have now compiled The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, the first proverb dictionary to be based on electronic research from full-text databases. With more than 1,400 entries, this exhaustive collection
Ellen Elias-Bursać, editor of Vlada Stojiljkovic‘s translation of Ranko Marinkovic‘s 1965 novel Cyclops, writes on the special and playful relationship formed between author and translator by their respective attentions to wit, banter, and humor, along with excerpts from the text. Like many previously published titles in the Margellos World Republic of
For Terry Eagleton, writing is “exploratory.” “The act of writing is both a great delight to me in itself,” he explained in a recent interview on London’s Yale Books Blog, but it “also is constitutive of my thought.” As the author of more than forty books, which span the fields
The latest Margellos World Republic of Letters interview features acclaimed poet and translator Peter Cole on The Poetry of Kabbalah, the first English-language collection of poems from the Kabbalistic tradition. In the excerpt below, Cole discusses the history, culture, language, and identities that have shaped over a millennium of tradition in
Congratulations to Alison Bechdel, whose newest book, Are You My Mother?, publishes today. We can’t wait to read this book, and have been thrilled by the marvelous attention its author has gotten recently, including a New Yorker profile by Judith Thurman, a Time profile by Lev Grossman, a fabulous book
One day, oddly fainted on the ground, I fell asleep on the deep plush textures of this forest . . . I dreamed divine things! . . . A smile of yours woke me, it seems to me . . . and I do not feel my wings!. . .
Fady Joudah first became associated with Yale University Press in 2007 when he was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize by then-judge Louise Glück, and the subsequent publication of his first volume of poetry, The Earth in the Attic, in April 2008. He returns to our list this
The first poem Eduardo C. Corral ever wrote was a response to Beowulf in rhyming couplets. Corral’s high school English teacher, who assigned the poem, thought his response was so good, she read it aloud to her other classes. More than a decade later, Corral’s poetry is winning even higher