I love Edward Lear's story and James Marshall's illustrations are magical. I don't like the version with Jan Brett's illustrations. I've never liked Jan Brett's illustrations. I've spent hundreds of hours looking at children's books and I always pass over Jan Brett's books. Her illustrations just don't appeal to me. Her illustrations are distinctive and I can always recognize her work but I don't like them. There is just something missing--they don't have any life to them or something. I can't explain it. I have always loved James Marshall. His genius transcends understanding. His illustrations complement Ed Lear's beautiful tale perfectly.

A very good illustrated version of the classic poem- the pictures are beautiful with a distinctly exotic flavour, great for all ages!

This book is just so cool. Longing for a trip to the tropics? Read this version of the book to your little one and you can at least feel like you are there. The illustrations are really sweet. They have a lot of details so that kids kind find new things with each reading. My two-year old loves this book. It is a great twist on an old tale

Of all of Virginia's diaries (there are five volumes), volumes 3 and 4 are perhaps the most interesting, if only because they span the period in which she wrote her classics such as Orlando, To The Lighthouse, and The Waves (which itself literally spans the period between Vol 3 and Vol 4.)

If you read the collected Diaries and Woman Of Letters by Phyllis Rose, you will gain a vital series of insights into the life and thoughts of this most haunting of female writers.

Whenever I think of Virginia, I always think of the lines from "Vincent" by Don Maclean...

This world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you...

If you have never read any Virginia Woolf, I would respectfully suggest you rent a copy of Sally Potter's Orlando. While Sally takes artistic license with the novel, she has created a very sympathetic work of Art.

This diary above all gives you many insights into her thought processes and her writing career, including her reactions to the publication of her works and their reception by the public and the sub-species known as Critics.

Recommended.

Woolf is fascinating, even when describing the most mundane details of daily life. Her writing style is as beautiful here as in her fiction, and so the diary is well worth reading for that alone. Plus, nearly every page contains a reference to Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, or some other Bloomsbury luminary. She isn't always completely truthful or straightforward, but she is always supremely entertaining. However, despite a number of very helpful footnotes, the editor cannot provide explanations and clarifications for every entry, so it helps to be somewhat familiar with Woolf's life before reading her diaries.

Until I read this book, I thought I knew everything about Spenser, but Norton has done it again! Insightful and interesting,this anthology of criticism covers everything from "The Faerie Queene" to all the other things Spenser wrote. I had always been a Chaucer hound,but now I've converted to the Spenserian camp. Partake of this grand work and be saved!

EDMUND SPENSER'S POETRY : Authoritative Texts and Criticism. Third Edition. Selected and Edited by Hugh Maclean and Anne Lake Prescott. 842 pp. London & New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Although everyone has heard of Edmund Spenser's amazing narrative poem, 'The Faerie Queene,' it's a pity that few seem to read it. To a superficial glance it may appear difficult, although the truth is that it's basically a fascinating story that even an intelligent child can follow with enjoyment and interest.

It appears difficult only because of Spenser's deliberately antique English. He needed such an English because he was creating a whole new dimension of enchantment, a magical world, a land of mystery and adventure teeming with ogres and giants and witches, hardy knights both brave and villainous, dwarfs, magicians, dragons, and maidens in distress, wicked enchanters, gods, demons, forests, caves, and castles, amorous encounters, fierce battles, etc., etc.

To evoke an atmosphere appropriate to such a magical world, a world seemingly distant in both time and place from ours, Spenser created his own special brand of English. Basically his language is standard Sixteenth Century English, but with antique spellings and a few medievalisms thrown in, along with a number of new words that Spenser coined himself. The opening lines of the poem are typical :

"A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, / Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, / Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine, / The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde...." (page 41).

If, instead of reading with the eye, we read with the ear or aloud, the strange spellings resolve themselves into perfectly familiar words such as clad (clothed), mighty, arms, shield, deep, cruel, marks, bloody, field. And "Y cladd" is just one of those Spenserian medievalisms that simply means "clad" or clothed (i.e., wearing).

The only two words in this passage that might cause problems for the beginner are "pricking" and "dints," and it doesn't take much imagination to realize that these must refer, respectively, to 'riding' (i.e., his horse) and 'dents.' But if you can't guess their meaning, in the present edition a quick glance to the right at their explanatory glosses will soon apprize you of it, and will save you the trouble of searching for their meaning elsewhere.

Once you've used the side glosses for a little while, progress through Spenser's text becomes a snap. And learning a few hundred words is a small price to pay for entrance into one of the most luxuriant works ever produced by the Western imagination, and one that once entered you will often want to return to.

The present Norton Critical Edition has been designed for college students, but will appeal to anyone who is looking for an abridged Spenser which gives maximum help with the language, and who might also like to read a little of the best recent criticism.

The first part of the book, besides giving almost 500 large pages of annotated selections from 'The Faerie Queene' which amount to well over half of Spenser's complete text, also includes a generous selection from Spenser's other poetry : The Shephearde's Calendar; Muipotmos : or The Fate of the Butterflie; Colin Clouts Come Home Againe; Amoretti; and the beautiful Epithalamion and Prothalamion. An Editor's Note exploring important issues follows each selection, and all obscure words have been given convenient explanatory glosses in the right margins.

The second part of the book consists mainly of a wide range of Twentieth-Century Criticism, and contains twenty-five critical essays on various aspects of Spenser, many by noted scholars such as A. Bartlett Giamatti, Thomas P. Roche Jr., Northrop Frye, A. C. Hamilton, Isabel MacCaffrey, Paul Alpers, Louis Martz, and William Nelson. The book is rounded out with A Chronology of Spenser's Life and a very full Selected Bibliography.

Criticism undoubtedly has its value and at times can be stimulating, but Spenser, as one of England's very greatest writers, was of course writing not so much for critics as for you and me. Admittedly his language can be a bit tricky at first, and he certainly isn't to be rushed through like a modern novel. His is rather the sort of book that we wish would never end.

His pace is leisurely and relaxed, a gentle flowing rhythmic motion, and that's how he wants us to read him. To get the hang of things, try listening to one of the many available recordings. And when you hit a strange-looking word there will be no need to fret or panic, for a quick glance to the right at its gloss will soon apprize you of its meaning.

So take Spenser slowly, and give his words a chance to work their magic. Let him gently conduct you through his enthralling universe, one that you will find both wholly strange and perfectly familar, since human beings and their multifarious doings are Spenser's real subject, and somewhere in one of his enchanted forests you may one day find yourself.

Anne of the Island is an exciting book to read. it keeps you on the edge of your seat, trying to figure out what will happen next to Anne. it is an excellent choice for reading

One day Nicole woke up and looked into the mirror and she saw the same thing she saw every day, her young, fresh but flat no curved body, she had a flat chest and a small butt. But Nicole didn't really mind at least she could do more things than the girls she knew that had already grown breasts and their butts have enlarged. Later Nicole went to school and felt kind left out with her curveless body, then she went to one of her friends to talk about her body. Her friend said everything would be ok and whispered something under her breath that Nicole couldn't make out. Then Nicole went home. Later that night Nicole started to feel strange and went to look into the mirror. Nicole didn't notice anything and then she went to sleep. The next morning Nicole woke up and felt great. Then she walked over to the mirror and gasped. Nicole noticed that her breasts had grown, pressing against her shirt so that she could see her nipples. Nicole then looked in the mirror again and she saw that her butt had also grown larger and her waist had got narrower. Nicole noticed her butt felt really tight in her pants. Nicole looked at her breasts agin, she couldn't beleive what was happening!

I waited forever for it to come out, I've been to the website and read the spoiler pages and such.

I was really worth the wait!

Poyntz brings the landscape, the bird, animal, and plant life, and the geology of the unique Burren to life with her sure grasp of detail and lively draught of wit. She loves the land of which she writes, and this shines through on every page. If you can't go and visit this magical place, reading Poyntz's diary entries would be the next best thing. If you've been there, this is a treasure box of memories.

This book is a very worthwhile companion volume to another recent book by Anne Harvey, "Adlestrop Revisited: an Anthology Inspired by Edward Thomas's Poem" (1999). Notable among the poets/"elected friends" are: Eleanor Farjeon (friend and literary adviser of Edward Thomas, and author of "Morning Has Broken" - set to the music of the traditional Irish hymn "St Patrick's Breastplate" and popularised in the 1970s by Cat Stevens); Other poets such as Ivor Gurney, Walter John De La Mare and William Henry Davies and Robert Frost, to name a few. "Elected Friends" is a book to be treasured and frequently "dipped into".

'Sick of mankind and its disgusting ways' Anne Bronte once scribbled on the back of her prayer book. Her evident harsh view of life, coupled with her moral strength as a woman, are beautifully interwoven to produce this novel; her masterpiece. Although never enjoying the popularity and success of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' - her sisters' books - 'Wildfell Hall' is quite fit to join any bookshelf of classic English literature. The themes include utter despair and the tragic consequences of a young woman's naivety; Helen felt that, although she could see Arthur's faults, she would be able to somehow change him once they were married. In reality, her marital experience was a disaster.

Anne Bronte creates a world in which the drunken, immoral behaviour of men becomes the norm and this may have been startling to contemporary readers - perhaps a reason for the book's panning at the critics. The narrative is built up delicately; first Gilbert; and then the racier, more gripping diary of Helen as she guides us through her married life; before returning again to Gilbert, whose tale by this time has become far more exciting as we know of Helen's past. Helen's realisation of the awful truth and her desperate attempts to escape her husband, are forever imprinted in the mind of the reader as passages of perfect prose.

One of the earliest feminist novels, the underrated Anne Bronte writes in this a classic, and - defying the views of her early (male) critics - a claim to the position of one of England's finest ever female writers.

I read "The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte for my review of personal reading in English last year and I thought it was really gripping. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it.

It tells the story of a young woman's struggle for independence, against law and a society which defined a married woman as her husband's property. The novel, which uses extracts from her diary and narration from her neighbour, is very interesting and quite realistic.

It seems to me that the most interesting thing about the novel, is the build up of tension Bronte uses to sustain the reader's attention. It is stimulating and creates a little excitement in the book.

Helen Graham moves into Wildfell Hall with her son. She is a single mother and earns her living as a painter. Her neighbour, Gilbert Markham, takes a sudden interest in her and wants to find out everything about her. Although she is quite content being friends with him, she wants nothing more. As soon as he becomes too personal, she reminds him that friendship is the principal of their relationship. As they spend more time together, though, she learns to trust him and reveals the truth about her past. She is living at Wildfell Hall under a false surname, hiding from her husband who is an adulterer. The only other person who knows of this is her landlord, who Gilbert learns late in the novel, is in fact, her brother.

One thing which I found gripping about this story, was the build up of tension Bronte used. She took her time, revealing one thing, building up the tension again, then revealing another. She continued to do this throughout the story, and this is what kept me interested. It is a story, in which two people who love one another, are prevented from being together by society and their own natural reticence. We know romance often has this, but Bronte creates a strong desire in the reader for them to be together. She puts real obstacles in the way of their love for each other, such as the fact that Helen is already married and has a child to her husband. This therefore, causes the reader to understand the story more.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a riveting novel by the "least famous" Bronte sister Anne. The main character is Helen Huntingdon, who also uses the assumed name Helen Graham for part of the book.

Narrated in part by Mr. Markham, the gentleman farmer who falls in love with her, and partly by herself in diary form, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a sad portrayal of the miseries Helen Huntingdon endures at the hands of an immature self-centered husband.

The story starts out with Helen, an intriguing beautiful "widow" who comes to live in a deserted moorland mansion called Wildfell Hall with no one but her maid and young son as companions. She excites the gossip of the local townspeople by her refusal to mingle in the town's social life, her strong opinions on the upbringing of her 5 year old son, and by working to support herself as a landscape painter. Mr. Markham, the gentleman farmer, rather than being repelled by her fiercely guarded independence is intrigued by her and determines to learn more about her, falling in love with her in the process. Helen becomes the butt of sinister gossip when it is discovered that she and Mr. Lawrence, her landlord, are not the strangers to each other that they pretend to be in public, and it is rumored that something is going on between them romantically.

It is in response to this falsehood that she turns over her diary to Mr. Markham, who at last learns within its contents her true identity, why she is at Wildfell, and why she can not marry him. He also learns the astonishing identity of Mr. Lawrence. Helen's diary traces her life from a naive girl of 18 to a courageous woman of 26, and the sorrow and trials she endures in her marriage to a wretch of a husband, the womanizing, alcoholic Arthur Huntingdon.

Excellent presentation on chintz pottery and ceramics without making it look like a manual. The type of book you'd want in your collection as a show piece.

This book clearly shows the author's enthusiasm and knowledge of chintz ceramics. Beautifully illustrated and packed with information for both the novice and experienced collector of chintz china. Highly recommended!

For any serious collector of Chintz this book is a must. It is clearlly set out and easy to understand. The passion and love the writer has for Chintz is apparent.