Tony Frazer (ed.) : Poets of Devon & Cornwall – from Barclay to Coleridge Click on book covers for more information.
Shearsman Classics No. 1.
Published 2007, 8.5x5.5ins, 148pp, £9.95 / $17. ISBN 9781905700509
Alexander Barclay, George Peele, John Ford, Humfrey Gifford, Richard Carew, Anne Dowriche, Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Arthur Gorges, Joseph Hall, Robert Herrick, Sidney Godolphin, William Strode, William Browne, Thomas Spratt, Mary, Lady Chudleigh, Thomas D'Urfey, John Gay, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
All of these are poets born in the two westernmost counties of England, or – like Hall and Herrick – poets who were active there. In time we stretch from the very beginning of the 16th century until the early 19th century. We begin with Barclay, a priest working in Ottery St. Mary, and we close with Coleridge, the son of a priest in Ottery St. Mary, his birthplace.
Robert Herrick : Selected Poems
Shearsman Classics No. 2. Edited by Tony Frazer.
Published 2007. 8.5x5.5ins, 120pp, £8.95 / $15. ISBN 9781905700493
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was perhaps the greatest poet to have worked in Devon. Born in London, the son of a goldsmith, he studied at Cambridge and later fell in with the London poets who had gathered around the magnetic figure of Ben Jonson. In order to make a living – since he had not pursued the family trade – he entered the Church and in 1627 was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, whom he accompanied on an unsuccessful military expedition in 1627. In 1629 he was appointed to the living of Dean Prior, a village on the edge of Dartmoor, about half way between Exeter and Plymouth. He was to remain there for the rest of his life, with the exception of the Cromwellian period from 1647-1660, during which he was expelled for his royalist sympathies and, no doubt, also doctrinal disagreements.
Tony Frazer (ed): Spanish Poetry of the Golden Age, in contemporary English translations
Shearsman
Classics No. 3.
Published 2008. Paperback, 120pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £9.95 / $17. ISBN 9781905700691
Some of the greatest writers of 16th and 17th century Spain are represented here, in translations from 16th and 17th century England. This was an era when translation was important for the dissemination of new styles and forms, and it gives a fascinating view of two great literatures interacting – for both were at their peak: the Spanish Golden Age stretches from roughly 1540 to 1660, and the first great era of English poetry and drama overlaps this almost exactly. Poems by Montemayor, Boscán, Garcilaso, Góngora, Quevedo, Cervantes, Argensola and Mendoza; translations by Sidney, Ayres, Fanshawe, Drummond, Stanley, Yong and Shelton.