Books by louis macneice

Commissioned by the BBC for the Goethe Centenary in 1949, and originally broadcast in six instalments, Louis MacNeice's translation of Goethe's Faust distills the digressive dimensions of the original - at once a play and an epic poem - into a verse drama for the ear. The translation is almost line for line, following closely and skilfully the varied verse patterns of the original, as well as i... ...Read More »

Louis MacNeice read classics at Oxford, and his professional life began as a lecturer in classics, before his career developed as a poet and broadcaster.

Published in 1936 and intended primarily for the stage, MacNeice's version of The Agamemnon was immediately recognised, in the words of T. S. Eliot, as 'an accurate, almost literal translation, and at the same time as English poetry for ... ...Read More »

In Varieties of Parable, which comprises the Clark Lectures given by Louis MacNeice at Cambridge in 1963, a few months before his death, the poet discusses the significance of 'parable' for the times in which he lived, and implictly for his own poetic. The discussion ranges widely, including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and William Golding (new writers with whom MacNeice felt an obvious kinshi... ...Read More »

The poet Louis MacNeice's pioneering critical study of W. B. Yeats was undertaken in 1939, shortly after the death of Yeats, and published early in 1941, in time of war - as an attempt to disentangle MacNeice's own feelings about the elder poetic statesman and compatriot, but also to investigate the reality of poetry at a historical moment when its uses seemed most tenuous.

As Richard Ell... ...Read More »

Born in Ireland, Louis MacNeice was sent to England for his schooling, to Marlborough, and then went on to read classics at Oxford. His professional life began as a lecturer in classics but in 1941 he joined the BBC and for the next twenty years produced programmes for the legendary Features Department, including his own celebrated radio play, The Dark Tower, which was broadcast for the first t... ...Read More »

Written between August and December 1938, "Autumn Journal" is a moving and essential snapshot of the world on the precipice of war. It is a record of young MacNeice's emotional and intellectual experience during those turbulent months, offsetting the commonplaces of everyday living against the tectonic events of the world at large, such as the settlement in Munich and the republican defeat in Spai... ...Read More »

'I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.' Louis MacNeice's prescription is designed to look ordinary, rather than esoteric, but very little poetry can claim to meet these specifica... ...Read More »

Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907 and educated at Marlborough and Merton College, Oxford. For most of his working life he was a writer and producer for BBC radio. His death in 1963 was sudden and unexpected. ...Read More »

For both readers and critics, the nature of MacNeice's poetic work as a whole is a matter of importance, and the second posthumous "Collected Poems", entirely re-edited by Peter McDonald, attempts, for the first time, to print MacNeice's poetry in groupings corresponding closely to the collections published by Faber between 1935 and 1963. This makes it easier to read the poet in the published form... ...Read More »

Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list - starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is scheduled, to i... ...Read More »

Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list - starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is scheduled, to i... ...Read More »

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. ...Read More »

Written between August and December 1938, this is a record of the author's emotional and intellectual experience during those months; the trivia of everyday life set against the events of the world outside, the settlement in Munich and slow defeat in Spain. Originally published in 1996. ...Read More »