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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems
Aug 1, 2025 12:05 PM

Author:Thomas Gray

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems

The English countryside has inspired some of the most exquisite and well-loved poetry ever composed in the language. This selection of verse includes, among others, Thomas Gray's reflective and moving meditation on mortality, 'Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard', the soaring beauty of Wordsworth's lines on Tintern Abbey and Keats's ode to Autumn, the deceptively simple words of Emily Brontë and the personal and evocative verse of Thomas Hardy, bringing together the greatest riches of English poetry.

Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Reviews

A bleakly powerful ending with a moving, finely contrived element of hope

—— Times Literary Supplement

Beautifully spare, poetic prose...A haunting book

—— Metro

A thoughtful reminder of the wounds of conflict, and the depths of its scars... a clever, innovative, unusual book which is both timeless and timely

—— Scotsman

A well-paced narrative with carefully crafted twists...intensely visual descriptions... Inventive in its form and often profound in its poetry, Symmons Roberts' gripping story is a meditation on the difficulty of forgiveness in wartime

—— Sunday Telegraph

Symmons Roberts is already a poet of note, and this...is discernibly a poet's book. Short and introspective, it stays in the mind and echoes

—— The Times

Magically spun out. An entrancing yet disturbing book

—— Sunday Express

An absorbing fable of the here-and-now

—— Independent

Dazzling

—— Vanity Fair

A brilliant evocation of the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla

—— Guardian

Remarkable... Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

Hunt's deft blend of sf elements and romantic subplots may remind readers of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, while her prose style and attention to historical detail are on a par with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Hunt's greatest triumph, however, lies in her depiction of Tesla, who wavers between genius and madness with carefully controlled charm.

—— Library Journal

A fantastical story that engages the heart and mind, as Hunt pays tribute to the power of invention, and the enduring strength of love

—— Psychologies

Hunt has done a fine job of reanimating the dead and reawakening my curiosity about this odd, overlooked man... Hunt's prose is sylish and tasty and her observations wise and witty

—— Scotsman

Weird and wonderful debut novel

—— Red

Remarkable...Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

An ambitious conflation of fact and fiction

—— Literary Review

Samantha Hunt's fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla's commercial and personal failings ... The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry

—— New Scientist

a fascinating blend of fact, fiction, history and dare I say, science fiction surrounding the weird and wonderful life of Nikola Tesla the acknowledged father of radio and AC electricity.

—— Dovegreyreader

her portrait of Tesla buzzes with vitality

—— Metro

This unusual novel skilfully interweaves the story of the eccentric inventor of radio and AC electricity with that of Louisa ... a compelling novel.

—— Emma Lee-Potter , Express

A sophisticated pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, melodrama, and historical anecdote....It all adds up to a precocious math of human marvel

—— Elle

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in

—— Evelyn Waugh
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