Christopher E. G Benfey

"Rudyard Kipling once towered over not just English literature, but indeed the entire literary world. In 1907, at just forty-two, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner and the first in the English language. Today, however, when he is read, if indeed he is read at all, it is regarding the history of colonial India, his birthplace and the setting of some his most famous work, and to a lesser extent England, his...

"In tones alternately sardonic and rueful, Stephen Crane's poems, although small in scale, address immense problems of cosmic justice and the purpose of human life. They are not quite like anything else in American poetry: uncompromisingly harsh, gnomic, deliberately anti-poetic, and shot through with unforgettable phrases and perceptions. Christopher Benfey's edition collects all Crane's poems and provides an introduction illuminating their biographical...