Annoted Cover 2010-full-correct spine.indd - Penguin Group

e. e. CuMMings
1894 – 1962, american
The Enormous Room
Edited with an Introduction and Glossary
by Samuel Hynes
Drawn from Cummings’s unexpected
confinement in a World War I French
concentration camp, this rambunctious
modern story reflects the essential paradox
of his experience: to lose everything—
all comforts, possessions, all rights and
privileges—is to become free, and so to
be saved.
384 pp. 978-0-14-118124-0 $16.00
“When a book like The Enormous Room
manages to emerge from the morass of print
we flounder in, it is time to take off your new
straw hat and jump on it.” —j o h n d o s passos
quintus Curtius ruFus
c. 1st cent. a.d., Roman
The History of Alexander
Translated by John Yardley with an
Introduction and Notes by
Waldemar Heckel
This history of Alexander’s life provides
by far the most plausible and haunting
portrait of him: a brilliantly realized image
of a man ruined by constant good fortune
in his youth.
352 pp. 978-0-14-044412-4 $16.00
64 Penguin ClassiCs
riChard henry dana, jr.
1815 – 1882, american
Two Years Before the Mast
A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
Thomas Philbrick
Dana’s account of his passage as a
common seaman from Boston around
Cape Horn to California, and back, is a
remarkable portrait of the seagoing life.
Bringing to the public’s attention for the
first time the plight of the most exploited
segment of the American working class,
he forever changed readers’ romanticized
perceptions of life at sea.
576 pp. 978-0-14-039008-7 $15.00
dante alighieri
1265 – 1321, Florentine
The Portable Dante
Translated and Edited with an Introduction
by Mark Musa
The Portable Dante captures the scope and
fire of Dante’s genius as thoroughly as any
single volume can with the complete verse
translations of The Divine Comedy and
La Vita Nuova.
704 pp. 978-0-14-243754-4 $18.00
dante alighieri
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 to a noble but impoverished family.
At twenty, he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had four children. He had
first met his muse Bice Portinari, whom he immortalized as Beatrice, in 1274, and
when she died in 1290 he sought distraction by studying philosophy and theology
and by writing La Vita Nuova. During this time he became involved in the strife
between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, becoming a prominent White Guelf.
When the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302 Dante was condemned to exile.
He took refuge first in Verona and after wandering from place to place, as far as
Paris, he settled in Ravenna. There he completed The Divine Comedy, which he
had begun in about 1308, if not later. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321.