Poetry > T Poetry > 5 GBP to 9 GBP

Advantages: It will make you believe in love.
Disadvantages: You may feel you are prying.

Ted Hughes was always reticent about his marraige to Sylvia Plath and it seems beautifully appropriate that he should finally choose to talk about it in poetry. The poetry itself is polished, moving and thought-provoking but I suspect the real interest lies in its subject matter and you may find yourself trying to match poems to known biographical details. At times, indeed, you may feel that you are prying, and it is,of course, a very one sided account ... Read review

Advantages: It is a very interesting look at the bleakness of 20th century life.
Disadvantages: It often uses allusion which may be overlooked by less well read individuals.

T S Eliot was one of the poems I was required to study as part of my A Level course. Initially I met this with typical distain as many students undoubtedly would when faced with poetry. However, upon studying our first poem, which was Prufrock, I saw that this was the work of a poet which I could really relate to. Here was not some work of a distant artist, whose life would have revolved around very different parameters but instead it described the ... Read review

Advantages: tender
Disadvantages: few

Poetry was Hardy’s first and last love. He wrote poetry for 60 years and only turned to his more famous fiction at a later date after retiring from poetry. There is every shade of emotion in Hardy’s beautifully composed ‘petits poemes’. He shows both great technical inventiveness and a masterly control of language. The poems seem caught between his humility, his self-deprecation and a strangely strong sense of pride at his creations. Reading these ... Read review

Advantages: Powerful and gripping storyline, Great contributions of all characters
Disadvantages: None that I have found

Written by Arthur Miller in the early 1950s during the time of the McCarthyism when the government blacklisted accused communists. Miller was also summoned in court and he wrote this play as a parable and links the Salem witch-hunt and the McCarthy trials which took place nearly 250 years apart. A very powerful play and an excellent one to study for GCSE English Literature for its revoloutionary work in the theatre and its portrayal of the human ...
...man's struggle to find and do what is right by him. With just 4 Acts and 5 important characters, this truly is a masterpiece. Proctor, a hard-working family man finds in the middle of lying and confessing to witchcraft, both of which go against his newly developed religious beliefs. ... Read review

Advantages: Interesting concept behind the plot
Disadvantages: Slow paced

Author: George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright born in 1856, and who died in 1950. Although he write music as well, he most enjoying writng plays, with the prupose of putting across a social message, and making it more memorable with the use of comedy, whilst doing so. Some of his plays addressed the issue of education, religion and government, however one topic he often considered was the exploitation of the working class. As a socialist, ...
...a British socialist movement, writing brochures and leaflets for them. He even married a fellow member of the Society, called Charlotte Payne-Townshend. He was an eloquent orator, and gave speeches on equal rights in politics for men and women, how to live healthy lifestyles, and condemning the attitudes of the rich towards the poor. This socialist attitude of Bernard Shaw influenced many of his writings, including Pygmalion, which has become a classic. ... Read review