Books by Simon Armitage

The Shout: Selected Poems

by Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is one of Britain's most respected poets. He is considered Philip Larkin's successor in both the easy brilliance of his verse and the national acclaim he has received. His subjects have ranged from yardwork to politics, from the fidelity of dogs to the negotiations of lovers. A selection of poetry that is wry, unpretentious, and constantly inventive, The Shout collects Armitage's best work from the past three decades and includes many of his most recent poems.

Man with a Golf Ball Heart

They set about him with a knife and fork, I heard,
and spooned it out. Dunlop, dimpled, perfectly hard.
It bounced on stone but not on softer ground-they made
a note of that. They slit the skin-a leathery,
rubbery, eyelid thing-and further in, three miles
of gut or string, elastic. Inside that, a pouch
or sac of pearl-white balm or gloss, like Copydex.
It weighed in at the low end of the litmus test
but wouldn't burn, and tasted bitter, bad, resin
perhaps from a tree or plant. And it gave off gas
that caused them all to weep when they inspected it.

That heart had been an apple once, they reckoned. Green.
They had a scheme to plant an apple there again
beginning with a pip, but he rejected it.

The Shout: Selected Poems

by Simon Armitage

Now in paperback, the powerful selected work of Simon Armitage, the most distinctive poetic voice of contemporary Britain.

Simon Armitage is arguably the leading British poet of the past twenty years. His knowledge of the English just as they are ("a gentleman farmer / living on reduced means, a cricketer's widow, / sowing a kitchen garden with sweet peas"), his colloquial Yorkshire wit and eye for situational ironies, his ability to steal up on us with the surreal while capturing the ordinary speech of everyday life: these qualities place him at the forefront of British poetry today. This slim volume is the perfect introduction to his work for newcomers, or the ideal selection for longtime readers to keep on the bedside table.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid

by Simon Armitage

From one of the most important British poets at work today comes a brilliant new collection that meditates on human battles past and present, on youth and age, on monsters and underdogs, on the life of nations and the individual heart.

In Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid, we meet a writer who speaks naturally, and with frankness and restraint, for his culture. Armitage witnesses the pathos of women at work in the mock-Tudor Merrie England coffeehouses and gives us a backstage take on the world of Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger. He makes a gift to the reader of the sympathy and misery and grit buried in his nation’s collective consciousness: in the distant battle depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry and in the daily lives and petty crimes of ordinary people. In poems that are sometimes lyrical, sometimes brash and comic, and full of living voices, the extraordinary and the mythic grow out of the ordinary, and figures of diminishment and tragedy shine forth as mysterious, uncelebrated exemplars. Armitage tells us ruefully that “the future was a beautiful place, once,” and with a steady eye out for the odd mystery or joyous scrap of experience, examines our complex present instead.

AFTER THE HURRICANE

Some storm that was, to shoulder-charge the wall
in my old man’s back yard and knock it flat.
But the greenhouse is sound, the chapel of glass
we glazed one morning. We glazed with morning.
And so is the hut. And so is the shed.

We sit in the ruins and drink. He smokes.
Back when, we would have built that wall again.
But today it’s enough to drink and smoke
amongst mortar and bricks, here at the empire’s end.

The Death of King Arthur: A New Verse Translation

by unknown author, Simon Armitage

“A new standard in the enterprise of bringing the past back into poetry.”―Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal First appearing around 1400, The Death of King Arthur is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems penned in Middle English. While it is more than six centuries old, this magisterial new translation has finally given American readers the ability to experience the splendor and poignancy of the original. Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic translation of a timeless masterpiece, one that follows Arthur’s bloody conquests across Europe, all the way to his spectacular and even bloodier downfall. This unparalleled presentation of the greatest Arthurian tale promises to become the definitive edition for generations to come.

The Death of King Arthur: A New Verse Translation

by unknown author, Simon Armitage

King Arthur comes to vivid life in this gripping poetic translation by the renowned poet and translator. First appearing around 1400, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, or, The Death of King Arthur, is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems ever penned in Middle English. Now, from the internationally acclaimed translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, comes this magisterial new presentation of the Arthurian tale, rendered in unflinching and gory detail. Following Arthur's bloody conquests across the cities and fields of Europe, all the way to his spectacular and even bloodier fall, this masterpiece features some of the most spellbinding and poignant passages in English poetry. Never before have the deaths of Arthur's loyal knights, his own final hours, and the subsequent burial been so poignantly evoked.

Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic new translation that promises to become both the literary event of the year and the definitive edition for generations to come.

the-odyssey

by Homer, Simon Armitage

Homer’s classic epic of survival, revenge, and homecoming, translated by E.V. Rieu, now in a stunning clothbound edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, and featuring an Introduction by Peter V. Jones.

The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats—shipwrecks, battles, monsters, and the implacable enmity of the sea god Poseidon—Odysseus must use his wit and native cunning if he is to reach his homeland of Ithaca safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

the-odyssey

by Homer, Simon Armitage

"Armitage has given an ageless story new vigor, and has done it with style, wit and elegance."―Literary Review In this new verse adaptation, originally commissioned for BBC radio, Simon Armitage has recast Homer's epic as a series of bristling dramatic dialogues: between gods and men; between no-nonsense Captain Odysseus and his unruly, lotus-eating, homesick companions; and between subtle Odysseus (wiliest hero of antiquity) and a range of shape-shifting adversaries―Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, the Cyclops―as he and his men are "pinballed between islands" of adversity. One of the most individual voices of his generation, Armitage revitalizes our sense of the Odyssey as oral poetry, as indeed one of the greatest of tall tales.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

A witty Arthurian tale receives a wondrous translation by England's Children's Laureate and an award-winning artist.

Think yourself back in years, my friends. . . .

It's New Year's Eve in Camelot, where King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and all their good Knights wait breathlessly for an extravagant feast to begin. Suddenly, a strange and frightening Knight bursts into the hall — a giant of a man, green from head to toe, who mockingly challenges the Court to a shocking game. Only the chivalrous Sir Gawain dares to take on the hideous Green Knight. But over the unexpected course of his test,
will Gawain prove as brave and honest as he'd like to believe? Welcome to a medieval world full of sword fights and shape-shifting, monsters and magic, and timeless characters both gallant and wonderfully human. Written anonymously in the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is retold in its entirety by Michael Morpurgo in a lively and accessible narration that captures all the tale's drama and humor. Vivid illustrations by the celebrated Michael Foreman infuse this classic tale with the sights and colors of dragons, swords, and medieval pageantry.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

The inspiration for the major motion picture The Green Knight starring Dev Patel.

An early English poem of magic, chivalry and seduction

Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter. The mighty knight presents a challenge to the court: he will allow himself to be struck by one blow, on the condition that he will be allowed to return the strike on the following New Year's Eve. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge, decapitating the stranger - only to see the Green Knight seize up his own severed head and ride away, leaving Gawain to seek him out and honour their pact. Blending Celtic myth and Christian faith, Gawain is among the greatest Middle English poems: a tale of magic, chivalry and seduction.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

The inspiration for the major motion picture The Green Knight starring Dev Patel.

‘Be prepared to perform what you promised, Gawain;
Seek faithfully till you find me …’

A New Year’s feast at King Arthur’s court is interrupted by the appearance of a gigantic Green Knight, resplendent on horseback. He challenges any one of Arthur’s men to behead him, provided that if he survives he can return the blow a year later. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge and decapitates the knight – but the mysterious warrior cheats death and vanishes, bearing his head with him. The following winter Gawain sets out to find the Knight in the wild Northern lands and to keep his side of the bargain. One of the great masterpieces of Middle English poetry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight magically combines elements of fairy tale and heroic sagas with the pageantry, chivalry and courtly love of medieval Romance.
Brian Stone’s evocative translation is accompanied by an introduction that examines the Romance genre, and the poem’s epic and pagan sources. This edition also includes essays discussing the central characters and themes, theories about authorship and Arthurian legends, and suggestions for further reading and notes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

A splendid translation of the classic Arthurian tale of enchantment, adventure, and romance, presented alongside the original Middle English text—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “one of the greatest poets of our age … the Thoreau of our era” (Edward Hirsch).

It is the height of Christmas and New Year’s revelry when an enormous knight with brilliant green clothes and skin descends upon King Arthur’s court. He presents a sinister challenge: he will endure a blow of the axe to his neck without offering any resistance, but whoever gives the blow must promise to take the same in exactly a year and a day’s time. The young Sir Gawain quickly rises to the challenge, and the poem tells of the adventures he finds—an almost irresistible seduction, shockingly brutal hunts, and terrifyingly powerful villains—as he endeavors to fulfill his promise.

Capturing the pace, impact, and richly alliterative language of the original text, W. S. Merwin has imparted a new immediacy to a spellbinding narrative, written centuries ago by a poet whose name is now unknown, lost to time. Of the Green Knight, Merwin notes in his foreword: “We seem to recognize him—his splendor, the awe that surrounds him, his menace and his grace—without being able to place him … We will never know who the Green Knight is except in our own response to him.”

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

The classic story that inspired the film starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander
“A medieval romance…but also an outlandish ghost story, a gripping morality tale and a weird thriller.… I couldn’t put down Simon Armitage’s compulsively readable...energetic, free-flowing, high-spirited version.” ― Edward Hirsch, New York Times Book Review
One of the founding stories of English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight narrates the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse who rudely interrupts Camelot’s Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. The following Yuletide, Gawain dutifully sets forth. His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dreamlike castle, a dire challenge answered―and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.
Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, this Arthurian epic was rediscovered only two hundred years ago and published for the first time in 1839. Following in the tradition of Ted Hughes, Marie Borroff, and J.R.R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage―one of England’s leading poets―has produced an inventive translation that resounds with both clarity and spirit. His work, presented here with facing original text and a note by Harvard scholar James Simpson, is meticulously responsible to the sophistication of the original but succeeds equally in its ambition to be read as a totally new poem. It is as if two poets, six hundred years apart, set out on a journey through the same mesmerizing landscapes―acoustic, physical, and metaphorical―to share in and double the pleasure of this enchanting classic. 2 illustrations

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

A spellbinding poetic translation of this six hundred year-old Arthurian story of beheading, romance, and the supernatural. "Promises to drive the green force of the old poem through the Armitage fuse and set it a-buddin' and a-bloomin' for the new millennium."―Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, best-selling translator of BeowulfCom posed in the late fourteenth century by an anonymous author in the English provinces, this remarkable epic has enchanted readers for generations. The work itself is an unparalleled masterpiece of alliteration and rhyme, beginning at Christmastime in Camelot, when the festivities of the Round Table are interrupted by the sudden appearance of a fearful stranger, green from head to foot. A young knight, Gawain, rises to the challenge. What follows is a test of nerve and heart as Gawain travels north to meet his destiny at the Green Chapel in a year's time. Following in the tradition of Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage, one of England's leading poets, has produced a virtuoso new translation that resounds with both clarity and verve.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Anonymous, Michael Morpurgo, unknown author, Brian [transl.] Stone, Simon Armitage

“Morpurgo's dramatic telling captures the vitality of the tale as well as its beauty and mystery.” — Booklist(starred review)

Welcome to a medieval world full of sword fights and shape-shifting, monsters and magic, and timeless characters both gallant and wonderfully human. Written anonymously in the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is retold in its entirety by Michael Morpurgo in a lively and accessible narration that captures all the tale’s drama and humor. Vivid illustrations by the celebrated Michael Foreman infuse this classic tale with dragons, swords, and medieval pageantry. Now in a compact black-and-white digest edition ideal for classroom use.

Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

by Simon Armitage

Nineteen days, 256 miles, and one renowned poet walking the backbone of England. The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry humor all his own, has taken on Britain’s version of our Appalachian Trail: the Pennine Way. Walking “the backbone of England” by day (accompanied by friends, family, strangers, dogs, the unpredictable English weather, and a backpack full of Mars Bars), each evening he gives a poetry reading in a different village in exchange for a bed. Armitage reflects on the inextricable link between freedom and fear as well as the poet’s place in our bustling world. In Armitage’s own words, “to embark on the walk is to surrender to its lore and submit to its logic, and to take up a challenge against the self.” 29 photographs

Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

by Simon Armitage

Shortlisted for the Portico Prize for Nonfiction
Nineteen days, 256 miles, and one renowned poet walking the backbone of England. The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry humor all his own, has taken on Britain’s version of our Appalachian Trail: the Pennine Way. Walking “the backbone of England” by day (accompanied by friends, family, strangers, dogs, the unpredictable English weather, and a backpack full of Mars Bars), each evening he gives a poetry reading in a different village in exchange for a bed. Armitage reflects on the inextricable link between freedom and fear as well as the poet’s place in our bustling world. In Armitage’s own words, “to embark on the walk is to surrender to its lore and submit to its logic, and to take up a challenge against the self.” 29 photographs

The Story of the Iliad: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer's Epic and the Last Days of Troy

by Simon Armitage

Award-winning poet Simon Armitage dramatizes the story of Troy, animating this classic epic for a new generation of readers. Following his highly acclaimed dramatization of the Odyssey, Simon Armitage here takes on the fate of Troy, bringing Homer’s Iliad to life with refreshing imaginative vision. In the final days of the Trojan War, the Trojans and the Greeks are caught in a bitter stalemate. Exhausted and desperate after ten years of warfare, gods and men battle among themselves for the glory of recognition and a hand in victory. Cleverly intertwining the Iliad and the Aeneid, Armitage poetically narrates the tale of Troy to its dire end, evoking a world plagued by deceit, conflict, and a deadly predilection for pride and envy. As with the Odyssey, Armitage reveals the echoes of ancient myth in our contemporary war-torn landscape, and reinvigorates the classic epics with adventure, passion, and, surprisingly, Shakespearean wit.

Praise for The Odyssey: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer’s Epic:

“So superb. . . . Armitage ’s love of the Greek epic is evident in almost every line.”―New York Times

New Cemetery Poems

by Simon Armitage

From the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, a poem sequence that considers our use of the land that surrounds him, and recounts the personal tales of beauty and loss that play out on it

A few years ago, in the poet’s home county of West Yorkshire, the Local Authority began converting a series of cow fields near his home into a new cemetery. As the graveyard takes shape, its presence on the brow of the hill casts a lengthening shadow over the imagination and enlivens the poet’s landscape, both inner and outer. These poems, in regular, cascading tercets, sparked into being as he daily walked the site, with moorlands rising beyond it and the wind turbines of Brontë country to the north. Eventually the muddy construction scene gives way to fresh headstones and mown lawns, and, during the COVID-19 lockdown, the spectacle of gravediggers in hazmat suits. The poet retreats to write in his garden shed, charting his losses, conversing fruitfully with the dead, and engaging the world in the perilous present.

The sharply observed lyrics in New Cemetery—each fancifully named for a species of moth, a creature whose numbers the poet sees dwindling across a lifetime of night walks—remind us to turn a cool eye on the doings of man, and yet to embrace all we love while we still can, as “Time, what else,” stands “propped in a corner / like a cricket bat.”

Pearl A New Verse Translation

by Simon Armitage

Winner of the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation 

From the acclaimed translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a spellbinding new translation of this classic allegory of grief and consolation.

Simon Armitage, the acclaimed poet who brought Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to vivid life in "an energetic, free-flowing, high-spirited translation" (New York Times Book Review), turns his attention to another beloved medieval English masterpiece, the soulful Pearl. Believed to have been penned by the same author who wrote Sir Gawain and housed in the same original fourteenth-century manuscript, Pearl is here reanimated with Armitage's characteristic flair in the alliterative music of the original text.

Pearl describes a bereft father mourning the loss of his precious "Perle." Returning to the garden where she first disappeared, he observes the verdant shades of late summer—a cruel reminder of the grief that shadows his every waking thought. Succumbing to the afternoon heat, he falls into a trancelike sleep and dreams of a radiant apparition that closely resembles his Pearl. Standing before him across an unfordable stretch of water, the maiden reassures her father that she has been granted a home in heaven alongside Christ. At first overjoyed, then incredulous at the maiden’s exalted stature, the dreamer is ultimately convinced of her providence by a series of tense, sorrowful arguments as she—much like Dante’s Beatrice—leads him through the throes of grief toward a vision of paradise and divine redemption. At the brief, teasing glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, the dreamer rushes forward to join the maiden—only to be struck awake, his dream shattered and his irreplaceable Pearl lost once more.

Presented alongside the original text, and overseen by renowned medievalist James Simpson, Pearl is a spellbinding new translation of a classic medieval work. Remaining faithful to the intricate structure of the original, Armitage's virtuosic rendering of the lyrical dialogue between father and daughter arrives at the end only to echo the beginning; the poem emerges as a circular and perfected whole, much like the pearl itself. One of our most ingenious interpreters of Middle English, Armitage transforms this allegory of grief and consolation into a story that feels hauntingly immediate.

The Unaccompanied: Poems

by Simon Armitage

From the prize-winning poet and former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom comes a powerful collection of poetry that gives voice to the people of Britain with a haunting grace.

We meet characters whose sense of isolation is both emotional and political, both real and metaphorical, from a son made to groom the garden hedge as punishment, to a nurse standing alone at a bus stop as the centuries pass by, to a latter-day Odysseus looking for enlightenment and hope in the shadowy underworld of a cut-price supermarket. We see the changing shape of England itself, viewed from a satellite "like a shipwreck's carcass raised on a sea-crane's hook, / nothing but keel, beams, spars, down to its bare bones." In this exquisite collection, Armitage X-rays the weary but ironic soul of his nation, with its "Songs about mills and mines and a great war, / lines about mermaids and solid gold hills, / songs from broken hymnbooks and cheesy films"—in poems that blend the lyrical and the vernacular, with his trademark eye for detail and biting wit.

Seeing Stars: Poems

by Simon Armitage

A thrilling new collection from the hugely acclaimed British poet Simon Armitage. With its vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, and tall tales, this absurdist, unreal exploration of modern society brings us a chorus of unique and unforgettable voices.

All are welcome at this twilit, visionary carnival: the man whose wife drapes a border-curtain across the middle of the marital home; the black bear with a dark secret; the woman who oversees giant snowballs in the freezer. “My girlfriend won me in a sealed auction but wouldn’t / tell me how much she bid,” begins one speaker; “I hadn’t meant to go grave robbing with Richard Dawkins / but he can be very persuasive,” another tells us. The storyteller behind this human tapestry has about him a sly undercover idealism: he shares with many of his characters a stargazing capacity for belief, or for being, at the very least, entirely “genuine in his disbelief.” In these startling poems, with their unique cartoon-strip energy and air of misrule, Armitage creates world after world, peculiar and always particular, where the only certainty is the unexpected.

Still

by Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage has been commissioned by 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers’ Centre Norwich to write a sequence of poems in response to 26 panoramic photographs of battlefields associated with the Battle of the Somme chosen from archives at Imperial War Museum, London. The Somme Offensive took place on the Western Front between July and November 1916, and is considered to be one of the bloodiest in British military history. Armitage has written thirty poems of between two and 20 lines that are versions of The Georgics by the Roman poet Virgil. Paired with black-and-white images that are a hundred years old, the contemporary words meld with the visual devastations of war to haunting effect.

The Owl and the Nightingale A New Verse Translation

by Simon Armitage

From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a complete verse translation of a spirited and humorous medieval English poem

The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest literary works in Middle English, is a lively, anonymous comic poem about two birds who embark on a war of words in a wood, with a nearby poet reporting their argument in rhyming couplets, line by line and blow by blow. In this engaging and energetic verse translation, Simon Armitage captures the verve and humor of this dramatic tale with all the cut and thrust of the original.

In an agile iambic tetrameter that skillfully amplifies the prosody and rhythm of the original, Armitage’s translation moves entertainingly from the eloquent and philosophical to the ribald and ridiculous. Sounding at times like antagonists in a Twitter feud, the owl and the nightingale quarrel about a host of subjects that still resonate today—including love, marriage, identity, cultural background, class distinctions, and the right to be heard. Adding to the playful, raucous mood of the barb-trading birds is Armitage, who at one point inserts himself into the poem as a “magistrate . . . to adjudicate”—one who is “skilled with words & worldly wise / & frowns on every form of vice.”

Featuring the Middle English text on facing pages and an introduction by Armitage, this volume will delight readers of all ages.