Sir Philip Sidney The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

book in good condition and my dog only had a tiny bite of it as it landed on the door mat.

Well worth the read and the price. I read Astrophil and Stella first as this is for my English course and it completely inspired me to read the rest of Sidney. No bad points whatsoever. Read and enjoy.

Because of its irritatingly small type of letter. Besides, the scarcity of notes makes this a useless edition. I would of course never recommend this edition to anyone.Dr. Joao S Monteiro

Good value for uni book

SPS, along with Edmund Spenser, was the first major English talent to get hold of what the Renaissance Italians were doing with poetry and turn it into literary gold. He was a far more accomplished and versatile sonnet-writer than Shakespeare (born 10 years later), whose work in this form is often tedious. Indeed, SPS is so clever he blocks out any emotion that may lie behind his muse, unlike Spenser, who swims in the stuff. To compensate, the Astrophil and Stella sequence boasts plenty of poetical pyrotechnics to prevent boredom creeping in over the course of 108 sonnets and 11 songs, and you get a wodge of literary criticism for your money - the acclaimed 'The Defense of Poesy', along with other bits and bobs from an effortlessly cultured and gifted man. That he died young (31) of infected wounds received at the now almost forgotten battle of Zutphen is a matter of regret. Imagine a writing partnership with the Stratford lad... SPS could have written some ace plays and WS much more consistently good poetry. Oh well, that's history but this book is very much here and now, with illuminating notes and commentary by Katherine Duncan-Jones.

Philip Sidney, nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (and Elizabeth's favourite) has become for us, as for at least some of his contemporaries, the epitome of the Renaissance courtier. However he is a far more complex and ambiguous figure than that (see, for example, the excellent Stewart biography Sir Philip Sidney: A Double Life). This excellent collection, edited and introduced by Duncan-Jones, herself a renowned Sidneian, is a superb introduction to the contradictions of this immensely intelligent, cultured, and yet slippery man.This contains his early writings, the eclogues from the 'Old' Arcadia, the full Defense of Poetry, the full Astrophil and Stella, prose excerpts from the 'new' Arcadia, and a handful of psalms. It is rounded off with a few of Sidney's own letters (about 15 or so) and a short appendix which includes some very (very) brief writings about Sidney's death.Duncan-Jones is unobstrusive in her commentary but the serious student will need to consult other secondary literature. The letters are fascinating and this section could have been much longer as it's difficult to get an affordable copy of Sidney's correspondance.However, the full Defense and Astrophil make this a bargain at the price. For the Sidney student, do also get the Oxford 'old' Arcadia with this (The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia) (Oxford World's Classics), as the intersections between the epic/pastoral romance of that,and the Petrarchan Astrophil really do need to be read in conjunction.