Fiona Sampson

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Sand's death, and Becoming George is a fitting celebration of her literary genius--as well as the first new biography in nearly twenty-five years. Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin in 1804, Sand achieved international fame as a novelist early in life. Prolific and iconoclastic, she was a key intellectual and artistic figure who addressed the social and political issues of her time. Yet this central role in literary and cultural history has long been overshadowed by superficial interest in her promiscuity and cross-dressing. In Becoming George, poet and Romanticist Fiona Sampson identifies Sand's personal relationships with fellow artists and thinkers--from Gustave Flaubert to Fryderyk Chopin--as part of the creative and cultural dialogue through which her life and work unfolded. Following Sand's transformation from rural ing nue to metropolitan "Ma tre," Sampson captures the sweep of the writer's life and the enduring influence of her work.

My friends will respect me, I hope, just as much under my jacket as under my dress. Be reassured, I do not aspire to the dignity of man. It seems to me too laughable to be much preferable to the servility of woman. But I claim to possess, today and forever, the superb and complete independence which you alone believe you have the right to enjoy. So take me for a man or a woman as you wish.

This volume provides an account of collaborative poetry translation in practice. The book focuses on the 'poettrio' method as a case study. This process brings together the source-language poet, the target-language poet, and a language advisor serving as a bilingual mediator between the two. Drawing on data from over 100 hours of recorded footage and interviews, Collaborative Poetry Translation offers both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the method in practice, exploring such issues as poem selection, translation strategies, interaction between participants, and the balancing act between the different cultures at play. A final chapter highlights both the practical and research implications for practices of collaborative translation. This innovative work is situated in an interdisciplinary framework of collaborative translation, poetry translation, poetry and creative writing, and it addresses concerns ranging from the ethnography of collaboration to contemporary publishing practice. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and specialists in translation studies, comparative literature, literary studies, and creative writing, as well as creative practitioners.

Limestone Country is a perceptive, lyrical evocation and investigation into four landscapes in Europe and beyond. Seemingly disparate these places are bound together by their limestone geology, by personal experience and Fiona Sampson's unique imagination. Limestone Country delves deep into the heart of these landscapes: the people, wildlife and culture, told through vivid snapshots of daily life, farming routines and encounters with the wild. It is a meditation on the meaning of place, how we shape it and how it shapes us.

This volume provides an account of collaborative poetry translation in practice. The book focuses on the 'poettrio' method as a case study. This process brings together the source-language poet, the target-language poet, and a language advisor serving as a bilingual mediator between the two. Drawing on data from over 100 hours of recorded footage and interviews, Collaborative Poetry Translation offers both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the method in practice, exploring such issues as poem selection, translation strategies, interaction between participants, and the balancing act between the different cultures at play. A final chapter highlights both the practical and research implications for practices of collaborative translation. This innovative work is situated in an interdisciplinary framework of collaborative translation, poetry translation, poetry and creative writing, and it addresses concerns ranging from the ethnography of collaboration to contemporary publishing practice. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and specialists in translation studies, comparative literature, literary studies, and creative writing, as well as creative practitioners.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention. Born in 1806, Barrett Browning lived in an age when women could not attend a university, own property after marriage, or vote. And yet she seized control of her private income, defied chronic illness and disability, became an advocate for the revolutionary Italy to which she eloped, and changed the course of cultural history. Her late-in-life verse novel masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, reveals both the brilliance and originality of her mind, as well as the challenges of being a woman writer in the Victorian era. A feminist icon, high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery, and international literary superstar, Barrett Browning inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Two-Way Mirror is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more than three decades. With unique access to the poet's abundant correspondence, "astute, thoughtful, and wide-ranging guide" (Times UK]) Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.

We think we know the Romantic countryside; it has become the stuff of cliche. Here, renowned biographer and poet Fiona Sampson explores how Romanticism shaped the British countryside and our attitudes to it,via series of ten walks through the British landscape, punctuated by the author's vivid and personal reflections.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Plutarch Award A Washington Post 2021 Non-Fiction Book of the Year New York Times Review of Books Editors' Choice Non-Fiction Title Longlisted for the 2022 PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A Sunday Times Best Paperback of 2022 'Brilliant, heart-stopping ... reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all at the same time ... magical and compelling' Washington Post 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains an electrifying study in self-invention. Elizabeth was born in 1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote, and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain's greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This vividly written biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art - and the art of biography itself.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention. Born in 1806, Barrett Browning lived in an age when women could not attend a university, own property after marriage, or vote. And yet she seized control of her private income, defied chronic illness and disability, became an advocate for the revolutionary Italy to which she eloped, and changed the course of cultural history. Her late-in-life verse novel masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, reveals both the brilliance and originality of her mind, as well as the challenges of being a woman writer in the Victorian era. A feminist icon, high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery, and international literary superstar, Barrett Browning inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Two-Way Mirror is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more than three decades. With unique access to the poet's abundant correspondence, "astute, thoughtful, and wide-ranging guide" (Times UK]) Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.

WINNER OF THE WALES POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021Winner of the Naim Frashëri Laureateship of Albania and Macedonia Winner of the European Lyric Atlas Prize 'Fiona Sampson's voice is something new and it's a delight to hear it . . . A joy to read' W. S. MerwinQuestions of humanity, of point of view, are at the heart of Fiona Sampson's new collection, Come Down. Throughout, Sampson's poems shimmer between the human perspective and what is beyond - some larger, longer-term consciousness. Language runs and dances over the stuff of the human body and the material of the landscape. And yet, despite these radical perspective shifts, the collection keeps in sight, always, the human experience: the act of creation; the way in which childhood memory and family lore impinge on the present. Come Down ends with a long, eponymous poem, which moves fluidly and brilliantly through different forms of memory.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2018 'If we get another literary biography in 2018 as astute and feelingful as this one, we shall be lucky.' - John Carey, Sunday Times Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Aged sixteen, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, embarking on a relationship that was lived on the move across Britain and Europe, as she coped with debt, infidelity and the deaths of three children, before early widowhood changed her life forever. Most astonishingly, it was while she was still a teenager that Mary composed her canonical novel Frankenstein, creating two of our most enduring archetypes today. The life story is well-known. But who was the woman who lived it? She's left plenty of evidence, and in this fascinating dialogue with the past, Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the story. She uncovers a complex, generous character - friend, intellectual, lover and mother - trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly. Published for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, this is a major new work of biography by a prize-winning writer and poet.

Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein is the foundation of modern SF, fantasy and horror fiction, was born to the writer William Godwin and social campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft. This new, special collection brings together extracts of her novels and short stories, with an emphasis on the supernatural.

How is the new generation of British Muslims navigating relations across three distinct religious and social worlds? This book looks at how they are balancing expectations from traditional Islam imported from their ancestral homeland, expressions of Islam drawn from across the global Muslim community the Ummah and from Britain itself.

Nummer 18 i skriftserien Svavel bär titeln Världens kortaste essäsamling och innehåller sju tidigare opublicerade mikroessäer av sex svenska författare och en brittisk. Konstvetaren Linda Fagerström, kritikern Björn Kohlström, översättaren Inger Johansson, litteraturvetaren Niklas Schiöler, filosofen Fredrika Spindler, översättaren och kulturskribenten John Swedenmark samt poeten Fiona Sampson skriver om läsande, förräderi, kalksten, nostalgi, fred, Artemisia Gentileschi och den där språkliga kryptan som vi inte vet någonting om. Svavel är en handgjord, småskalig och alltid sextonsidig skriftserie innehållande koncentrerad och högklassig litteratur. Böckerna i serien är häftade och i A6-format. Utgivna titlar i Svavel: 1. PETER LUCAS ERIXON Fotismer (2012) 2. MORTEN SONDERGAARD Akut sol (2013) 3. KENNETH KOCH Om estetik (2013) 4. JONAS ELLERSTRÖM Antecknat i Albion (2013) 5. DAN GUSTAVSSON Naturlyrik (2013) 6. CHRISTER BOBERG Haiku (2013) 7. LOUISE JUHL DALSGAARD Att spela squash i ett rum utan väggar (2015) 8. JONAS RASMUSSEN Det hemska vi har gjort (2015) 9. MARIA KÜCHEN Varg (2015) 10. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Genom eldslågorna (2015) 11. PETRA MÖLSTAD Omloppstid (2015) 12. SIDDHARTHA SEBASTIAN LARSSON Jag har 33 aforismer och du är en av dem (2016) 13. VÄRLDENS KORTASTE ANTOLOGI (2016) 14. JONAS ELLERSTRÖM Antipoderna (2016) 15. RAINER MARIA RILKE Urljud (2016) 16. JONAS RASMUSSEN Därur orden (2016) 17. LEIF HOLMSTRAND Avstå från tragedierna (2017) 18. VÄRLDENS KORTASTE ESSÄSAMLING (2017) 19. EVA RIBICH Kvar (2018) 20. CIA RINNE Vad angår meningar är jag förtvivlad (2020) 21. RUNE CHRISTIANSEN Transamorem Transmortem (2021) 22. FREDRIK AHLFORS Väderobservationer (2021) 23. CHARLOTTA LJUNG A B C D E (2021) 24. LUISA FAMOS På väg (2022) 25. LINA HAGELBÄCK Låt oss aldrig tala ut (2022) 26. WILLIAMS CARLOS WILLIAMS Som denna blomma framhärdar jag (2023) 27. KENNET KLEMETS eller som när jag blundar (2023)

Leading poet, critic and former musician explores the 'deep forms' common to both poetry and musicToday, poetry and art music occupy similar cultural positions: each has a tendency to be regarded as problematic, 'difficult' and therefore 'elitist'. Despite this, the audiences and numbers of participants for each are substantial: yet they tend not to overlap. This is odd, because the forms share early history in song and saga, and have some striking similarities, often summed up in the word 'lyric'. These similarities include much that is most significant to the experience of each, and so of most interest to practitioners and audiences. They encompass, at the very least: the way each art-form is aural, and takes place in time; a shared reliance on temporal, rather than spatial, forms; an engagement with sensory experience and pleasure; availability for both shared public performance and private reading, sight-reading and hearing in memory; and scope for non-denotative meaning. In other words, looking at these elements in music is a way to look at them in poetry, and vice versa. This is a study of these two formal craft traditions that is concerned with the similarities in their roles, structures, projects and capacities. Key FeaturesSets out a new way to think about both music and poetry Doesn't make its arguments from within or for one particular school of music or poetry but has wide applicability Uses each 'cousin' art-form to cast light on the other as a whole: it is not just for poet-musicians, or musicians writing for voiceArare 'joint' perspective: written by an award-winning poet who was formerly a professional musician

Fiona Sampson’s latest collection transforms the sensory world into an astonishingly new and vivid poetry. Here, dream and myth, creatures real and imagined, and the sights and sounds of ‘distance and of home’ all coalesce in a sustained meditation on time and belonging. Combining formal sophistication with metaphysical exploration, this is an incandescent work of renewal, beauty and risk.

Deep in limestone country, at the corner of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, lies the village of Coleshill. This haunting new collection from Fiona Sampson is a portrait of place, both real and imaginary; a dreamscape with its roots deep in the local soil. The poems hum with an evocative music of their own: there are hymns of the orchards, verses for walkers, songs for bees. These are slices of life and states of mind; poems of grief, fears and maledictions, but also of renewal, resurrections and the promise of spring. Coleshill emerges as a “parish of sun / and shade”; its darkness and light perfectly balanced. From the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prize shortlisted poet comes a deep, interrogative collection of astonishing clarity and power.

This is a book of enthusiasms: an intelligent and witty map of contemporary British poetry and a radical, accessible guide to living British poets, grouped for the first time according to the kind of poetry they write.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was born in Sussex and died in Italy when his sailing boat overturned while returning from a visit to Byron. A radical thinker and social campaigner, Shelley wrote some of the finest lyric verse in the English language which confirms his standing as a major figure in Romantic literature. In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature.