John Skelton, Priest As Poet: Seasons of Discovery

John Scattergood's 'The Complete English Poems of John Skelton', originally published in 1983 and long out of print, was the leading academic edition with comprehensive notes. Students are currently limited to searching for Skelton's poems in anthologies. This new edition contains the poems, accompanied by around 150 pages of revised notes. There is an entirely new introduction, covering all developments in Skelton scholarship since the early 1980's, and an updated reading list. Scattergood also reproduces much of the Latin paratexts, considered by readers to be so essential to Skelton - and therefore to scholars of his work. Reviews of previous edition: ''Skelton's greatest poems are learned, difficult, allusive, multilingual, intensely self-conscious and self-reflexive. With their verbal play and many-layered meaning they demand careful and repeated reading; and the most important reason why Skelton's reputation [...] does not correspond to the reality of his work is that there has been no complete edition of the authentic text of his poems since that of Alexander Dyce in 1843. [...] Scattergood's is a splendid achievement: it must be the product of many years of learned and intelligent labour, and it is likely to be the standard edition of Skelton for many years to come.' The Cambridge Review '[Skelton] sits in an awkward historical corner beween the regular "middle ages" and the Shakespeare epoch; and is not nearly well-enough known today. Splendid then, to have [...] this new, complete edition of his works with both the original spellings and explanatory notes, indeed the only such edition since 1843.' The Morning Star

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Huntington Library N046064 London: printed for Isaac Dalton, and sold by W. Boreham, 1718. [8],31, [1]p.; 8°

This is the first edition of Skelton's elaborate dream-allegory to be based on a thorough examination of extant texts. It represents a major revision of our knowledge of Skelton's career and of the form and meaning of the poem. Extensive introduction, notes, and glossary.

John Skelton (c.1460-1529) wrote poetry and some prose, in Latin and English, for almost 40 years, circulating his work through manuscript copies and the new medium of print. This book traces both the course of his public career and his developing personal concerns as he restlessly sought to express ideas which were politically relevant and effective in ways which were also aesthetically satisfying.

This book presents a collection of works of John Skelton, the first great modern English poet, who wrote in a vigorous vernacular, taking literary English out of the medieval world and enriching it with new forms and tones. It provides notes and glossary illuminating Skelton's works for the reader.