Death's Jest-Book and Other Writings (Oxford World's Classics)

'If there were dreams to sell What would you buy?'Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) was among the most talented writers of the Romantic age.A prodigiously gifted poet and dramatist, he already had two published volumes to his name and seemed set to assume a role at the vanguard of English letters when, in 1825, he left England to pursue anatomical studies at the University of Göttingen.He continued to write while overseas, treating his great themes of love, death, and nature, and attempting to unite the spirits of scientific and artistic enquiry, but published almost nothing.When he died by suicide in Basel in 1849, Beddoes left behind him a trail of thwarted hopes and ruined ambitions, but also a body of work that speaks eloquently and without self-pity about its own failures and disappointments.This volume presents a wide selection of Beddoes's writings across a variety of genres.At its heart lies his sprawling masterpiece Death's Jest-Book, an extravagant attempt to resurrect the tr