Alma Classics – The Bell Bookshop

The Complete Poems

Emma — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Famous for seminal poems such as ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ and ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’, Dylan Thomas was the author of a substantial body of poetry, which he began writing as a teenager and continued to expand until the end of his short and troubled life.

This is the most complete edition ever published of Dylan Thomas’s poetry. The texts are based on the first published editions of the poems or on manuscript notebook versions. All of his Swansea Grammar School poems are here reproduced, many of them reprinted for the first time since their original appearance in the student magazine. The book contains over a thousand notes, with textual variants.

ABOUT ALMA CLASSICS: Alma Classics is committed to making available a wide range of literature from around the globe. Most of the titles are enriched by an extensive critical apparatus, notes and extra reading material, as well as a selection of photographs. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition and edited using a fresh, accessible editorial approach. With an emphasis on production, editorial and typographical values, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading classics.

The complete nonsense books

Emma — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This volume, which collects the four books of “nonsense” published by Lear during his lifetime, contains all of his most celebrated verse and prose productions, from his first collection of limericks, A Book of Nonsense, to his Nonsense Songs and Stories – which includes ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’, long considered one of the nation’s favourite poems, as well as many lesser-known pieces composed in the same waywardly imaginative vein.

Embodying his passion for the absurd, Lear’s limericks, stories, alphabets and botanical sketches, each accompanied by one of the author’s beguiling original illustrations, are fun, lyrical, lively and hilarious, and have enchanted children and adults since their first appearance in print.

The Peter Rabbit stories

Emma — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This collection brings together in a single volume the four books that feature the famous young rabbit with the blue jacket and a penchant for mischief and disobedience: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and The Tale of Mr Tod.From Peter’s early adventures in the kitchen garden of Mr McGregor to his late exploits in the rescue of his cousin Benjamin’s baby bunnies, these stories show why Beatrix Potter remains one of the most beloved children’s authors this country has ever produced.

Gone With the Wind

Emma — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O’Hara soon realizes that young men can’t resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her refusal to embrace her mother’s ladylike ways. Her romantic intrigues lead her to an early marriage, but when the war between the Union and the Southern States breaks out and she is left a young widow, Scarlett’s life is turned upside down, and she finds herself embroiled, together with the world surrounding her, in a long struggle for survival. Both a coming-of-age tale and a historical epic, Gone with the Wind is regarded as one of the great American novels, and is perhaps one of the most popular stories in the Western canon. Famously inspiring the iconic 1939 Oscar-winning film starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as the rakish but cynical Rhett Butler, it is Margaret Mitchell’s only published novel, and a living testament to the irrepressible resilience of the American spirit.

The enchanted April

Emma — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Four women, with very different backgrounds and characters – the artless Lottie Wilkins, the pious Rose Arbuthnot, the cantankerous Mrs Fisher and the haughty Lady Caroline Dester – respond to an advertisement in The Times offering a medieval castle to rent in Italy that April. As their joint holiday begins, tensions flare up between them, but they soon bond over their past misfortunes and rediscover hope and the pleasures of life in their tranquil surroundings.

A huge best-seller when it was published in 1922, The Enchanted April has inspired generations of readers since and established Portofino and the Italian Riviera as a mainstay of the tourist circuit.

The Master and Margarita

Emma — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Russia’s literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman – a professor of black magic – arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil’s mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master – a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum – and his past lover, Margarita. Both a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, The Master and Margarita is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century.