The Hand of the poet

Based on an enormously successful exhibition at The New York Public Library, The Hand of the Poet draws the reader into the real world of the poet - ink spots, tobacco stains, and all - by presenting a wide range of working drafts, letters, diary entries, photographs, and memorabilia. One hundred writers from the seventeenth century to the present day are represented.

Biographies and portraits of each poet - alongside manuscripts of such legendary works as Yeats's "The Wild Swans at Coole" and W. H. Auden's "Stop All the Clocks" - make up a mosaic that offers powerful and often surprising revelations of the person behind the poem. Illustrated with over three hundred black-and-white photographs, The Hand of the Poet is for those new to poetry as well as those for whom poetry has been a life-long passion.