The Norton Book of Friendship

by Ronald A. Sharp (Editor), Eudora Welty (Editor)

Famous literary friendships such as those between H.L. Mencken and James Joyce, Gustave Flaubert and Ivan Turgenev, and Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore are examined in this magnificent collection of stories, legends, poems, essays, letters, and memoirs that illuminate the breadth and depth of friendship in all its human complexity.

Contents:
Invitations. Invitation to Hsiao Chü-shih / Po Chü-I --
Inviting a friend to supper / Ben Jonson --
Epistle 1.5 / Horace --
from The life of Samuel Johnson / James Boswell --
from My mother's house / Colette --
The walrus and the carpenter / Lewis Carroll --
To Thomas Manning / Charles Lamb --
Here's a bottle and an honest friend / Robert Burns --
My boat / Raymond Carver --
To the bachelor of arts P'ei Ti / Wang Wei --
Horses in flowers / Sappho --
The pasture / Robert Frost --
The evils of Spain / V.S. Pritchett. Classic essays. from Nicomachean ethics / Aristotle --
from On friendship / Cicero --
from Of friendship / Michel de Montaigne --
from Of friendship / Francis Bacon --
from The rambler, no. 64 ; from The rambler, no. 40 ; from The idler, no. 23 / Samuel Johnson --
from The life of Samuel Johnson / James Boswell. Letters : group 1. To Joseph Haydn ; To Baron Gottfried von Jacquin / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart --
To George Strahan ; To James Boswell ; To Hester Thrale / Samuel Johnson --
To the Rev. James Stopford / Jonathan Swift --
To Jonathan Swift / Alexander Pope --
To Madame d'Épinay / Jean-Jacques Rousseau --
To Captain Richard Brown / Robert Burns --
To Jane Williams / Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley --
To J.H. Reynolds ; To Benjamin Bailey ; To J.H. Reynolds ; To Benjamin Bailey ; To James Rice ; To Benjamin Bailey ; To Charles Brown ; To C.W. Dilke ; To the George Keatses ; To John Taylor ; To Charles Brown / John Keats. Poetry. from The Iliad / Homer --
Epistle 1.3 / Horace --
Epigram 5.42 ; Epigram 1.32 / Martial --
Hearing that his friend was coming back from the war / Wang Chien --
Old age ; The letter ; To Liu Yu-Hsi ; Dreaming that I went with Lu and Yu to visit Yüan Chēn / Po Chü-I --
from The divine comedy / Dante Alighieri --
Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti / Dante Alighieri --
To Giovanni da Pistoja on the painting of the Sistine Chapel ; To Tommaso Cavalieri / Michelangelo Buonarroti --
from The faerie queene / Edmund Spenser --
from To the immortal memory of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison / Ben Jonson --
To the memory of my beloved, the author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he had left us / Ben Jonson --
To Mr T.W. / John Donne --
To Mrs. Mary Awbrey ; from Friendship / Katherine Philips --
Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia ; To a friend / Anne Finch --
from Verses on the death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D. / Jonathan Swift --
from Retirement / William Cowper --
A poison tree ; To Hayley ; To forgive enemies Hayley does pretend / William Blake --
To J.R. / John Keats --
May and death / Robert Browning --
We two, how long we were fool'd ; As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods ; I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing / Walt Whitman --
I'm nobody! who are you? ; I showed her hights she never saw ; We talked as girls do ; Elysium is as far / Emily Dickinson --
A snow-storm / Giosuè Carducci --
The rakes of Mallow / Anonymous --
A confession to a friend in trouble ; The man he killed / Thomas Hardy --
A Shropshire lad, LIV / A.E. Housman --
The municipal gallery re-visited ; Friends ; The lover pleads with his friend for old friends ; A deep-sworn vow ; To a friend whose work has come to nothing / William Butler Yeats --
Mr. Flood's party / Edwin Arlington Robinson --
The listeners / Walter De La Mare --
Sonnets to Orpheus, 1.24, 2.8 / Rainer Maria Rilke --
Boris Pasternak ; There are four of us ; If all who have begged help / Anna Akhmatova --
In memoriam / Giuseppe Ungaretti --
To my friend / Wilfred Owen --
The friends / Bertolt Brecht --
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejias / Federico García Lorca --
To Francisco López Merino ; To a minor poet of the Greek anthology / Jorge Luis Borges --
Poem / Langston Hughes --
from Hearts of gold / Ogden Nash --
For friends only ; The common life / W.H. Auden --
Elegy for Jane / Theodore Roethke --
Do the others speak of me mockingly, maliciously? / Delmore Schwartz --
What is the opposite of two? / Richard Wilbur --
With mercy for the greedy / Anne Sexton --
Vita amicae / Ursula K. Le Guin --
Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff / Adrienne Richt --
Forest of Europe / Derek Walcott --
The view from Mount Saint Helens / Michael S. Harper --
Friends through at New Year's / August Kleinzahler. Affinities : group I. This lime-tree bower my prison / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
from The Grasmere journals / Dorothy Wordsworth --
from Christabel / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
To William Wordsworth / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
Popular fallacies, XVI : that a sulky temper is a misfortune ; The old familiar faces / Charle...

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Friendship, Research

624 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Andrew]

As mentioned in We Need to Talk.

[Meredith Links · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my Love in the Arts humanities class. The stories overall we okay, but a lot of the text was outdated. The collection would have been better if there were more current examples of friendships.

[Peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

In teresting collection of essays, poems, stories and excerpts on the subject of friendship. Book is editied by Eudora Welty and Ronald Sharp.