Publisher's Synopsis
Originating in 12th-century Italy, the sonnet had its first flowering in the work of Dante and Petrarch, and was later embraced all over Europe as poets discovered that its brevity and musicality gave impact to the expression of emotion.;This volume is one of a series of Penhaligon scented treasuries of verse. It draws together pieces by sonnet-writers in the English language. In the first section come works by Spencer, Shakespeare, Donne and less familiar Elizabethans such as Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. The second section draws on the Romantic sonnets of Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth, and the final section includes pieces by the Victorian poets Tennyson, Longfellow, Browning and the Rosettis.;The poetry is illustrated with paintings from each period: decorative Elizabethan minatiatures in Part One, Pre-Raphaelite studies in the second part, and portraits by Tissot and Alma-Tadema accompany the Victorian sonnets. The endpapers are scented with Penhaligon's Esprit de Lavande.
