The Sonnets | Random House Publishing Group

About the Book

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition

Gold Medal Winner of the 3x3 Illustration Annual No. 14

A Penguin Classic

This edition of The Sonnets is edited with an introduction by John Hollander and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series.

The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come.

Read more

Close

Praise for The Sonnets

“Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.”
—Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course—it's invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”
—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

Read more

Close

Excerpt

The Sonnets

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights; Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not still enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

The Pelican Shakespeare Series

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Henry VI, Part 1

Henry VIII

Coriolanus

The Comedy of Errors

Love's Labor's Lost

The Sonnets

Troilus and Cressida

Henry IV, Part 2

Antony and Cleopatra

View more

About the Author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was a poet, playwright, and actor who is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. Often referred to as the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare's vast body of work includes comedic, tragic, and historical plays; poems; and 154 sonnets. His dramatic works have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. More by William Shakespeare

Decorative Carat

About the Author

John Hollander

JOHN HOLLANDER is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry. His first, A Crackling of Thorns, was chosen by W. H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He wrote eight books of criticism, including the award-winning Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse and The Work of Poetry, and edited or coedited twenty-two collections, among them The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, and (with Anthony Hecht, with whom he shared the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1983) Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls.

Mr. Hollander attended Columbia and Indiana Universities and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. He taught at Connecticut College and Yale, and was a professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. In 1990 he received a MacArthur Fellowship. He died in August 2013. More by John Hollander

Decorative Carat

About the Author

Stephen Orgel

Stephen Orgel is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University and general editor of the Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. He has edited Ben Johnson's masques, Christopher Marlowe's poems and translations, and many other classics. His books include The Authentic Shakespeare (2002), Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (1996), and The Illusion of Power (1975). More by Stephen Orgel

Decorative Carat

About the Author

Stephen Orgel

Stephen Orgel is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of the Humanities at Stanford University and general editor of the Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. He has edited Ben Johnson's masques, Christopher Marlowe's poems and translations, and many other classics. His books include The Authentic Shakespeare (2002), Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (1996), and The Illusion of Power (1975). More by Stephen Orgel

Decorative Carat

About the Author

A. R. Braunmuller

A. R. Braunmuller is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on English and European drama from 1500 to the present. He has written critical volumes on George Peele and George Chapman and has edited plays in both the Oxford (King John) and Cambridge (Macbeth) series of Shakespeare editions. He is also the general editor of The New Cambridge Shakespeare. More by A. R. Braunmuller

Decorative Carat

Stay in the know with our

email lists