The Oxford Book of The Sea

[dnice]

I found this in my local library the other day... Its a wonderful compilation of poems, prose, and short stories of the sea. With excerpts and quotes from some of the worlds greatest literary minds and masterpieces...and plenty of stuff I haven't heard of too :)

"A rich anthology that draws together writings from as far back as the 1500s and more modern accounts of the Sea from Joseph Conrad, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Hopkinson, Herman Melville: The Chase, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Earnest Hemingway among others."

The authors introduction is by itself a complete essay on the literature of the sea, and worth getting the book just for this.

It can work as a reference or 'inspirational' type if book, randomly selecting passages...
But it also has a nice flow to it and works (as it was intended) as a good cover-to-cover read.

Well worth the price of visiting the library...

And as a special added bonus; after reading this you will be able to wow all the seafaring intellectual crowds around the oyster bar, with your new found nautical wisdom and poetic points of view.  :P

The Oxford Book of The Sea
Jonathan Raban