The Oxford Book of the Sea (Oxford Books of Prose)
Jonathan Raban's anthologyThe Oxford Book of the  Seais just that: a collection of writings about the sea--not  about voyages or naval battles, or fishing or swimming, but rather  passages that define the water itself. Open the book to any page  and you'll find descriptions of the sea in all its infinite  variability. Benjamin Franklin writes: "The water is now  visibly changed.... Abundance of dolphins are about us...;"  H.M. Tomlinson describes a storm thus: "In the early  afternoon the waves had assumed serious proportions. They soared  by us in broad, somber ranges, with hissing white ridges, an  inhospitable and subduing sight." Even Jane Austen has  something to say about the sea: "The terrific grandeur of the  ocean in a storm, its glassy surface in a calm, its gulls and its  samphire, and the deep fathoms of its abysses, its quick  vicissitudes, its direful deceptions..."Virginia  Woolf,James Joyce,Ezra Pound,  andJohn  Miltonare just a few of the contributors to this magnificent  paean to the sea.This is a book meant to be sampled and savored in small bites.  Read a poem here, a letter there, an excerpt fromDavid CopperfieldorRabbit at  Rest, or a few lines from a diary entry. The collection spans  nearly 1,000 years of the English-speaking world's experience of  the sea; in all that time it has lost none of its power to  enchant, inspire, and terrify.The Oxford Book of the Seais a terrific read for seafarers and landlubbers alike.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.