Books by Matthew Francis

Matthew Francis's latest collection celebrates the richness of nature and of our responses to it. And, in a moving elegy for a friend killed in a parachute accident, Francis shows us a vertiginous vision of a world where even the dead 'sleep on the wing'.

The Mabinogi is the Welsh national epic, a collection of tales of war and enchantment, adventure and romance. This book retells the first four stories, in which a baby is kidnapped by a monstrous claw, a giant wades across the Irish Sea to do battle, and a wizard makes a woman out of flowers, only to find she is less biddable than he expected.

Following the adventures of its eponymous hero from birth through three decades, this acclaimed stage adaptation presents a plethora of brilliant characters from the original novel: the Peggottys; 'umble Heep; eccentric Aunt Betsey and Steerforth, young David's champion. Two actors play David Copperfield: one the young David, the other David's older self, each interacting throughout.10 women, 13 men

This adaptation of Dickens' famous epic novel of the French revolution tells the story of English lawyer Sydney Carton and French aristocrat Charles Darnay, both caught up in the bloodshed of the French Revolution.

Huckleberry Finn's adventurous journey along the Mississippi is captured in this adaptation of Mark Twain's classic novel. It thrives on the use of minimal set and prop devices to illustrate the many locations.

Catherine Morland lives for much of her time in a fantasy world of romance and mystery based on the Gothic novels of her time, the early 1800s. But a stay in Northanger Abbey leads her into a series of misjugdements and a farewell to her Gothic world, only to be dealt a cruel blow in the real one.

Adapted from the novel by Anthony Hope. This fine imperialist adventure is brought vividly to life in Matthew Francis's stirring adaptation which plunges straight into the heart of the Ruritanian dynastic conflict. Rudolph Rassendyll, young English gallant, is distantly related on the wrong side of the blanket to the Ruritanian royal family. When the Crown Prince is drugged by Black Michael, Rudolph steps in and takes the Prince's place at his coronation.|2 women, 9 men, 4 women or men

William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) is increasingly widely acknowledged as one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century. This study relates his poetic exploration of language to his nostalgic memories of his Clydeside childhood, and argues that his work tries to turn language itself into a community.

Like his acclaimed Mandeville (2008), Matthew Francis's fourth Faber collection explores a world of marvels, real and fantastic. A man takes off for the moon in an engine drawn by geese, a poltergeist moves into a remote Welsh village, and a party of seventeenth-century Englishmen encounter the wonders of Russia - sledges, vodka, skating and Easter eggs. The scientist Robert Boyle basks in the newly discovered radiance of phosphorus (the noctiluca of the title) and the theme of light in darkness is taken up by the more personal poems in the book: phoneboxes, streetlamps, moonlight. The joys of the world and of the imagination find their equivalent in Francis's joy in the possibilities of language: 'A basket of snow for the Empress / with a poem ofmodest triumph: / I made this out of what does not last.'