Rosalind Powell

Perception and analogy explores ways of seeing scientifically in the eighteenth century. The book examines how sensory experience is conceptualised during the period, drawing novel connections between treatments of perception as an embodied phenomenon and the creative methods employed by natural philosophers. Covering a wealth of literary, theological, and pedagogical texts that engage with astronomy, optics, ophthalmology, and the body, it argues for the significance of analogies for conceptualising and explaining new scientific ideas. As well as identifying their use in religious and topographical poetry, the book addresses how analogies are visible in material culture through objects such as orreries, camera obscuras, and aeolian harps. It makes the vital claim that scientific concepts become intertwined with Christian discourse through reinterpretations of origins and signs, the scope of the created universe, and the limits of embodied knowledge.

In the first full-length study of Christopher Smart’s translations and the place and function of translation in Smart’s poetry, Rosalind Powell proposes a new approach to understanding the relationship between Smart’s poetics and his practice. Drawing on translation theory from the early modern period to the present day, this book addresses Smart's translations of Horace, Phaedrus and the Psalms alongside the better-known religious works such as Jubilate Agno and A Song to David. Five recurrent threads run throughout Powell’s study: the effect of translation on the identity of a narrative voice in a rewritten text; the techniques that are used to present translated texts to a new literary, cultural and linguistic readership; performance and reading contexts; the translation of great works as an attempt to achieve literary permanence; and, finally, the authorial influence of Smart himself in terms of the overt religiosity and nationalism that he champions in his writing. In exploring Smart’s major translation projects and revisiting his original poems, Powell offers insights into classical reception and translation theory; attitudes towards censorship; expressions of nationalism in the period; developments in liturgy and hymnody; and the composition of children’s books and school texts in the early modern era. Her detailed analysis of Smart’s translating poetics places them within a new, contemporary context and locality to uncover the poet's works as a coherent project of Englishing.

For thousands of years dreams have been interpreted and celebrated as oracles, channels for prophecies and as a way of contacting the spiritual self. Rediscover the art of deciphering dreams with this book.

'Honest, funny and, crucially, helpful to anyone who has ever had difficulty conceiving or considered adoption, this is required reading.' Emma Thompson When journalist Rosalind Powell and her husband wanted to start a family, they had no idea of the journey that lay ahead. Encountering fertility issues and gruelling IVF treatment to no avail, but still determined to be parents, they set off on the adoption route. After many false starts and dashed hopes they eventually, and luckily, found their son. How I Met My Son is more than a memoir, it is an invaluable guide to the reality of adoption in the UK. Both joyful and heartbreaking, the path to becoming a parent is laid bare. The story explores the sadness of infertility, the rigours of IVF, the minefield of social services, the intensity of the assessment process, the difficulties of choosing a child (and being chosen) and the happiness and shock of finally bringing that child home.A candid, compelling and inspirational book about what it means to be a parent of a child that isn't, biologically, your own.'Whether you have no children, have been through IVF, fostered, adopted or borne biological children, this stunning warts-and-all account of the yearning to parent is a must-read. Powell's experiences, told with such particular and often heart-rending hilarity, speak to the universal questions we all ask of our parents, partners, friends and ultimately of ourselves.' Cate Blanchett

In the first full-length study of Christopher Smart’s translations and the place and function of translation in Smart’s poetry, Rosalind Powell proposes a new approach to understanding the relationship between Smart’s poetics and his practice. Drawing on translation theory from the early modern period to the present day, this book addresses Smart's translations of Horace, Phaedrus and the Psalms alongside the better-known religious works such as Jubilate Agno and A Song to David. Five recurrent threads run throughout Powell’s study: the effect of translation on the identity of a narrative voice in a rewritten text; the techniques that are used to present translated texts to a new literary, cultural and linguistic readership; performance and reading contexts; the translation of great works as an attempt to achieve literary permanence; and, finally, the authorial influence of Smart himself in terms of the overt religiosity and nationalism that he champions in his writing. In exploring Smart’s major translation projects and revisiting his original poems, Powell offers insights into classical reception and translation theory; attitudes towards censorship; expressions of nationalism in the period; developments in liturgy and hymnody; and the composition of children’s books and school texts in the early modern era. Her detailed analysis of Smart’s translating poetics places them within a new, contemporary context and locality to uncover the poet's works as a coherent project of Englishing.