Irodalom

Hamlet's combination of violence and introspection is unusual among Shakespeare's tragedies. It is also full of curious riddles and fascinating paradoxes, making it one of his most widely discussed plays.Professor Hibbard's illuminating and original introduction explains the process by which variant texts were fused in the eighteenth century to create the most commonly used text of today. Drawing on both critical and theatrical history, he shows how thisgusion makes Hamlet seem a much more 'problematic' play than it was when it originally appeared in the First Folio of 1623.The Oxford Shakespeare edition presents a radically new text, based on that First Folio, which printed Shakespeare's own revision of an earlier version. The result is a 'theatrical' and highly practical edition for students and actors alike.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Readership: Students and teachers of Shakespeare from A-level up. Students of English Literature, drama, tragedy, seventeenth century literature. Actors and playgoers.

Sparkling with the witty dialogue between Beatrice and Benedicts, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable and theatrically successful comedies.This edition offers a newly edited text and an exceptionally helpful and critically aware introduction. Paying particular attention to analysis of the play's minor characters, Sheldon P Zitner discusses Shakespeare's transformation of his sourcematerial. He rethinks the attitudes to gender relations that underlie the comedy and determine its view of marriage.Allowing for the play's openness to reinterpretation by successive generations of readers and peformers, Zitner provides a socially analytic stage history, advancing new views for the actor as much as for the critic.

- A new translation of Books 6 to 10 of Livy's monumental history of Rome, in which Rome recovers from its Gallic disaster to impose mastery over almost the entire Italian peninsula.- The most up-to-date edition drawing on the latest scholarship to illuminate this unique document in Roman literature and history.- John Yardley's translation gives a vivid sense of the energy, variety, and literary skill of Livy's great work.- Dexter Hoyos's introduction sets Livy in the context of Roman historiography and discusses the sources that he used and their strengths and limitations. It deftly sets out the structure of the work and explains why the fourth century BC was so criticalan era for the rise of Rome.- Comprehensive notes clarify problems of historical content, topography, and chronology.- Detailed glossary explains Roman technical terms.- Appendix analyses Livy's invaluable, but in places flawed, description of how the Roman legion of the time was organized.- Two maps clarify the regions and peoples of Italy mentioned in the text.'People have it in their minds that he would have been a match for Alexander, had Alexander turned his arms on Europe.'So Livy characterizes Papirius Cursor, one of Rome's famous generals in the fourth century BC. In Books 6 to 10 of his monumental history of Rome, Livy deals with the period in which Rome recovered from its Gallic disaster to impose mastery over almostthe entire Italian peninsula in a series of ever greater wars. Along with Papirius, Livy paints vivid portraits of other notable figures, such as Camillus, who rescued the city from its Gallic captors in 390, young Manlius Torquatus, victor in aDavid-versus-Goliath duel with a Gallic chieftain, and Appius Claudius who built Rome's first major highway, the Appian Way. Livy's blend of factual narrative and imaginative recreation brings to life a critical era for the rise of Rome, and Books 6 to10 of his work are the one complete account we have, as the city passes from myth and legend into the increasing light of reliable history.John Yardley's fluent translation is accompanied by an introduction and notes that set Livy in the context of Roman historiography.The complete Livy in English, available in five volumes from Oxford World's Classics.

On a dark, silvery moonlit night, Sophie is snatched from her bed by a giant. Luckily it is the Big Friendly Giant, the BFG, who only eats snozzcumbers and glugs frobscottle. But there are other giants in Giant Country: fifty foot brutes who gallop farand wide every night to find human beans to eat. Sophie decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

Anne wishes her bright red hair was a beautiful auburn (not the green she accidentally dyed it).She dreams of pretty dresses and eating fancy cakes (made with all the right ingredients instead of the medicine she accidentally used).And she's determined to beat Gilbert Blythe to be top of the class (and doesn't care one bit how handsome he is).But most of all, she wants to stay at Green Gables forever, with her very best friend, Diana.With friendship, family, catastrophes, and romance

The Professor (1845-6), written before Jane Eyre, challenged contemporary expectations of the novel by its brevity, realism, and insistence on a working career both before and after marriage for its hero and heroine. Strikingly up to date for its period,the action begins against a background of the fight for better factory conditions in the 1830s, and finishes in the early 1840s with the spread of liberal ideas which led to the continental revolutions of 1848.This edition is based directly on the author's fair copy manuscript, and also includes `Emma', Charlotte Bront‰'s last, unfinished attempt to write a novel after Villette.

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers*a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608*on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much else*detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances and changing critical attitudes to the play*illustrated with production photographs and related art*includes 'The Ballad of King Lear' and related offshoots*full index to introduction and commentary*durable sewn binding for lasting use'not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.' Times Literary SupplementABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Readership: Students of English Literature, Shakespeare studies, scholars, teachers, theatregoers

'I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...'Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, inwhich documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings forunbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.

*A new edition of Kingsley's extraordinary children's fantasy that reprints the original first-edition text and illustrations and explores the book's many different facets.*Conventionally regarded as a children's book in its many abridged and expurgated versions, this complete edition reveals the story's other genres, as social polemic, topical satire, moral fable, evolutionary tract, naturalist's handbook, and fairy tale.*Introduction by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores the genesis and context of Kingsley's tale, its linguistic oddities and imaginative exuberance, delight in nature and scientific discovery mixed with romance and mythic symbolism.*First-edition text includes 2 full-page illustrations and 8 engraved chapter initials.*Explanatory notes provide a wealth of background information concerning contemporary figures, literature, and events alluded to in the text.*Includes an appendix of variants between serial and volume publication and part of Kingsley's essay 'The Wonders of the Shore' in which he first wrote about the myriad creatures living underwater.'this is all a fairy tale...and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true'The Water-Babies (1863) is one of the strangest and most powerful children's stories ever written.In describing the underwater adventures of Tom, a chimney-sweeper's boy who is transformed into a water-baby after he drowns, Charles Kingsley combined comic fantasy and moral fable to extraordinary effect. Tom's encounters with friendly fish, curiouslobsters, and characters such as Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby are both an exciting fairy tale and a crash course in evolutionary theory. They also reflect the quirky imagination of one of the great Victorian eccentrics. Tom's adventures are constantlyinterrupted by Kingsley's sideswipes at contemporary issues such as child labour and the British education system, and they offer a rich satiric take on the great scientific debates of the day.This edition reprints the original complete version of the story, and includes a lively introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and an appendix that reprints Kingsley's first attempt to describe the mysterious creatures that live under the sea.

Translated with introduction and notes by Robin Hard.* The only accurate, affordable edition of an ancient guide to Greek mythology.The only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity, the Library of Apollodorus is a unique guide to Greek mythology, from the origins of the universe to the Trojan War.Apollodorus' Library has been used as a source book by classicists from the time of its compilation in the 1st-2nd century BC to the present, influencing writers from antiquity to Robert Graves. It provides a complete history of Greek myth, telling thestory of each of the great families of heroic mythology, and the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason and Perseus to Heracles and Helen of Troy. As a primary source for Greek myth, as a reference work, and as anindication of how the Greeks themselves viewed their mythical traditions, the Library is indispensable to anyone who has an interest in classical mythology.Robin Hard's accessible and fluent translation is supplemented by comprehensive notes, a map and full genealogical tables. The introduction gives a detailed account of the Library's sources and situates it within the fascinating narrative traditions ofGreek mythology.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

- Buddhist religious belief and philosophy derive from the teachings of Gotama the Buddha, and this new translation offers the best selection of his most important sayings across a full range of themes and literary style.- The most critically up-to-date edition.- Scholarly and readable translation that offers a wide selection of complete discourses within a single volume.- The only anthology of material exclusively from the Pali Nikayas, one of the oldest and most important sources for the teachings of the Buddha.'As if someone were to hold up a lamp in the dark so that those with eyes could see - in exactly the same way Gotama has made the truth clear in various ways.'Gotama the Buddha, who lived the life of a wandering ascetic in northern India during the fifth century BCE, is looked to as the founder of one of the world's major religions. One of the main sources for knowledge of his teachings is the four PaliNikayas or 'collections' of his sayings. Written in Pali, an ancient Indian language closely related to Sanskrit, the Nikayas are among the oldest Buddhist texs and consist of more than one and a half million words. This new translation offers aselection of the Buddha's most important sayings reflecting the full variety of material contained in the Nikayas: the central themes of the Buddha's teaching (his biography, philosophical discourse, instruction on morality, meditation, and the spirituallife) and the range of literary style (myth, dialogue, narrative, short sayings, verse).

The Kalevala is the great Finnish epic, which like the Iliad and the Odyssey, grew out of a rich oral tradition with prehistoric roots.During the first millenium of our era, speakers of Uralic languages (those outside the Indo-European group) who had settled in the Baltic region of Karelia, that straddles the border of eastern Finland and north-west Russia, developed an oral poetry thatwas to last into the nineteenth century.This poetry provided the basis of the Kalevala. It was assembled in the 1840s by the Finnish scholar Elias Lönnrot, who took `dictation' from the performance of a folk singer, in much the same way as our great collections from the past, from Homericpoems to medieval songs and epics, have probably been set down.Published in 1849, it played a central role in the march towards Finnish independence and inspired some of Sibelius's greatest works. This new and exciting translation by poet Keith Bosley, prize-winning translator of the anthology Finnish Folk Poetry:Epic, is the first truly to combine liveliness with accuracy in a way which reflects the richness of the original.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Translated by Niall RuddWith introduction and notes by William BarrJuvenal, writing between AD 110 and 130, was one of the greatest satirists of Imperial Rome. His powerful and witty attacks on the vices, abuses, and follies of the big city have been admired and used by many English writers, including Ben Jonson,Dryden, and most notably, Dr Johnson, who described his writing as `a mixture of gaiety and statelines, of pointed sentences and declamatory grandeur'.Juvenal has been seen as a stern moralist and, more recently, as an extravagant wit, and is acclaimed for his vivid description of the scenes which aroused his anger. He coined the famous phrase designating people `eager and anxious for two things

Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. He is also remarkable for the prominence hegave to female characters, whether heroines of virtue or vice. In the ethically shocking Medea, the first known child-killing mother in Greek myth to perform the deed in cold blood manipulates her world in order to wreak vengeance on her treacheroushusband. Hippolytus sees Phaedra's confession of her passion for her stepson herald disaster, while Electra's heroine helps her brother murder their mother in an act that mingles justice and sin. Lastly, lighter in tone, the satyr drama, Helen, is anexploration of the impossibility of certitude as brilliantly paradoxical as the three famous tragedies.This new translation does full justice to Euripides's range of tone and gift for narrative. A lucid introduction provides substantial analysis of each play, complete with vital explanations of the traditions and background to Euripides's world.

Edited by Catalin Partenie This is the only selection of Plato's myths currently available. It brings together ten of the most celebrated Platonic myths from Plato's dialogues to make a perfect introduction to Plato's philosophy for new readers. The general introduction gives a brief account of the philosophical theories to which the myths refer and Plato's use of myth. The myths are self-contained stories and each one is prefaced by a short description of its setting and a summary of itsphilosophical meaning. The translations come from established OWC editions of the dialogues from which the myths are taken, together with useful explanatory notes, with three new translations by Robin Waterfield. Includes diagrammatic maps and an index of names.'Once upon a time there were just the gods

A new edition of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice stories by one of the foremost children's literature experts, Peter Hunt, and featuring Tenniel's much-loved illustrations. Includes the 'Wasp in a Wig' episode, removed from the proofs of Through the Looking-Glass. Takes account of the most recent research and critical opinion. The Introduction places the book in the context of children's literature and general literature, and reviews interpretations of them, and the various views of Dodgson's relationship to children and childhood. Extensive explanatory notes give information on Dodgson's political, social, intellectual, and personal allusions and sources. Includes an extensive bibliography and a chronology of Dodgson's life and times.New to this edition*Engaging and comprehensive introduction by Peter Hunt, a leading authority on children's literature.*Up-to-date bibliography.*Extensive annotation, drawing on the latest scholarship.*Appendix containg 'The Wasp in a Wig', an episode in Through the Looking-Glass that was withdrawn at proof stage.*Newly scanned illustrations and reset text to give improved appearance.'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat. 'We're all mad here.'The 'Alice' books are two of the most translated, most quoted, and best-known books in the world, but what exactly are they? Apparently delightful, innocent fantasies for children, they are also complex textures of mathematical, linguistic, andphilosophical jokes. Alice's encounters with the White Rabbit, the Cheshire-Cat, the King and Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and many other extraordinary characters have made them masterpieces of carefree nonsense, yet theyalso appeal to adults on a quite different level. Layers of satire, allusion, and symbolism about Victorian culture and politics, as well as revelations about the intricate subconscious problems of their author, add to their fascination and make themimpossible to classify.This new edition explores the phenomenal range of reference, and the paradoxical appeal of two of the most inventive books in world literature. It also includes an episode removed by Carroll from the proofs of Through the Looking-Glass, called 'The Waspin a Wig'.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Readership: General readers, readers of fantasy and Victorian fiction, students of children's literature, nineteenth-century literature, childrhood studies, literary history, cultural studies, popular culture, nineteenth-century history, literary theory.

* The only edition available, updated with expanded notes`Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Rreflections brought only regret, and anticipation terror.'Such is the state of mind in which Emily St. Aubuert - the orphaned heroine of Ann Radcliffe's 1794 gothic Classic, The Mysteries of Udolpho - finds herself after Count Montoni, her evil guardian, imprisions her in his gloomy medieval fortress in theAppenines. Terror is the order of the day inside the walls of Udolpho, as Emily struggles against Montoni's rapacious schemes and the threat of her own psychological disintegration.A best-seller in its day and a potent influence on Walpole, Poe, and other writers of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic horror, The Mysteries of Udolpho remains one of the most important works in the history of European fiction. As the same time,with its dream-like plot and hallucinatory rendering of its characters' psychological states, it often seems strangely modern: `permanently avant-garde' in Terry Castle's words, and a profound and fascinating challenge to contemporary readers.

Eliot's first full-length novel, Adam Bede paints a powerful portrait of rural life, seduction, faith, and redemption. This is the first edition based on Eliot's final revision of the novel in 1861, using the definitive Clarendon text. Includes George Eliot's journal entry on the real-life origins of the story and the composition of the novel, and broadsheet accounts of the execution of Mary Voce, whose story provided the germ of the novel. The Introduction discusses the novel's historical context and some of the main issues it explores: the role of work, class, and relations between the sexes, and Eliot's belief that the artist's duty is 'the faithful representing of commonplacethings'. Comprehensive notes identify literary and historical allusions and evidence of Eliot's wide reading. Up-to-date bibliography.New to this edition A completely new and reset text, using the definitive Clarendon edition based on the the corrected eighth edition of 1861. New Introduction, Select Bibliography, and Explanatory Notes by Carol A. Martin. New Chronology.'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.'Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in theirsmall rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of theinteraction of ordinary people brought a new social realism to the novel, in which humour and tragedy co-exist, and fellow-feeling is the mainstay of human relationships. Faith, in the figure of Methodist preacher Dinah Morris, offers redemption to allwho are willing to embrace it.This new edition is based on the definitive Clarendon edition and Eliot's corrected text of 1861.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Readership: Readers of classic fiction, especially the Victorian novel, George Eliot, women writers

Taken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Ibsen, this collection of Ibsen's plays includes A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The first full-scale edition of Cymbeline for 37 yearsThis is the first full-scale edition of Cymbeline for 37 years. During that time, there has been considerable interest in Shakespeare's late work in the theatre, and several notable productions have demonstrated the powerful impact of Cymbeline. Basedfirmly on Roger Warren's extensive experience of the play in rehearsal and performance, this edition shows how Shakespeare draws upon a wide range of sources to create a self-sufficient dramatic universe, combining virtuoso theatrical and poetic means topresent a story of a marriage imperilled by mistrust and painfully rebuilt through the physical and spiritual journeys undertaken by the heroine and hero, set in a context of international conflict. A full and detailed commentary pays close attention tothe play's complex, evocative language.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Readership: Students and scholars of Shakespeare at undergraduate level and above

The only edition to offer Jonson's four greatest comediesThis edition brings together Jonson's four great comedies in one volume. Volpone, which was first performed in 1606, dramatizes the corrupting nature of greed in an exuberant satire set in contemporary Venice. The first production of Epicene marked theend of a year-long closure of the theatres because of an epidemic of Plague in 1609

This is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. It is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for money. The detailed descriptions of bothaffluence and squalor in the Paris of 1819 are an integral part of the drama played out by a wide range of characters, including the sinister but fascinating Vautrin. Unquestionably one of Balzac's finest novels, Pére Goriot still has the power to movethe modern reader.

When Miss Milner announces her passion for her guardian, a Catholic priest, she breaks through the double barrier of religious vocation and society's standards of `proper' womanly behaviour. Her love is legitimized when Dorriforth is released from hisvows, but she finds her own unorthodox nature cannot conform to a marriage where her husband continues to be a stern moral guide. With a surenees of touch that prefigures Jane Austen, Elizabeth Inchbald shows that there is no simple answer to theirpredicament, and that their conflict can only be resolved in the next generation.

'I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his fidelity...incorruptible! It is indeed a name of honour for the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco.' One of the greatest political novels in any language, Nostromo enacts the establishmentof modern capitalism in a remote South American province locked between the Andes and the Pacific. In the harbourtown of Sulaco, a vivid cast of characters is caught up in a civil war to decide whether its fabulously wealthy silver mine, funded byAmerican money but owned by a third-generation English immigrant, can be preserved from the hands of venal politicians. Greed and corruption seep into the lives of everyone, and Nostromo, the principled Capataz, is tested to the limit. Conrad's evocationof the great Latin-American landscapes, the ferocity of its politics, and individuals swept up in imperial ambitions has never been bettered. This edition offers new insights into Conrad's masterpiece. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World'sClassics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expertintroductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'There's no baseness I wouldn't commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake.'The poet Aspern, long since dead, has left behind some private papers. They are jealously guarded by an old lady, once his mistress and muse, a recluse in an old palazzo in Venice, tended by her ingenuous niece. A predatory critic is determined to seizethem. What can he make of the younger woman? What are his motives? What are the papers worth and what is he prepared to pay?In all four stories collected here, including 'The Death of the Lion', 'The Figure in the Carpet', and 'The Birthplace', the figure of the artist is central. Extraordinarily prophetic, James explores the emergent new cult of the writer as celebrity, andasks, who cares about the work for itself? Can the man behind the artist ever truly be known, and does our knowledge explain the act of creativity? This new edition includes extracts from James's Prefaces and Notebooks which shed light on the genesis ofthe stories.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

- A new edition of one of the great American novels, Hawthorne's masterpiece, with a new wide-ranging introduction and up-to-date bibliography.- Cindy Weinstein's Introduction considers the novel's autobiographical, historical, and literary contexts, and the tension between the seventeenth-century and nineteenth-century sensibilities. It also examines how its themes intersect with women writersof the time.- A comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography.- Thorough notes provide essential information on the Puritan and antebellum contexts.- Text from the Centenary Edition of Hawthorne's works, the most authoritative critical edition, and approved by the Center for Editions of the Modern Languague Association of America.New to this edition- Introduction by Cindy Weinstein- Up-to-date bibliography by Cindy Weinstein'Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me.'With these chilling words a husband claims his wife after a two-year absence. But the child she clutches is not his, and Hester must wear a scarlet 'A' upon her breast, the sin of adultery visible to all. Under an assumed name her husband begins hissearch for her lover, determined to expose what Hester is equally determined to protect. Defiant and proud, Hester witnesses the degradation of two very different men, as moral codes and legal imperatives painfully collide.Set in the Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, The Scarlet Letter also sheds light on the nineteenth-century in which it was written, as Hawthorne explores his ambivalent relations with his Puritan forebears. The text of this edition istaken from the Centenary Edition of Hawthorne's works, the most authoritative critical edition.

La Dame aux Camelias still has the power to cast the spell that has fascinated generations of readers. Dumas's marvellously beautiful, intelligent, and vibrant heroine lives on in revivals of the stage version, in film and television adaptations, andinLa Traviata, Verdi's perennially popular opera. For Marguerite has long since attained the status of a myth. Dumas's subtle and moving portrait of a woman in love is a timeless antidote to the cynicism of every age.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth ofother valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Anthony TrollopeEdited by Helen SmallOxford World's Classics The Eustace Diamonds is the third in Trollope's six-volume Palliser series, the least political, and with an extraordinary heroine in the shape of Lizzie Eustace, a lying schemer in the mould of Thackeray's Becky Sharp. In her introduction Helen Small explores the central themes of lying and truth-telling, placing the novel within contemporary political and social debates as well as paying attention to the story, characters, and style of the novel. Invaluable appendix outlines the political context of the Palliser novels and establishes the internal chronology of the series and the relationship between fictional and actual political events, providing a unique understanding of the series as alinked narrative. Biographical Preface provides a compact biography of Anthony Trollope, and a Chronology charts his life against the major historical events of the period. Explanatory Notes identify aspects of the political landscape, the social significance of Trollope's account of the geography of London, and his extensive allusions to Romantic literature, song, and matters of topical interest in the late 1860s and1870s.New to this Edition: Introduction, select bibliography, and explanatory notes by Helen Small. Biographical Preface outlining Trollope's life, and new Chronology. Appendix outlining the political contextof the Palliser novels and establishing the internal chronology of the series and the relationship between fictional and actual political events, providing a unique understanding of the series as a linkednarrative. Improved print appearance with an entirely reset text.