Literary studies: fiction Books
Oxford University Press Fairy Tale
Book SynopsisFrom wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and goblins, to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These fantastic stories have travelled across cultural borders, and been passed on from generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. In this Very Short Introduction, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy tales in all their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. Drawing on a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers'' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen''s The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney''s Snow White, Warner forms a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewReview from previous edition the book is an enchanted material object, and reading a journey toward knowledge and wisdom. * Gramayre *thoroughly enjoyable and scholarly account * Times Literary Supplement *elegantly concise * Literary Review *...this is a book to treasure. It really is the perfect introduction to the subject. * Desperate Reader, Hayley Anderton *wide ranging and handsomely produced * Rowan Williams, New Statesman *wise, witty, elegant, little book * Amanda Craig, Mslexia *This is a book to treasure. * Helen Parry, Shiny New Books *Marina Warner's newest book is as pocket-sized and potent as one might expect a short history of fairy tales to be...she manages to be astute without being intrusive...there is sharpness too. * Shahidha Bari, Times Higher Education *Warner is always intelligent, writes with great elegance and bubbles over with new ideas and impressions. Many will enjoy her style, wide range of literary reference and infectious enthusiasm. * Irish Times *Marina Warner's new book distills her work on the literary, cultural, psychological and social influence of fairy tales, old and new, into an elegant little volume. From fantasy to feminism - it is all here. * Wall Street Journal *For such a small book it carries a heavy load, but Ms Warner's insights are both surprising and rewarding. * The Economist *An expert and intruiging guide to the roots and triffid-like growth of a significant genre * The Tablet *a spellbinding cultural tour de force * The Lady *Marina Warner is our doyenne of fairy stories ... her scholarly knowledge is not just worn lightly but presented with a flourish * Amanda Craig, Observer19/10/2014 *her light touch effortlessly imparts knowledge in your mind. A beautifully produced book, this will be a joy to anyone who loves stories. * Patrick Neale, The Bookseller *Table of ContentsPrologue 1: The worlds of Faery: far away and down below 2: With a touch of her wand: magic & metamorphosis 3: Voices on the page: tales, tellers, & translators 4: Potato soup: true stories/real life 5: Childish things: pictures & conversations 6: On the couch: house-training the Id 7: In the dock: don't bet on the Prince 8: Double vision: the dream of reason 9: On stage and screen: states of illusion Epilogue Further reading Index
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Oxford University Press Mansfield Park
Book SynopsisFanny Price is taken to live at Mansfield Park, the home of her wealthy uncle. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzling and sophisticated Crawfords arrive, and amateur theatricals unleash rivalry and sexual jealousy, Fanny has to fight to retain her independence. This new edition places Mansfield Park in its Regency context and elucidates the theatrical background that pervades the novel.
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Oxford University Press Persuasion
Book Synopsis''She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.''Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned herself to living off her memories. More than seven years earlier she complied with duty: persuaded to view the match as imprudent and improper, she broke off her engagement to a naval captain with neither fortune, ancestry, nor prospects. However, when peacetime arrives and brings the Navy home, and Anne encounters Captain Wentworth once more, she starts to believe in second chances. Persuasion celebrates romantic constancy in an era of turbulent change. Written as the Napoleonic Wars were ending, the novel examines how a woman can at once remain faithful to her past and still move forward into the future. 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''
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Oxford University Press The Picture of Dorian Gray
Book SynopsisDorian Gray gives his soul for eternal youth. While his portrait changes hideously, reflecting his crimes and corruption, he remains outwardly flawless. This new edition uses the 1891 expanded text and shows how Wilde transformed his many sources.Trade ReviewIt seemed to be an impossible task to outdo the former edition of 'Dorian Gray' in the World's Classics series, but Bristow has achieved his goal. The quality of the explanatory notes is, simply, superb, and the introduction is succint but informative,
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Oxford University Press Fathers and Sons
Book SynopsisTurgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862.
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Oxford University Press Anna Karenina
Book SynopsisMany believe Anna Karenina to be the greatest novel ever written. The impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky, is set against the marriage of Levin and Kitty, illuminating the most important questions which beset humanity. This edition uses Louise and Aylmer Maude's classic translation - still unsurpassed - and is printed here with a new introduction and detailed annotation.
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Oxford University Press The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories
Book SynopsisA young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master''s dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead. Like the other tales collected here - `Sir Edmund Orme'', `Owen Wingrave'', and `The Friends of the Friends'' - `The Turn of the Screw'' is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. But are the appearances what they seem? Is what appears to the governess a ghost or a hallucination? Who else sees what she sees? The reader may wonder whether the children are victims of corruption from beyond the grave, or victims of the governess''s `infernal imagination'', which torments but also entrals her? `The Turn of the Screw'' is probably the most famous, certainly the most eerily equivocal, of all ghostly tales. Is it a subtle, self-conscious exploration of thTable of ContentsSir Edmund Orme; Owen Wingrave; The Friends of the Friends; The Turn of the Screw
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Oxford University Press South Sea Tales
Book SynopsisTrade Reviewa real treasure. ... RLS at his most serious and playful. * Daily Telegraph Arts and Books section, 19 July 1997 *Table of ContentsThe Beach of Falesa; The Bottle Imp; The Isle of Voices; The Ebb-Tide; A Trio and Quartette; The Cart-Horses and the Saddle-Horse; Something In It.
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Oxford University Press The Pickwick Papers
Book SynopsisIn 1836 the 23-year-old Dickens was invited by his publishers to write `a monthly something'' illustrated by sporting plates. Thus the Pickwick Club was born: its supposed `papers'' soom outgrew their origins and became a brilliantly comic novel, still among Dicken''s most popular works. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review'The publication of this edition of ___The Pickwick Papers___ adds to the series of cheap but reliable coipes of Dicken's novels which are based on the formidable Clarendon editions ... authoritative introductions.' Margaret Reynolds, King's College, University of London'Extremely useful edition with excellent introduction, notes ete. and very reasonably priced' Norman Vance, Sussex University.
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Oxford University Press David Copperfield
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIntroduction and notes by Andrew Sanders facilitated a proper understanding of period details and plot structure. I will continue to use this edition in future classes on Dickens's novels. * Helge Nowak, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universtitaet *
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Oxford University Press The Karamazov Brothers
Book SynopsisDostoevsky''s last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved.Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky''s exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disatrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the authors most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy, and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it the allegory for the world''s maturity, but with children to the fore. This new translation does full justice to Doestoevsky''s genius, particularly in the use of the spoken word, which ranges over every mode of human expression. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Oxford University Press The Idiot
Book Synopsis
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Oxford University Press A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Book SynopsisOne of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century, and one of the most innovative. Young Irish Catholic, Stephen Dedalus, rejects religion and national ties to develop unfettered as an artist. Stronly autobiographical, the novel is one of the founding texts of Modernism and the precursor of Ulysses.Trade Reviewhandsome new editions . . . . eminently readable with good, clear typefaces and text unencumbered by note numbersTable of ContentsIntroduction ; Bibliography ; Chronology ; Publication history/Note on the text ; Explanatory notes
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Oxford University Press Les Liaisons dangereuses
Book SynopsisThe complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel''s prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able a judge whether the novel is as `diabolical'' and `infamous'' as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward''s introduction explodes myths about Laclos''s own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context. 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 weTrade ReviewThe Oxford World's Classic edition offers students an excellent introduction to this classic text and also important notes and chronologies. * Dr. Paraic Finnerty, University of Portsmouth. *
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Oxford University Press The Professor
Book SynopsisThe 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 Brontë''s last, unfinished attempt to write a novel after Villette. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify t
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Oxford University Press Germinal
Book SynopsisZola''s masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola''s death in 1902 it had come to symbolise the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted ''Germinal! Germinal!''.The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow-miners in a strike protesting against pay-cuts - a strike which becomes a losing battle against starvation, repression, and sabotage. Yet despite all the violence and disillusion which rock the mining community to its foundations, Lantier retains his belief in the ultimate germination of a new society, leading to a better world. Germinal is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, but it is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigour and power in this new translation. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made availableTrade Review'masterpiece' Oxford Times'A good translator uses the language of his day; the original text remains fixed, but translations must move with the times. Collier's, though differing from, and not always improving on, Tancock's, is likely to have the same startling effect on the reader coming fresh to it today as his prdecessor's had forty years ago.' F.W.J. Hemmings, French Studies, Vol. 48, Part 4
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Oxford University Press Tom Jones
Book SynopsisFielding''s comic masterpiece of 1749 was immediately attacked as `A motley history of bastardism, fornication, and adultery''. Indeed, his populous novel overflows with a marvellous assortment of prudes, whores, libertines, bumpkins, misanthropes, hypocrites, scoundrels, virgins, and all too fallible humanitarians. At the centre of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. Expelled from Mr Allworthy''s country estate for his wild temper and sexual conquests, the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones loses his money, joins the army, and pursues his beloved across Britain to London, where he becomes a kept lover and confronts the possibility of incest. Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding''s greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. This carefully modernized edition is based on Fielding''s emended fourth edition text and offers the most thorough notes, maps, and bibliography. The introduction uses the latest scholarship to examine how Tom Jones exemplifies the role of the novel in the emerging eighteenth-century public sphere. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Reviewwith each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money * Oxford Times *well-produced edition. * Daily Telegraph Arts & Books section, 5 July 1997 *
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Oxford University Press North and South
Book SynopsisThrough the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret's ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill owner, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.
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Oxford University Press Twenty Years After
Book SynopsisTwenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure.Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.In his Introduction to this edition David Coward sets both the author and his exciting tale in their historical and cultural contexts. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Review'All good fun.' Sunday Telegraph
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Oxford University Press The Vicar of Wakefield
Book Synopsis''He loved all mankind; for fortune prevented him from knowing there were rascals.''Oliver Goldsmith''s hugely successful novel of 1766 remained for generations one of the most highly regarded and beloved works of eighteenth-century fiction. It depicts the fall and rise of the Primrose family, presided over by the benevolent vicar, the narrator of a fairy-tale plot of impersonation and deception, the abduction of a beautiful heroine and the machinations of an aristocratic villain. By turns comic and sentimental, the novel''s popularity owes much to its recognizable depiction of domestic life and loving family relationships.Regarded by some as a straightforward and well-intentioned novel of sentiment, and by others as a satire on the very literary conventions and morality it seems to embody, The Vicar of Wakefield contains, in the figure of the vicar himself, one of the most harmlessly simply and unsophisticated yet also ironically complex narrators ever to appear in English fiction. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Oxford University Press Lorna Doone
Book Synopsis
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Oxford University Press The Scarlet Letter
Book SynopsisAfter a two-year absence a husband returns to find his wife wearing the scarlet 'A' for Adulteress on her breast. Determined to find her lover, he embarks on a destructive path of revenge. This edition uses the most authoritative text, with a wide-ranging critical introduction.
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Oxford University Press The Story of an African Farm Oxford Worlds
Book SynopsisLyndall, Schreiner''s articulate young feminist, marks the entry of the controversial New Woman into nineteenth-century fiction. Raised as an orphan amid a makeshift family, she witnesses an intolerable world of colonial exploitation. Desiring a formal education, she leaves the isolated farm for boarding school in her early teens, only to return four years later from an unhappy relationship. Unable to meet the demands of her mysterious lover, Lyndall retires to a house in Bloemfontein, where, delirious with exhaustion, she is unknowingly tended by an English farmer disguised as her female nurse. This is the devoted Gregory Rose, Schreiner''s daring embodiment of the sensitive New Man. A cause célèbre when it appeared in London, The Story of an African Farm transformed the shape and course of the late-Victorian novel. From the haunting plains of South Africa''s high Karoo, Schreiner boldly addresses her society''s greatest fears - the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women''s social and political independence. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Oxford University Press Ethan Frome
Book Synopsis`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.'' Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel''s powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel''s composition and the reasons for its enduring success. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade Reviewwith each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money * Oxford Times *This love story has an emotional intensity made all the more poignant by the inarticulate reticence of Wharton's characters - a ménage à trois consisting of Frome, his querulous wife and her young girl cousin. With quiet assurance, Wharton conveys passion, malaise and tragedy with memorable impact. * Sophia Sackville-West, Evening Standard (London) *Ethan Frome is one of Edith Wharton's most famous novels and rightly so. It is exquisitely written by an author with remarkable observation and imagination. Ethan Frome is a novel which extinguishes hope and blows away happiness but it is so powerful as an analysis of waste that it is nothing short of a masterpiece. * Madeleine Burton, Herts Advertiser *
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Oxford University Press Ivanhoe
Book SynopsisMore than a century after the Norman Conquest, England remains a colony of foreign warlords. The dissolute Prince John plots to seize his brother''s crown, his barons terrorize the country, and the mysterious outlaw Robin Hood haunts the ancient greenwood. The secret return of King Richard and the disinherited Saxon knight, Ivanhoe, heralds the start of a splendid and tumultuous romance, featuring the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, the siege of Torquilstone, and the clash of wills between the wicked Templar Bois-Guilbert and the sublime Jewess Rebecca. In Ivanhoe Scott fashioned an imperial myth of national cultural identity that has shaped the popular imagination ever since its first appearance at the end of 1819. The most famous of Scottish novelists drew on the conventions of Gothic fiction, including its risky sexual and racial themes, to explore the violent origins and limits of English nationality. This edition uses the 1830 Magnum Opus text, corrected against the Interlea
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Oxford University Press What Maisie Knew
Book SynopsisWhat Maisie Knew (1897) represents one of James''s finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue. In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child''s capacity for intelligent `wonder'', James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie inspires James to dwell with extraordinary acuteness on the things that may pass between adult and child. In addition to a new introduction, this edition of the novel offers particularly detailed notes, bibliography, and a list of variant readings. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100
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Oxford University Press Trilby
Book Synopsis''You shall see nothing, hear nothing, think of nothing but Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!'' First published in 1894, the story of the diva Trilby O''Ferrall and her mesmeric mentor, Svengali, has entered the mythology of the time alongside Dracula and Sherlock Holmes. Immensely popular for a number of years, the novel led to a hit play, a series of popular films, and the trilby hat. The setting of the story reflects the author''s bohemian years as an art student in Paris; indeed James McNeill Whistler was to recognize himself in one of the early serialized instalments. George Du Maurier was a celebrated caricaturist for Punch magazine and his drawings for the novel form part of its appeal - this edition includes his most significant illustrations. 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 Trade ReviewA captivating, strange and evocative story that brings to life 1850s bohemian Paris. * The Sunday Telegraph *
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Oxford University Press Culture and Anarchy
Book Synopsis''The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.''Matthew Arnold''s famous series of essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of culture and society that are as relevant now as they have ever been. Arnold seeks to find out ''what culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it'' in an age of rapid social change and increasing mechanization. He contrasts culture, ''the study of perfection'', with anarchy, the mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England. How can individuals be educated, not indoctrinated, and what is the role of the state in disseminating ''sweetness and light''? This edition reproduces the original book version and enables readers to appreciate its immediate historical context as well as the reasons for its continued importance today, in the face of the challenges of multi-culturalism and post-modernism. ABOUT THE SERIE
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Oxford University Press Collected Maxims and Other Reflections
Book Synopsis''Our virtues are, most often, only vices in disguise.''Deceptively brief and insidiously easy to read, La Rochefoucauld''s shrewd, unflattering analyses of human behaviour have influenced writers, thinkers, and public figures as various as Voltaire, Proust, de Gaulle, Nietzsche, and Conan Doyle. The author gave himself the following advice: ''The reader''s best policy is to assume that none of these maxims is directed at him, and that he is the sole exception...After that, I guarantee that he will be the first to subscribe to them.''This is the fullest collection of La Rochefoucauld''s writings ever published in English, and includes the first complete translation of the Réflexions diverses (Miscellaneous Reflections). A table of alternative maxim numbers and an index of topics help the reader to locate any maxim quickly and to appreciate the full range of La Rochefoucauld''s thought on any of his favourite themes, such as self-love, vice and virtue, love and jealousy, friendship and self-interest, passion and pride. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Trade ReviewThis superb publication of La Rouchefoucauld's seminal 'Maxims' combines the erudition and comprehensiveness of a scholarly edition with the welcoming accessibility of a first-class textbook. * Kevin De Ornellas, University of Ulster *
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Oxford University Press The Diary of a Nobody
Book Synopsis`Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a `Somebody'' - why my diary should not be interesting.''The Diary of a Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to be seen as the epitome of English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency. Both celebration and critique, The Diary of a Nobody has often been imitated, but never bettered. This edition features Weedon Grossmith''s hilarious illustrations and is complemented by an enjoyable introduction discussing the book''s social background and suburban fiction as a genre. ABOUT THE SE
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Oxford University Press The Female Quixote
Book SynopsisThe Female Quixote (1752), a parody of the style of Cervantes and much praised by Fielding, Richardson and Dr. Johnson, tells of the misadventures of the aristocratic Arabella, a devoted reader of romantic fiction.
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Oxford University Press The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales
Book SynopsisThe name of the Marquis de Sade is synonymous with the blackest corners of the human soul, a byword for all that is foulest in human conduct. In his bleak, claustrophobic universe, there is no God, no morality, no human affection, and no hope. Power is given to the strong, and the strong are murderers, torturers, and tyrants. No quarter is given; compassion is the virtue of the weak. Yet Sade was a man of savage intelligence who carried the philosophy of the French Enlightenment to its logical extreme. His writings effectively release the individual from all social and moral constraint: for many, Sade is the Great Libertarian. The Victorians considered him `Divine' and Apollinaire called him `the freest spirit'; the Surrealists recognised him as a founding father, and he is a key figure in the history of modernism and post-modernism. With Freud and Marx, Sade has been oneof the crucial shaping influences on this century, and reactions to him continue to be extreme. But he has always bTable of ContentsThe Misfortunes of Virtue; Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man; The Successful Ruse; The Pimp Well Served; The Windbags of Provence; An Inexplicable Affair; The Prude; Émile de Tourville; Augustine de Villeblanche; The Law of Talion; The Self-Made Cuckold; The Husband who Said Mass; The Lady of the Manor of Longeville; The Confidence Men
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Oxford University Press The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Book SynopsisAnd now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact''.The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man''s rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But it also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, at last leaving the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution.Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author''s own role of posing as ghost-writer of the narrative; Pym - his only novel - has become the key text for our understanding of Poe.This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to Pym by their treatment of persistent themes - fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials - or by their ironic commentary on Trade Review'a fine introduction to a fascinating writer' The Observer
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Oxford University Press Devils
Book SynopsisDevils, also known in English as The Possessed and The Demons, was first published in 1871-2. The third of Dostoevsky''s five major novels, it is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism, depicting the disarray which follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town. Dostoevsky compares infectious radicalism to the devils that drove the Gadarene swine over the precipice in his vision of a society possessed by demonic creatures that produce devastating delusions of rationality.Dostoevsky is at his most imaginatively humorous in Devils: the novel is full of buffoonery and grotesque comedy. The plot is loosely based on the details of a notorious case of political murder, but Dostoevsky weaves suicide, rape, and a multiplicity of scandals into a compelling story of political evil. _ This new translation also includes the chapter `Stavrogin''s Confession'', which was initially considered to be too shocking to print. In this edition it appears where the author originally intended it. 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 of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. _ _
£10.44
Oxford University Press A Memoir of Jane Austen
Book SynopsisThis unique edition brings together for the first time Austen-Leigh's memoir of his aunt Jane Austen, together with shorter recollections by James Edward's two sisters. It also includes Jane's brother Henry's two biographical accounts.Trade Reviewa must for lovers of Austen's work * Choice Magazine *A very good introduction by Kathryn Sutherland * Derwent May, the Times, *
£8.54
Oxford University Press Shirley
Book Synopsis''You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don''t shriek...you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob.''Shirley is Charlotte Brontë''s only historical novel and her most topical one. Written at a time of social unrest, it is set during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when economic hardship led to riots in the woollen district of Yorkshire. A mill-owner, Robert Moore, is determined to introduce new machinery despite fierce opposition from his workers; he ignores their suffering, and puts his own life at risk. Robert sees marriage to the wealthy Shirley Keeldar as the solution to his difficulties, but he loves his cousin Caroline. She suffers misery and frustration, and Shirley has her own ideas about the man she will choose to marry. The friendship between the two women, and the contrast between their situations, is at the heart of this compelling novel, which is suffused with Brontë''s deep yearning for an earlier time. ABOUT
£8.54
Oxford University Press Zofloya
Book SynopsisThis is the first edition for nearly 200 years of an unduly neglected work, originally published in 1806, by an intriguing and unconventional woman writer. A Gothic tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in fifteenth-century Venice, the novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of the central character, Victoria's, intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron andShelley, it contradicts idealized stereotypes in women's writing and challenges the received idea of the Gothic genre's representation of passive, victimized women.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Note on the Text; Select Bibliography; A Chronology of Charlotte Dacre; Engraving of Charlotte Dacre as Rosa Matilda; ZOFLOYA, OR THE MOOR; Appendix; A Note on Names; Explanatory Notes
£8.99
Oxford University Press The Doctors Wife
Book Synopsis`Isabel Gilbert was not a woman of the world. She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers...she believed in a phantasmal world created out of the pages of poets and romancers.'' The Doctor''s Wife is Mary Elizabeth Braddon''s rewriting of Flaubert''s Madame Bovary in which she explores her heroine''s sense of entrapment and alienation in middle-class provincial life married to a good natured but bovine husband who seems incapable of understanding his wife''s imaginative life and feelings. A woman with a secret, adultery, death and the spectacle of female recrimination and suffering are the elements which combine to make The Doctor''s Wife a classic women''s sensation novel. Yet, The Doctor''s Wife is also a self-consciously literary novel, in which Braddon attempts to transcend the sensation genre. This is the only edition of a fascinating and engrossing work, and reproduces uncut the first three-volume edition of 1864. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford
£10.44
Oxford University Press Science Fiction
Book SynopsisScience Fiction has proved notoriously difficult to define. It has been explained as a combination of romance, science and prophecy; as a genre based on an imagined alternative to the reader''s environment; and as a form of fantastic fiction and historical literature. It has also been argued that science fiction narratives are the most engaged, socially relevant, and responsive to the modern technological environment. This Very Short Introduction doesn''t offer a history of science fiction, but instead ties examples of science fiction to different historical moments, in order to demonstrate how science fiction has evolved over time. David Seed looks not only at literature, but also at drama and poetry, as well as film. Examining recurrent themes in science fiction he looks at voyages into space, the concept of the alien and alternative social identities, the role of technology in science fiction, and its relation to time - in the past, present, and future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade Reviewbrief yet thorough * The Guardian *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Voyages into space ; 2. Alien encounters ; 3. Science fiction and technology ; 4. Utopias and dystopias ; 5. Fictions of time ; 6. The field of science fiction
£9.49
Oxford University Press The Waves ne Oxford Worlds Classics
Book Synopsis''I, who would wish to feel close over me the protective waves of the ordinary, catch with the tail of my eye some far horizon.''Intensely visionary yet absorbed with the everyday; experimental, daring and challenging, The Waves is regarded by many as Virginia Woolf''s greatest achievement. It follows a set of six friends from childhood to middle age as they experience the world around them and explore who they are and what it means to be alive. As the contours of their lives are revealed, a unique novel is slowly unveiled. Enfolded within Woolf''s lyrical and mysterious language, the mundane takes on a startling new significance while distant pasts are no less in play than the clamorous sounds and kaleidoscopic sights of the modern city. Yet precisely where the alluringly enigmatic pages of The Waves are leading, and what deeper meanings are held within its undulant chapters and shimmering interludes, are questions that have never ceased to enthral readers and critics alike.In this neTrade ReviewOxford World Classics has produced a terrific reissue of Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves. There are helpful endnotes, biographical information, a selected bibliography and an introduction... a beautiful, rich novel that cannot be completely grasped in one reading. It begs to be read again and again. When I finished it I was surprised by how emotionally charged and churned up I was. I felt abandoned on the shore as the tide went out, left to wait for its return, for a wave to grab me and pull me back out to sea. * Shiny New Books, Stefanie Hollmichel *Bradshaw's introduction helps the reader to see just how readable it actually is. * Lindsay Martin, Virginia Woolf Bulletin *
£7.59
Oxford University Press Crime Fiction
Book SynopsisCrime fiction has been one of the most popular genres since the 19th century, but has roots in works as varied as Sophocles, Herodotus, and Shakespeare. In this Very Short Introduction Richard Bradford explores the history of the genre, by considering the various definitions of ''crime fiction'' and looking at how it has developed over time. Discussing the popularity of crime fiction worldwide and its various styles; the role that gender plays within the genre; spy fiction, and legal dramas and thrillers; he explores how the crime novel was shaped by the work of British and American authors in the 18th and 19th centuries. Highlighting the works of notorious authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler -- to name but a few -- he considers the role of the crime novel in modern popular culture and asks whether we can, and whether we should, consider crime fiction serious ''literature''. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade Reviewthe "fine dining" of literature * Ruth Ginarlis, Newbooks Magazine *This is a fine introduction to a genre that embraces humanity in its flaws and glories, and it should find its way onto the bookshelves of anyone who likes crime fiction, or fiction in general. * Ben Macnair, Nudge.com *... this tidy little read-in-an-evening item will explain and enhance your affection for murder, open your eyes to new authors and have you reaching for the bookshelves for another fix, assured that you're right in the read afterall. * Sunday Sport, Jon Wise *Table of Contents1. Origins ; 2. The two ages: Golden and Hard Boiled ; 3. Transitions ; 4. International crime fiction ; 5. Gender ; 6. Cousins of crime: spy ficiton, the thriller, and legal drama ; 7. Epilogue: Can crime fiction be taken seriously? ; Further reading ; Index
£9.49
Oxford University Press An Autobiography
Book Synopsis''I hated the office. I hated my work...the only career in life within my reach was that of an author.''The only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, Trollope''s account offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions. After a miserable childhood and misspent youth, Trollope turned his life around at the age of twenty-six. By 1860 the ''hobbledehoy'' had become both a senior civil servant and a best-selling novelist. He worked for the Post Office for many years and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Best-known for the two series of novels grouped loosely around the clerical and political professions, the Barsetshire and Palliser series, in his Autobiography Trollope frankly describes his writing habits. His apparent preoccupation with contracts, deadlines, and earnings, and his account of the remorseless regularity with which he produced his daily quota of words, has divided opinion ever since. This edition reassesses the work''s distinctive qualities and incTrade ReviewTrollope is one of my favourite authors & his autobiography is a portrait of a lovable man who survived a miserable childhood & created a happy life for himself, both personally & professionally as a novelist. * I Prefer Reading *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; NOTE ON THE TEXT; CHRONOLOGY; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY; TROLLOPE ON JANE AUSTEN; 'ON ENGLISH PROSE FICTION AS A RATIONAL AMUSEMENT'; FROM THACKERAY; FROM 'THE GENIUS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE; FROM 'A WALK IN THE WOOD'; APPENDIX: PASSAGES OMITTED FROM THE MANUSCRIPT; EXPLANATORY NOTES; INDEX
£10.44
Oxford University Press Finnegans Wake
Book SynopsisOne of the greatest artistic works of the twentieth century, Finnegans Wake is both an outrageous epic and a wildly inventive comedy that rewards its readers with never-ending layers of meaning. This edition helps readers get past its reputation for difficulty in order to enjoy its astonishing originality and imaginative achievement.Trade Reviewenhances the reader's textual awareness...The captivating, accessible and rich introduction by Finn Fordham enthuses first-time readers * James Joyce Broadsheet, Dirk Van Hulle *The editors have provided a lucid introduction and a chapter-by-chapter outline which gives one at last a vague hold on what's going on, but it's not overburdened with notes, which frees one to stop worrying and just enjoy the surrealism and exuberance of Joyce's language. * Independent on Sunday *
£11.69
Dorling Kindersley Ltd Great Novels
Book SynopsisDiscover everything you ever wanted to know about the world''s greatest novels.From medieval romances and tales of chivalry found in the realist novels of the 19th century, to experimental modernist works and today''s explorations of the self, Great Novels explores the finest novels from around the world and through time.Tilt at windmills with Don Quixote, experience heartbreak with Tolstoy, discover the society in which Jane Austen lived, and delve into the complex rites of passage experienced by characters in modern novels. Find out what inspired writers to create their masterpieces, what their aims were, and how they set about writing them.Dive deep into the pages of this inspiring book to discover:- Paintings, photographs, and artefacts that tell the story of each novel and what inspired their authors- Superb images of first editions and manuscripts- The flavour of each novel through quotations and extended extracts - Ch
£22.50
Penguin Books Ltd Jane Austen
Book SynopsisA title that involves us so deeply that Austen's final illness and death come almost as a personal tragedy to the reader. It presents Austen as remarkably clever; sensitive, but sentimental; tough, yet observant; guarded; and a woman with the devil of a genius in her.Trade ReviewAs near perfect a Life of Austen as we are likely to get: intelligent, feeling, suggestive -- Carmen Callil * Daily Telegraph *A book that radiates intelligence, wit and insight -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *A perfect biography: detailed, witty, warm -- Dirk Bogarde * Sunday Telegraph *Claire Tomalin is the finest and most disinterested of biographers, because in her pages she has given Jane Austen her liberty -- Hilary Mantel * New York Review of Books *
£11.69
WW Norton & Co Le Morte Darthur
Book SynopsisThe text is unabridged, with original spelling and extensive, easy-to-use marginal glosses and footnotes.
£13.99
Vintage Deceived With Kindness
Book SynopsisAngelica Garnett may truly be called a child of Bloomsbury. Her Aunt was Virginia Woolf, her mother Vanessa Bell, and her father Duncan Grant, though for many years Angelica believed herself, naturally enough, the daughter of Vanessa''s husband Clive. Her childhood homes, Charleston in Sussex and Gordon Square in London, were both centres of Bloomsbury activity, and she grew up surrounded by the most talked-about writers and artists of the day - Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, the Stracheys, Maynard Keynes, David Garnett (whom she later married), and many others. But Deceived with Kindness is also a record of a young girl''s particular struggle to achieve independence from that extraordinary and intense milieu as a mature and independent woman. With an honesty that is by degrees agonising and uplifting, the author creates a vibrant, poignant picture of her mother, Vanessa Bell, of her own emergent individuality, and of the Bloomsbury era.Trade ReviewPassionate, lucid, risky, rash, hard to put down and impossible to forget -- Hilary Spurling * Observer *Beautifully written and admirably honest... Refreshing and surprising -- Fiona MacCarthy * The Times *
£9.49
Cambridge University Press What Was Shakespeare Really Like
Book SynopsisSir Stanley Wells is one of the world''s greatest authorities on William Shakespeare. Here he brings a lifetime of learning and reflection to bear on some of the most tantalising questions about the poet and dramatist that there are. How did he think, feel, and work? What were his relationships like? What did he believe about death? What made him laugh? This freshly thought and immensely engaging study wrestles with fundamental debates concerning Shakespeare''s personality and life. The mysteries of how Shakespeare lived, whom and how he loved, how he worked, how he produced some of the greatest and most abidingly popular works in the history of world literature and drama, have fascinated readers for centuries. This concise, crystalline book conjures illuminating insights to reveal Shakespeare as he was. Wells brings the writer and dramatist alive, in all his fascinating humanity, for readers of today.Trade Review'It is, I think, incontestable to claim that no single person in history has done more for the study and appreciation of Shakespeare than Stanley Wells. This book asks four beguilingly simple questions which result in deeply fascinating and exciting journeys into Shakespeare's mind and practice. As you read, you are very likely to exclaim, as I did, 'Why the hell didn't my English teacher talk like this? Actors, directors, producers, lecturers, teachers, students, and all who want to know and understand more will hug this book to them.' Stephen Fry'If this book wasn't short I wouldn't trust it. There is very little to go on in trying to find Shakespeare the man, and Stanley Wells doesn't pad anything out with wishful speculation. Having studied his works for longer than any man alive he is almost uniquely placed to do this detective work. In his tenth decade Wells has lost none of his curiosity or his eagerness to share his intimate knowledge.' Harriet Walter'Stanley Wells illuminates and entertains – brilliant!' Kenneth Branagh'A truly excellent book – I enjoyed every page. I am sure it will be read with appreciation by all who care for Shakespeare, or are curious about the inner turmoil of his life.' Claire Tomalin'This illuminating compilation … helps separate the man from the myth.' Publishers Weekly'Wells is our pre-eminent Shakespearean, and here he reflects magisterially on the topic that has absorbed his life for seven decades … [His] book offers a readable, pacy and personal introduction to Shakespeare's works, and to Wells's own important role, part-Prospero, part-Puck, in their popularisation. And if you're still wondering: what Shakespeare was really like remains, happily, a mystery.' The Telegraph'Wells roots his picture of the playwright and poet in evidence and logic, and he's too erudite to be anything but modest in his conjectures - which is much the appeal of this book.' Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater'Stanley Wells, the nonagenarian dean of Shakespeare scholars, condenses decades of living with Shakespeare into What Was Shakespeare Really Like? … Commonsensical, easy-going, Mr. Wells wants to encounter Shakespeare as a personality.' The Wall Street Journal'Just as any production of a Shakespeare play reveals as much about its interpreters as its playwright, so Wells paints a portrait of himself alongside his subject. That the reader will still likely be glad of it is testament to the author's unwavering enthusiasm and insight.' Rory Kinnear, The Guardian'…secret, passionate urgings and scoldings were the seeds of [Shakespeare's] creativity. Professor Wells deserves a round of applause for bringing them into the light.' John Walsh, The Mail on SundayTable of ContentsForeword Stephen Fry; 1. What Manner of Man Was He?; 2. How Did Shakespeare Write a Play?; 3. What Do the Sonnets Tell Us about Their Author?; 4. What Made Shakespeare Laugh?; Epilogue: Eight Decades with Shakespeare.
£13.49
