Search results for ""Author Isobel Murray""

Jim Baxter - the legendary 'Slim Jim' - was arguably Scotland's greatest-ever footballer, a left-footed genius who became a Rangers icon and helped Scotland humiliate world champions England at Wembley in 1967 - with some famous keepie-uppie along the way. And although much has been written about Slim Jim over the years, the real story behind his life is now revealed for the first time. When Jim Baxter joined Rangers in 1960 for a record fee of £17,500, he quickly proved his worth, helping the team to ten trophies over the next five years. It was the start of a glittering career and a hard-drinking, hard-living lifestyle in the big city, where he fully enjoyed the fruits of his success. But behind the glamour on and off the park, Jim Baxter hid a secret that would torment him for most of his life, a secret he only discovered the full truth about when he was fifty years old. What is beyond doubt is that Slim Jim Baxter will forever be revered for his unbelievable footballing talent. He will also be remembered for his ability to live life to the full and beyond. But had he uncovered the truth earlier about the family secret that left him shattered, the life of this footballing genius might have been very different both on and off the pitch.

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This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Wilde's poetry and prose short stories, plays, critical dialogues and his only novel - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Oscar Wilde's dramatic private life has sometimes threatened to overshadow his great literary achievements. His talent was prodigious: the author of brilliant social comedies, fairy stories, critical dialogues, poems, and a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In addition to Dorian Gray, this volume represents all these genres, including such works as Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest, 'The Happy Prince', 'The Critic as Artist', and 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'. 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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`Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!' A powerful poem of universal guilt and a protest against capital punishment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is Wilde's best-known poem, yet it is quite unlike the rest of his poetry. At Oxford Wilde discarded the passion and politics of his mother's Irish nationalistic anti-famine poetry and opted to follow an English Romantic tradition, paying tribute to Keats, Swinburne, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Admiration of French masters gradually led to his writing Impressionist, even decadent poems and his collection Poems (1881) brought accusations of obscenity and plagiarism as well as scathing reviews. Unabashed, Wilde revised and reprinted his final `Author's Edition' in 1892, by which time he was the successful author of fiction, criticism, and Lady Windermere's Fan. This volume follows as closely as possible the chronological order of composition, highlighting autobiographical elements including the young Wilde's conflicting attitudes to Greece and Rome, pagan and Christian, and his fluctuating attraction to Roman Catholicism. The Appendix shows Wilde's original ordering, constructed with great care around a `musical' arrangement of themes. The poems reveal unexpected aspects of a literary chameleon usually identified with sparkling wit and social comedy. 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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A leech, a pirate, a predator, an anti-Christ, a public benefactor and the fisherman's friend; such is Gillespie Strang in this remarkably powerful Scottish novel. Gillespie is the harsh prophet of the new breed of Scottish entrepreneur, prepared to use any means to achieve his insatiable ambition amongst the nineteenth-century fishing communities of the west coast.John MacDougall Hay (1881-1919) was born and raised in Tarbert, Loch Fyne, on which he based the setting for Gillespie. A Church of Scotland minister, his knowledge of such communities and his sombre vision of good and evil shape this, his finest novel.

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