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Having been persuaded to view the match as imprudent, Anne Elliot broke off her engagement to a naval officer with no prospects. Seven years later, when they meet again, Anne has the chance to recover the happiness she had forgone. This new edition examines Persuasion against the background of the Napoleonic Wars and includes fuller notes and appendices on social rank, dancing, and the Navy.

The Flowers of Evil, which T. S. Eliot called the greatest example of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian love, its linking sexuality and death, its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life. The volume was seized by the police, and Baudelaire and his published were put on trial for offence to public decency. Six offending poemswere banned, in a conviction that was not overturned until 1949.This bold new translation, which restores the banned poems to their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of the collection, makes available to English speakers a powerful and original version of the world. Jonathan Culler's Introduction outlines this vision, stressing that Baudelaire is more than just the poet of the modern city. Originally to be called `The Lesbians', The Flowers of Evil contains the most extraordinary body of love poetry. The poems also pose thequestion of the role of evil in our lives, of whether there are not external forces working to frustrate human plans and to enlist men and women on appalling or stultifying scenarios not of their own making.

"The father of history," as Cicero called him, and a writer possessed of remarkable narrative gifts, enormous scope, and considerable charm, Herodotus has always been beloved by readers well-versed in the classics. Compelled by his desire to "prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time," Herotodus recounts the incidents preceding and following the Persian Wars. He gives us much more than military history, though, providing the fullest portrait of the classical world of the 5th and 6th centuries. Translated by Robin Waterfield, a distinguished translator whose version of Plato's Republic has been described as the best available', this readable new translation is supplemented with expansive notes to help the reader appreciate the book in depth.

Lord Jim is a book about courage and cowardice, self-knowledge and personal growth, in the exotic setting of post-colonial Patusan, a remote Malay settlement. This new edition uses the first English edition text and includes a new introduction and notes by leading Conrad scholar Jacques Berthoud, glossaries, and an appendix on Conrad's sources and reading.

Dickens' second historical novel, which he considered "the best story I have written," provides a highly-charged examination of human suffering and human sacrifice. Private experience and public history paralled one another as the political activities and personal responsibilities of these fictional characters, during the French Revolution, draw them into the Paris of the Terror.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (commonly known as Fanny Hill), the most famous erotic novel in English, was denounced by its author as 'a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my soul, buried and forgot'. Cleland's critics too condemned the 'infamous' and 'poisonous' novel when it first appeared in 1748-9. But the proliferation of editions, adaptations, and translations since then bears witness not only to the popularity of scandalous novels, but also to the book's literary merit. Recounted with a lively use of metaphor and some curiously moral asides, Fanny Hill's boisterous education as a London prostitute never quite effaces the ingenuous charm of her country upbringing, and her story places her among the great heroines of eighteenth-century literature. 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.

The Gorgias is a vivid introduction to the central problems of moral and political philosophy. In the notes to his translation, Professor Irwin discusses the historical and social context of the dialogue, expounds and criticises the arguments, and tries above all to suggest the questions a modern reader ought to raise about Plato's doctrines. No knowledge of Greek is necessary.

This new translation successfully combines a feeling for the formal proprieties of Dumas's style with a supple and colloquial liveliness that once again proves this story irresistible.

Alexandre Dumas's novels are notable for their suspense and excitement, their foul deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, and glorious victories. In The Black Tulip (1850), the shortest of Dumas's most famous tales, the real hero is no Musketeer, but a flower. The novel - a deceptively simple story - is set in Holland in 1672, and weaves the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of John de Witte and his brother Cornelius into a tale of romantic love. The novel is also a timeless political allegory in which Dumas, drawing on the violence and crimes of history, makes his case against tyranny and puts all his energies into creating a symbol of justice and tolerance: the fateful tulipa negra.This new edition reprints the first, classic English translation. David Coward sets the novel in the context of its author's life, the turbulent history of the Dutch Republic, and the amazing `tulipmania' of the seventeenth century which brought wealth to some and ruin to many.

The De Doctrina Christiana ("On Christian Teaching") is one of Augustine's most important works on the classical tradition. Undertaken at the same time as the Confessions, it sheds light on the development of Augustine's thought, especially in the areas of ethics, hermeneutics, and sign-theory. This completely new translation gives a close but updated representation of Augustine's thought and expression, while a succinct introduction and select bibliography present the insights of recent research.

The greatest writer of Greek New Comedy and the founding father of European comedy, Menander (c.341-290 BC) wrote over one hundred plays, of which only one complete play and substantial fragments of others survive. This new verse translation is accurate and highly readable, providing a consecutive text by using surviving words in the damaged papyri.

Great Expectations includes some of Dickens's most memorable characters - Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Estella - encountered by young Pip as he grows into adulthood. This edition features a wide-ranging introduction, Dickens's working notes, the original ending and the definitive Clarendon text.

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 Wordsworth's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by important letters, prefaces, and essays - to give the essence of his work and thinking.

The Doctor's Wife is Mary Elizabeth Braddon's rewriting of Flaubert's Madame Bovary in which she explores her frustrated heroine's sense of entrapment and alienation in middle-class provincial life. This is the only edition of a fascinating work, and reproduces uncut the first edition of 1864.

Book Two of Rumi's Masnavi is concerned with the challenges facing the follower of Sufi enlightenment. It interweaves stories and homilies in order to instruct followers of Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Muslim mystic. Jawid Mojaddedi's sparkling new verse translation follows his prize-winning edition of Book One.

''My empire is of the imagination.'' These are the words of Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe, whose dread title, ''She-who-must-be-obeyed'', testifies to her undying beauty and magical powers; but they serve equally well to describe the hold of her author, Henry Rider Haggard, on generations of readers. Writing ''at white heat'', and in the flush of success after the publication of King Solomon''s Mines, Haggard drew again on his knowledge of Africa and of ancient legends, but also on something deeper and more disturbing. To the Englishmen who journey through shipwreck, fever, and cannibals to her hidden realm, ''She'' is the goal of a quest bequeathed to them two thousand years before; to Haggard''s readers, ''She'' is the embodiment of one of the most potent and ambivalent figures ofWestern mythology, a female who is both monstrous and desirable - and, without question, deadlier than the male. 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.

''Thus, gentle Reader, I have given thee a faithful History of my Travels for Sixteen Years, and above Seven Months; wherein I have not been so studious of Ornament as of Truth.''In these words Gulliver represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just set down; but how far can we rely on a narrator whose identity is elusive and whoses inventiveness is self-evident? Gulliver''s Travels purports to be a travel book, and describes Gulliver''s encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consummately skilful blend of fantasy and realism makesGulliver''s Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift plays tricks on us, and delivers one of the world''s most disturbing satires of the human condition.This new edition includes the changing frontispiece portraits of Gulliver that appeared in successive early editions. 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.

"First published 1982 as Love and death, by the Folio Society"--T.p. verso.

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 the plot also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, and then leaves the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution.

In this almost documentary account of his own experience of penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor, the degradation, in relentless detail - even down to the intricate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters. The steam-bath scene itself, where the livid branded bodies seem to burn in the fires of Hell, is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Trugenev to passages from Dante's 'Inferno.'

Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his 'Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. A romantic story in the manner of Shakespeare's early comedies, the 'Old' Arcadia also includes over 70 poems in a variety of meters and genres. This edition contains a Glossary and an Index of First Lines.

EVELINA TELLS THE STORY OF A YOUNG GIRL, FRESH FROM THE PROVINCES, WHOSE INITIATION INTO THE WAYS OF THE WORLD IS FREQUENTLY PAINFUL, THOUGH IT LEADS TO SELF-DISCOVERY, MORAL GROWTH, AND FINALLY, HAPPINESS. THIS NOVEL REVEALS SUPERBLY THE LIFE AND TEMPER OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND, AS SEEN THROUGH THE CURIOSITY OF IT YOUNG HEROINE.

`she tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.''North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience.Through 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 ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate. 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.

''The woman is no good to me. Who''ll have her?''Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. Although Henchard is fated to be a modern-day tragic hero, unable tosurvive in the new commercial world, his story is also a journey towards love.This edition is the only critically established text of the novel, based on a comprehensive study of the manuscript and Hardy''s extensive revisions. 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.

In this new translation the brilliant and impassioned descriptions of Augustine''s colourful early life are conveyed to the English reader with accuracy and art. Augustine tells of his wrestlings to master his sexual drive, his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of high power at the imperial court of Milan, and his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage as he recovered the faith that his mother had taught him. It was in a Milan garden that Augustine finally achieved the act of will to Christian conversion, which he compared to a lazy man in bed finally deciding it is time to get up and face the day. 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.

Aurora Leigh, now available in the first critically edited and fully annotated edition for almost a century, is the foremost example of the mid-nineteenth century poem of contemporary life. It is an amazing verse novel which provides a panoramic view of the early Victorian age in London. The dominant presence in the work however, is the narrator Aurora Leigh, as she develops her ideas on art, love, God, the "Woman Question," and society.

This new edition of Defoe's masterpiece includes a lively introduction by Tom Keymer, full notes and useful appendices, including a chronology of the action of the story and Defoe's most sustained commentary on it.

This edition brings together Jonson's four great comedies: Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. The texts of the plays have been newly edited, and there is a scholarly introduction, detailed annotation, and a glossary.