Oxford University Press

It is May 1660 and the fate of nations is at stake. Mazarin plots, Louis XIV is in love, and Raoul de Bragelonne, son of Athos, is intent on serving France and winning the heart of Louise de la Valliere. D'Artagnan, meanwhile, is perplexed by a mysterious stranger, and soon he learns that his old comrades already have great projects in hand. Athos seeks the restoration of Charles II, while Aramis, with Porthos in tow, has a secret plan involving a masked prisoner and the fortification of the island of Belle-Ile. D'Artagnan finds a thread leading him to the French court, the banks of the Tyne, the beaches of Holland, and the dunes of Brittany. «The Vicomte de Bragelonne» opens an epic adventure which continues with «Louise de la Valliere» and reaches its climax in «The Man in the Iron Mask». This new edition of the classic translation is fully annotated, and an introduction sets Dumas's saga in its historical and cultural context.

This selection of 21 stories represents the best of James's work, and includes three stories which are not in the Collected Edition.

- A must for all Jane Austen fans, this is a quiz book designed to test the readers' knowledge of their favourite books, compiled by literary detective John Sutherland, well-known for his series of literary puzzle books and Deirdre Le Faye, editor of Jane Austen's Letters — Ideal for reading groups, schoolchildren, participants in the BBC Big Read, viewers of classic novel TV adaptations, quiz-lovers — The questions are graduated in a series of four tests, moving from straightforward factual questions (e.g. 'How many children does Mrs Bennet have?') to more difficult ones requiring close reading, to interpretation and speculation, suitable for readers at all levels — The questions are ingenious and fun, and the answers (at the back), in Sutherland's inimitable style, are fascinating. Completing the book guarantees a hugely improved knowledge and appreciation of Austen. — Amusing marking system ('100: write your own book...Under 10: watch TV instead) How well do you really know your favourite author? Ace literary detective turned quizmaster John Sutherland and Austen buff Deirdre Le Faye challenge the reader to find out. Starting with easy, factual questions that test how well you remember a novel and its characters, the quiz progresses to a level of greater difficulty, demanding close reading and interpretative deduction. What really motivates the characters, and what is going on beneath the surface of the story? Designed to amuse and divert, the questions and answers take the reader on an imaginative journey into the world of Jane Austen, where hypothesis and speculation produce fascinating and unexpected insights. Whether you are an expert or enthusiast, «So You Think You Know Jane Austen?» guarantees you will know her much better after reading it.

`When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse'. The tale of Carrie Meeber's rise to stardom in the theatre and George Hurstwood's slow decline captures the twin poles of exuberance and exhaustion in modern city life as never before. The premier example of American naturalism, Dreiser's remarkable first novel has deeply influenced such key writers as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Joyce Carol Oates. This edition uses the 1900 text, which is regarded as the author's final version.

John Polidori's classic tale of the vampyre was a product of the same ghost-story competition that produced Mary Shelley's «Frankenstein». Set in Italy, Greece, and London, Polidori's tales is a reaction to the dominating presence of his employer Lord Byron, and transformed the figure of the vampire from the bestial ghoul of earlier mythologies into the glamorous aristocrat whose violence and sexual allure make him literally a 'lady-killer'. Polidori's tale introduced the vampire into English fiction, and launched a vampire craze that has never subsided. «The Vampyre» was first published in 1819 in the London New Monthly Magazine. The present volume selects thirteen other tales of the macabre first published in the leading London and Dublin magazines between 1819 and 1838, including Edward Bulwer's chilling account of the doppelganger, Letitia Landon's elegant reworking of the Gothic romance, William Carleton's terrifying description of an actual lynching, and James Hogg's ghoulish exploitation of the cholera epidemic of 1831-2.

Writing towards the close of the nineteenth century, Chekhov — himself a country doctor — recorded in his fiction the symptoms of a diseased society. The seven stories collected here are a bleakly savage indictment of a society paralysed by spiritual malaise, and morbidly conscious of evils which can neither be killed nor cured. This volume also contains an Introduction by Ronald Hingley.

This collection of eleven stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style, and touch on the central themes that surface in «War and Peace» and «Anna Karenina». Stories as different as 'The Snowstorm', 'Lucerne', 'The Diary of a Madman', and 'The Devil' are grounded in autobiographical experience. They deal with journeys of self-discovery and the moral and religious questioning that characterizes Tolstoy's works of criticism and philosophy. 'Strider' and 'Father Sergy', as well as reflecting Tolstoy's own experiences, also reveal profound psychological insights. These stories range over much of the Russian world of the nineteenth century, from the nobility to the peasantry, the military to the clergy, from merchants and cobblers to a horse and a tree. Together they present a fascinating picture of Tolstoy's skill and artistry.

Kipling portrays school as the first stage of a much larger game, a pattern-maker for the experiences of life. Implied throughout the stories is the question 'What happened to these fifteen-year-old boys, and how did the lessons they learned at school apply to the world of warfare and imperial government?' The stories are based on Kipling's own school, the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, which prepared boys destined for the army or for colonial service; Kipling himself appears as the subordinate character, Beetle. This edition includes five Stalky stories which did not appear in the original volume, and thus constitutes a «Complete Stalky & Co».

Authors in Context examines the work of major writers in relation to their own time and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insight into texts in their context. Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr: Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life — 'New Women', 'New Hedonism', 'New Journalism', 'New Imperialism'. His plays, tales, and critical writings questioned traditional attitudes to religion, sexuality, women and the home, crime and punishment, and the freedom of the individual. This book examines the rich interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work on stage, in film and the media in the century that has followed his death.

A unique anthology of Kipling's war stories and poems, from the frontier wars of empire to the Boer War and the First World War.

No other edition offers extensive textual apparatus such as explanatory notes, plot summaries, particularly vital as stories are complex and interwoven. The Sultan Schahriar's misguided resolution to shelter himself from the possible infidelities on his wives leads to an outbreak of barbarity in his kingdoms and a reign of terror in his court, stopped only by the resourceful Scheherazade. The tales with which Scheherazade nightly postpones the muderous intent of the sultan have entered our language and our lives like no other collection of narratives before or since. Sinbad, Aladdin, Ali Baba: all make their spectacular entrance on to the stage of English literary history in the «Arabian Nights Entertainments» (1704-17). The stories contained in this `store house of ingenious fiction' initiate a pattern of literary reference and influence which today remains as powerful and intense as it was throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This edition reproduces in its entirety the earliest English translation of the French orientalist Antoine Galland's «Mille et une Nuits». This remained for over a century the only English translation of the story cycle, influencing an incalculable number of writers, and no other edition offers the complete text supplemented by full textual apparatus.

Authors in Context examines the work of major authors in relation to their own times and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insight into texts in their context. Charles Dickens was both a representative Victorian and an artist who is quintessentially a 'Post-Romantic'. He was the most popular author of his age and the one who most vividly reflected the contradictory impulses of Victorian society, its energy and invention as much as its social and political anomalies. This book explores Dickens's interest in the urban phenomenon which so marks nineteenth-century culture, and it looks at the vital interconnection between his life and his art. Like his character, David Copperfield, Dickens lived his life and pursued his career 'thoroughly in earnest', but he was also a great comic writer whose work resonates well beyond his own age and continues to be recontextualized on the stage, on film, and on television.

In its third edition (previously entitled Labour Law), Employment Law Core Text has emerged as an extremely valuable student text, providing balanced coverage of the key legislative provisions impacting on employment relationships. Tailored to meet the needs of employment law modules, the authors' straightforward approach ensures that the text guides students concisely through the ever changing legislative maze of employment law. Areas of recent development are clearly highlighted, particularly relating to discrimination and equal pay, which are now chapters in their own right. The chapter summaries, self-test questions, and further reading sections enable students to critically self-test themselves as well as aiding exam preparation.

The definitive English version of the stories of King Arthur, «Le Morte Darthur» was completed in 1469-70 by Sir Thomas Malory, `knight-prisoner'. In a resonant prose style, Malory charts the tragic disintegration of the fellowship of the Round Table, destroyed from within by warring factions. Recounting the life of King Arthur, the knightly exploits of Sir Lancelot du Lake, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawain, and the quest for the Holy Grail, «Le Morte Darthur» depicts the contradictions that underscore the Fellowship's chivalric ideals. A pervading tension cumulates in the revelation of Lancelot and Guenivere's illicit passion, and in Arthur's powerlessness to prevent a related outbreak of violence and revenge. This generously annotated edition is based on the authoritative Winchester manuscript and represents what Malory wrote more closely than the first version printed by William Caxton. Intelligently abridged from the original to make a single substantial volume, the translation is supplemented by a fine Introduction, a Glossary, and extensive Notes

'Little Matters they are to be sure, but highly important'. Letter-writing was something of an addiction for young women of Jane Austen's time and social position, and Austen's letters have a freedom and familiarity that only intimate writing can convey. Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of 'Little Matters', of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family through the medium of the letter. Ironic, acerbic, always entertaining, Jane Austen's letters are a fascinating record not only of her own day-to-day existence, but of the pleasures and frustrations experienced by women of her social class which are so central to her novels. Vivien Jones's selection includes very nearly two-thirds of Austen's surviving correspondence, and her lively introduction and notes set the novelist's most private writings in their wider cultural context.

»Eugene Onegin» is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men — Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself — and the fates and affections of three women — Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. «Eugene Onegin» was Pushkin's own favourite work, and it shows him attempting to transform himself from a romantic poet into a realistic novelist. This new translation seeks to retain both the literal sense and the poetic music of the original, and capture the poem's spontaneity and wit. The introduction examines several ways of reading the novel, and text is richly annotated.

»The Queen of Spades» has long been acknowledged as one of the world's greatest short stories. In this classic literary representation of gambling, Alexander Pushkin explores the nature of obsession. Hints of the occult and gothic alternate with scenes of St Petersburg high-society in the story of the passionate Hermann's quest to master chance and make his fortune at the card-table. Underlying the taut plot is an ironical treatment of the romantic dreamer and social outcast. This volume contains three other major works of Pushkin's fiction, moving from the witty parodies of sentimentalism and high melodrama in «The Tales of Belkin» to an early experiment with recreating the past in Peter the Great's Blackamoor. It concludes with the novel-length masterpiece «The Captain's Daughter», which combines historical fiction in the manner of Sir Walter Scott with the colour and devices of the Russian fairy-tale in a narrative of rebellion and romance. These new translations, as well as being meticulously faithful to the original, do full justice to the elegance and fluency of Pushkin's prose. The Introduction provides insightful readings of the stories and places them in their European literary context. A chronology of the Pugachov Uprising illuminates the events in «The Captain's Daughter».

`The victor belongs to the spoils'. Fitzgerald's ironic epigraph to «The Beautiful and Damned» exemplifies his attitude toward the young rootless post-World War One generation who believed life to be meaningless and who pursued wealth despite its corrosive effect. Gloria and Anthony Patch party until money runs out; then their goal becomes Adam Patch's fortune. Gloria's beauty fades and Anthony's drinking takes its horrible toll. Fitzgerald here once again displays a wariness of the upper classes, `an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class — not the conviction of a revolutionist but the smouldering hatred of a peasant'.

`The language is refined, the smile not grave, My honest tongue recounts how men behave'. «The Satyricon» is the most celebrated work of fiction to have survived from the ancient world. It can be described as the first realistic novel, the father of the picaresque genre, and recounts the sleazy progress of a pair of literature scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean. En route they encounter type-figures the author wickedly satirizes — a teacher in higher education, a libidinous priest, a vulgar freedman turned millionaire, a manic poet, a superstitious sea-captain and a femme fatale. The novel has fascinated the literary world of Europe ever since, evoking praise for its elegant and hilarious description of the underside of Roman society, but also condemnation for some of its lewder subjects. This new and lively translation by P.G. Walsh captures the gaiety of the original, and the edition is supplemented by his superb Introduction giving an account of the plot, the various scholarly interpretations and the later histtory of its literary influcence. There are also extensive and detailed notes which serve to illuminate the reading of a text rich in literary in-jokes and allusion.

''The people are silent'' So ends Pushkin's great historical drama Boris Godunov, in which Boris's reign as Tsar witnesses civil strife and intrigue, brutality and misery. Its legacy is an uncertain future for the new Tsar whose inauguration is met with devastating silence by the people. Pushkin's dramatic work displays a scintillating variety of forms, from the historical to the metaphysical and folkloric. After Boris Godunov, they evolved into Pushkin's own unique, condensed transformations of Western European themes and traditions. The fearful amorality of A Scene from Faust is followed by the four Little Tragedies which confront greed, envy, lust, and blasphemy, while Rusalka is a tragedy of a different kind — a lyric fairytale of despair and transformation. James E. Falen's verse translations of Pushkin's dramas are here accompanied by an Introduction by Caryl Emerson on Russia's Top page most cosmopolitan playwright.

The new Oxford World's Classics edition of Oliver Twist is based on the authoritative Clarendon edition, which uses Dickens's revised text of 1846. It includes his preface of 1841 in which he defended himself against hostile criticism, and includes all 24 original illustrations by George Cruikshank. Stephen Gill's groundbreaking Introduction gives a fascinating new account of the novel. He also provides appendices on Dickens and Cruikshank, on Top page Dickens's Preface and the Newgate Novel Controversy, on Oliver Twist and the New Poor Law and on thieves' slang.

The Three Musketeers (1844) is one of the most famous historical novels ever written. It is also one of the world's greatest historical adventure stories, and its heroes have become symbols for the spirit of youth, daring, and comradeship. The action takes place in the 1620s at the court of Louis XIII, where the musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, with their companion, the headstrong d'Artagnan, are engaged in a battle against Richelieu, the King's minister, and the beautiful, unscrupulous spy, Milady. Behind the flashing blades and bravura, in this first adventure of the Musketeers, Dumas explores the eternal conflict between good and evil. This new edition is the most fully annotated to date in English, providing explanatory Top page notes which set the work in its historical, literary, and cultural context.

'But I don't want to go among mad people', Alice remarked. 'Oh, you ca'n'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, and philosophical 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 they also 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 them impossible 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 Wasp in a Wig'.

Jane Austen began writing in her early teens, and filled three notebooks with her fiction. Her earliest work reflects her interest in the novel as a genre; in brilliant short pieces she plays with plots, stock characters, diction, and style, developing a sense of form at a remarkably early age. The characters of these stories have a jaunty and never-failing devotion to themselves. They perpetually lie, cheat, steal — and occasionally commit murder. Throughout these short or unfinished pieces, Austen exhibits her sense of the preposterous in life and fiction with tough-mindedness and robust humour. Alice, the mock-heroine of Jack and Alice has 'many rare and charming qualities, but Sobriety is not one of them'. In her later published fiction, Austen had learned to take demands for propriety seriously, reining in whatever might be thought boisterous or coarse. Here we see Jane Austen without her inhibitions. In addition to prose fiction and prayers, this collection also contains many of Jane Austen's poems, written to amuse or console friends, and rarely reprinted. The texts have been compared with the manuscripts and edited to give a number of new readings.The notes recreate the texture of daily life in Jane Austen's age, and demonstrate her knowledge of the fiction of her time. The introduction by Margaret Anne Doody sets the writings within the context of Jane Austen's life and literary career.