Oxford University Press

The remote and inhospitable landscape of Iceland made it a perfect breeding-ground for heroes. The first Norsemen to colonize it in 860 found that the fight for survival demanded high courage and tough self reliance; it also nurtured a stern sense of duty and an uncompromising view of destiny. The Icelandic sagas relate the adventurous lives of individuals and families between 930 and 1030, which began as oral tales but were skilfully documented in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are now regarded as written literature.

This collection brings together six of Turgenev's best-known `long' short stories, in which he turns his skills of psychological observation and black comedy to subjects as diverse as the tyranny of serfdom, love, and revenge on the Russian steppes. These stories all display the elegance and clarity of Turgenev's finest writing.

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.

These five works — George Gascoigne's «The Adventures of Master F. J»; John Lyly's «Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit»; Robert Greene's «Pandosto. The Triumph of Time»; Thomas Nashe's «The Unfortunate Traveller» and Thomas Deloney's «Jack of Newbury» — represent Elizabethan fiction at its best. «The Adventures of Master F. J.» is a comedy of manners with a sting in its tail. In «Euphues» John Lyly invented a new, elaborate rhetorical style which delighted its Elizabethan audience and has been praised or parodied ever since. «Pandosto» was Shakespeare's source for «The Winter's Tale», but Greene's is a darker story designed to shock the reader accustomed to romantic conventions. «The Unfortunate Traveller» marks the peak of Nashe's gift for literary pastiche, mixing picaresque narrative with mock-historical fantasy. «Jack of Newbury» dedicated to 'All famous cloth Workers in England', sums up important social contradictions in sharply observed comic scenes and brisk, witty dialogue.

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».

»Beowulf» is the longest and finest literary work to have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and one of the world's greatest epic poems. Set in the half-legendary, half historical Scandinavian past, it tells the story of the hero Beowulf, who comes to the aid of the Danish king Hrothgar by killing first the terrifying, demonic monster Grendel, and then Grendel's infuriated and vengeful mother. A lifetime later, Beowulf's own kingdom, Geatland, is threatened by a fiery dragon; Beowulf heroically takes on this challenge, but himself dies killing the dragon. The poem celebrates the virtues of the heroic life, but Hrothgar and Beowulf are beacons of wisdom and courage in a dark world of feuds, violence and uncertainty, and Beowulf's selfless heroism is set against a background of ruthless power struggles, fratricide and tyranny. This acclaimed translation is complemented by a critical introduction and substantial editorial apparatus.

Thorough preparation for the revised FCE Use of English Paper (December 2008), providing in-depth coverage and extensive exam practice. Key features * Extra vocabulary practice focuses on phrasal verbs, collocations, word formation, and word sets. * Extensive practice of FCE Paper 3 tasks. * Four complete FCE Use of English Papers. * Notes on common learner errors.

After a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is forced to leave Oxford and begin a new life out in the wide world. His experiences take him from a boys' private school in Wales, where he meets some rather strange people, to a life of luxury in a grand country house and the Ritz Hotel, and then to seven years' hard labour in prison. Where will it all end? The black humour of this story about English society in the 1920s is as fresh today as it was when the novel was first written.

'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.' Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought a new social realism to the novel, in which humour and tragedy co-exist, and fellow-feeling is the mainstay of human relationships. Faith, in the figure of Methodist preacher Dinah Morris, offers redemption to all who are willing to embrace it. This new edition is based on the definitive Clarendon edition and Eliot's corrected text of 1861.

This brand new edition celebrating 20 years of R. W. Holder's popular and successful dictionary of euphemisms is packed full of traditional favourites, such as 'Dutch uncle' or 'push up the daisies', as well as euphemisms from the contemporary world such as 'restructuring', 'coffee-housing', 'extrajudicial killing'. Definitions include examples from real authors, along with entertaining explanations of their origins. To prove that the use of euphemisms is not just a British speciality, there is widespread coverage of American euphemisms, too: for example, 'English' (pertaining to sexual deviance) and 'watermelon' (an indication of pregnancy). The A-Z organization of the text is complemented by a thematic index with short introductory articles on fruitful areas of euphemistic language such as business, sex, death, and the human body. This book remains the most lively and authoritative guide to the language of evasion, hypocrisy, prudery, and deceit.

'his perfect indifference, and your pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd!' «Pride and Prejudice» has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and menide down. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity, as misconceptions and hasty judgements lead to heartache and scandal, but eventually to true understanding, self-knowledge, and love. In this supremely satisfying story, Jane Austen balances comedy with seriousness, and witty observation with profound insight. If Elizabeth Bennet returns again and again to her letter from Mr Darcy, readers

Herodotus is not only known as the `father of history', as Cicero called him, but also the father of ethnography; as well as charting the historical background to the Persian Wars, his curiosity also prompts frequent digression on the cultures of the peoples he introduces. While much of the information he gives has proved to be astonishingly accurate, he also entertains us with delightful tales of one-eyed men and gold-digging ants. This readable new translation is supplemented with expansive notes that provide readers the background that they need to appreciate the book in depth.

This edition contains generous selections from all five volumes of «The Wealth of Nations», and places Smith's inquiry into its historical, intellectual, and cultural context.

A thrilling search for a missing man amidst the scorching deserts and perilous mountains of Africa. In 1885, H. Rider Haggard's publisher considered King Solomon's Mines 'the most amazing book ever written'.

Writing at the very moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch (1871-2) the quintessential Victorian novel, a concept of life and society free from the dogma of the past yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age. In a panoramic sweep of English life during thr years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Eliot explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein. Felicia Bonaparte has provided a new Introduction for this updated edition, the text of which is taken from David Carroll's Clarendon Middlemarch (1986), the first critical edition.

'I beg as soon as you get Fielding's Joseph Andrews, I fear in Ridicule of your Pamela and of Virtue in the Notion of Don Quixote's Manner, you would send it to me by the very first Coach.' (George Cheyne in a letter to Samuel Richardson, February 1742) Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson's Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parody. But in Shamela Fielding also demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste. The same themes — together with a presentation of love as charity, as friendship, and in its sexual taste — are present in Joseph Andrews, Fielding's first novel. It is a work of considerable literary sophistication and satirical verve, but its appeal lies also in its spirit of comic affirmation, epitomized in the celebrated character of Parson Adams. This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C. Battestin for the definitive Wesleyan Edition of Fielding's works.The text of Shamela is based on the first edition, and two substantial appendices reprint the preliminary matter from Conyers Middleton's Life of Cicero and the second edition of Richardson's Pamela (both closely parodied in Shamela). A new introduction by Thomas Keymer situates Fielding's works in their critical and historical contexts.

Fielding'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.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Byron's poetry and prose — all the major poems, complemented by important letters, journals, and conversations — to give the essence of his work and thinking. Byron is regarded today as the ultimate Romantic, whose name has entered the language to describe a man of brooding passion. Although his private life shocked his contemporaries his poetry was immensely popular and influential, especially in Europe. This comprehensive edition includes the complete texts of his two poetic masterpieces «Childe Harold's Pilgrimage» and «Don Juan», as well as the dramatic poems «Manfred» and «Cain». There are many other shorter poems and part of the satire «English Bards and Scotch Reviewers». In addition there is a selection from Byron's inimitable letters, extracts from his journals and conversations, as well as more formal writings.

'I have made a terrible discovery ...I have not yet been born ...I live off borrowed substance; what I have within me is not mine.' In his four last plays Federico Garcia Lorca offered his disturbed and disturbing personal vision to Spanish audiences of the 1930s — unready, as he thought them, for the sexual frankness and surreal expression of his more experimental work. The ill-fated lovers of Blood Wedding, the desolate Yerma, the fading spinster Rosita, and Bernarda Alba's abused household of women all inhabit a familiar Andalusia. Their predicaments are starkly plotted, with a stagecraft rooted in classical theatrical tradition. In such figures Lorca addresses the cultural and political ferment of his time with a fiercely libertarian assault on 'old and wrong moralities', fusing the personal and the political through his virtuoso mastery of images. Yet all that mastery can barely keep at bay the anguished contradictions of these doomed human lives. Hence the authentic sense of danger — the duende, to use his own word of Lorca's theatre, finely conveyed here in John Edmunds's fluent and rhythmic new translations that lend themselves admirably to performance.

Thomas More: Utopia/ Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines With the publication of «Utopia» (1516), Thomas More introduced into the English language not only a new word, but a new way of thinking about the gulf between what ought to be and what is. His Utopia is at once a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of «Utopia». «Utopia» was only one of many early modern treatments of other worlds. This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. «New Atlantis» (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's «The Isle of Pines» (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Together these texts illustrate the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.

This novel, which has always been regarded as one of Scott's finest, opens with the Edinburgh riots of 1736. The people of the city have been infuriated by the actions of John Porteous, Captain of the Guard, and when they hear that his death has been reprieved by the distant monarch they ignore the Queen and resolve to take their own revenge. At the cente of the story is Edinburgh's forbidding Tolbooth prison, known by all as the Heart of Midlothian.

Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In «Leaves of Grass», he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry — breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and physiological allusions as `disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed'. A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour of the American nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.

The Barber of Seville * The Marriage of Figaro * The Guilty Mother Eighteenth-century France produced only one truly international theatre star, Beaumarchais, and only one name, Figaro, to put with Don Quixote or D'Artagnan in the ranks of popular myth. But who was Figaro? Not the impertinent valet of the operas of Mozart or Rossini, but both the spirit of resistance to oppression and a bourgeois individualist like his creator. The three plays in which he plots and schemes chronicle the slide of the ancien régime into revolution but also chart the growth of Beaumarchais' humanitarianism. They are also exuberant theatrical entertainments, masterpieces of skill, invention, and social satire which helped shape the direction of French theatre for a hundred years. This lively new translation catches all the zest and energy of the most famous valet in French literature.

`The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace'. Edward Gibbon called «The Histories» an `immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and the most lively images'. Its author, Cornelius Tacitus, widely acknowledged as the greatest of all Roman historians, describes with cynical power the murderous `Year of the Four Emperors' — AD 69 — when in just a few months the whole of the Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war. The ultimate triumph of Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian was only the prelude to further conflicts and disasters, with revolts among the Germans and Jews challenging the very foundations of Roman authority. W. H. Fyfe's classic translation has been substantially revised to accord with modern scholarship, and supplied with extensive historical and literary notes. The Introduction provides an essential guide to understanding the subtleties of Tacitus' writing, and sets the historical scene with a succinct account of the political and social background to the Imperial Roman state. Maps of the Roman Empire and a Glossary of Place Names complete this valuable edition.