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Книги издательства «Oxford University Press»
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The Oxford Bookworms Library provides superb reading and student / teacher support for the classroom, and is also highly recommended for schools running Extensive Reading Programmes, offering the right range of books that encourage students to read for pleasure. There are so many things that a mother wishes to teach her daughter. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to keep hoping, when hope is your only joy. How to laugh for ever. This is the story of four mothers and their daughters — Chinese-American women, the mothers born in China, and the daughters born in America. Through their eyes we see life in pre-Revolutionary China, and life in downtown San Francisco; women struggling to find a cultural identity that can include a past and a future half a world apart. |
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Provides students of all ages with easy-to-follow guidance on how to structure an essay and how to select and research the most appropriate subject to write on. The first section covers gathering and developing information; the second offers schematic sumaries to the first part. |
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- A unique collection of Chekhov's most lyrical stories in a new translation of great skill and originality, published to coincide with the centenary of Chekhov's death. — This translation captures Chekhov's musicality and modernism by paying special attention to his tone and prose rhythm — closer to the Russian while shaping the prose idiomatically. — The stories are arranged chronologically to show the evolution of Chekhov's art and include familiar as well as less well-known works. — Growing interest in Chekhov as a prose writer, evidenced by the attention given to recent publications of Chekhov's previously unpublished work, and the influence he had had on modern writers such as Katherine Mansfield, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. |
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«Devils», also known in English as «The Possessed and The Demons», was first published in 1871. 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.» |
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Turgenev'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. The controversial portrait of Bazarov, the energetic, cynical, and self-assured `nihilist' who repudiates the romanticism of his elders, shook Russian society. Indeed the image of humanity liberated by science from age-old conformities and prejudices is one that can threaten establishments of any political or religious persuasion, and is especially potent in the modern era. This new translation, specially commissioned for the World's Classics, is the first to draw on Turgenev's working manuscript, which only came to light in 1988. |
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«This volume contains English translations of: «Ivanov», «The Seagull», «Uncle Vanya», «Three Sisters», and «The Cherry Orchard», with a new Introduction by Ronald Hingley.» |
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«Frankenstein» was Mary Shelley's immensely powerful contribution to the ghost stories which she, Percy Shelley, and Byron wrote one wet summer in Switzerland. Its protagonist is a young student of natural philosophy, who learns the secret of imparting life to a creature constructed from relics of the dead, with horrific consequences. «Frankenstein» confronts some of the most feared innovations of evolutionism: topics such as degeneracy, hereditary disease, and mankind's status as a species of animal. The text used here is from the 1818 edition, which is a mocking exposé of leaders and achievers who leave desolation in their wake, showing mankind its choice — to live cooperatively or to die of selfishness. It is also a black comedy, and harder and wittier than the 1831 version with which we are more familiar. Drawing on new research, Marilyn Butler examines the novel in the context of the radical sciences, which were developing among much controversy in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, and shows how Frankenstein's experiment relates to a contemporary debate between the champions of materialist science and of received religion.» |
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«He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was...» «The Great Gatsby» (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, stands among the greatest of all American fiction. Jay Gatsby's lavish lifestyle in a mansion on Long Island's gold coast encapsulates the spirit, excitement, and violence of the era Fitzgerald named `the Jazz Age'. Impelled by his love for Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby seeks nothing less than to recapture the moment five years earlier when his best and brightest dreams — his `unutterable visions' — seemed to be incarnated in her kiss. A moving portrayal of the power of romantic imagination, as well as the pathos and courage entailed in the pusuit of an unattainable dream, The Great Gatsby is a classic fiction of hope and disillusion. This edition is fully annotated with a fine Introduction incorporating new interpretation and detailing Fitzgerald's struggle to write the novel, its critical reception and its significance for future generations.» |
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«The Hound of the Baskervilles» is the tale of an ancient curse suddenly given a terrifying modern application. The grey towers of Baskerville Hall and the wild open country of Dartmoor hold many secrets for Holmes and Watson to unravel. The detective is contemptuous of supernatural manifestations, but the reader will remain perpetually haunted by the hound from the moor. The editor of this volume, W.W. Robson, was Emeritus David Masson Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and author of «Modern English Literature». The general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, Owen Dudley Edwards, is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh and author or «The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle».» |
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«The Jungle Books» can be regarded as classic stories told by an adult to children. But they also constitute a complex literary work of art in which the whole of Kipling's philosophy of life is expressed in miniature. They are best known for the 'Mowgli' stories; the tale of a baby abandoned and brought up by wolves, educated in the ways and secrets of the jungle by Kaa the python, Baloo the bear, and Bagheera the black panther. The stories, a mixture of fantasy, myth, and magic, are underpinned by Kipling's abiding preoccupation with the theme of self-discovery, and the nature of the 'Law'.» |
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«The «Lives of the Caesars» include the biographies of Julius Caesar and the eleven subsequent emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitelius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. Suetonius composed his material from a variety of sources, without much concern for their reliability. His biographies consist the ancestry and career of each emperor in turn; however, his interest is not so much analytical or historical, but anecdotal and salacious which gives rise to a lively and provocative succession of portraits. The account of Julius Caesar does not simply mention his crossing of the Rubicon and his assassination, but draws attention to his dark piercing eyes and attempts to conceal his baldness. The Live of Caligula presents a vivid picture of the emperor's grotesque appearance, his waywardness, and his insane cruelties. The format and style of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars was to set the tone for biography throughout western literature — his work remains thoroughly readable and full of interest.» |
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In this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Serbia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor and the degradation, in relentless detail. The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Turgenev to passages from Dante's Inferno. Terror and resignation — the rampages of a pyschopath, the brief serence interlude of Christmas Day — are evoked by Dostoevsky, writing several years after his release, with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment. For this reason, House of the Dead is certainly the least Dostoevskian of his works, yet, paradoxically, it ranks among his great masterpieces. |
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The Merry Wives of Windsor was almost certainly required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597: Shakespeare threw into it all the creative energy that went into his Henry IV plays. Falstaff is here, with Pistol, Mistress Quickly, and Justice Shallow, in a spirited and warm-hearted 'citizen comedy'. Boisterous action is combined with situational irony and rich characterization. In his introduction T. W. Craik discusses the play's probable occasion (the Garter Feast of 1597 at court), its relationship to Shakespeare's English history plays and to other sources, its textual history (with particular reference to the widely diverging 1623 Folio and 1602 Quarto), and its original quality as drama. He assesses various interpretations of the play, topical, critical, and theatrical. In the commentary he pays particular attention to expounding the literal sense (he proposes some new readings) and evoking the stage business. |
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«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 Poe's mystification of his readers.» |
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«Notes from the Underground» (1864) is one of the most profound works of nineteenth-century literature. A probing, speculative book, often regarded as a forerunner of the Existentialist movement, it examines the important political and philosophical questions that were current in Russia and Europe at the time. «The Gambler» (1866), set in the fictional town of Roulettenberg, explores the compulsive nature of gambling, one of the author's own vices and a subject he describes with extraordinary acumen and drama. Specially commissioned for the World's Classics, this new translation includes a full editorial apparatus.» |
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Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, is one of the immortals of children's literature. J. M. Barrie first created Peter Pan as a baby, living in secret with the birds and fairies in the middle of London, but as the children for whom he invented the stories grew older, so too did Peter, reappearing in Neverland, where he was aided in his epic battles with Red Indians and pirates by the motherly and resourceful Wendy Darling. With their contrary lures of home and escape, childhood and maturity, safety and high adventure, these unforgettable tales are equally popular with children and adults. |
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«William Blake (1757-1827) was a poet of striking originality, whose poetic world of myth and mysticism continues to fascinate. By turns a haunting lyricist, an apocalyptic visionary, and an unorthodox thinker, Blake was for years ignored or derided. Sustained by his belief in the artistic imagination, he drafted poetry, prose visions, and epigrams, and manufactured beautiful illustrated volumes of his lyrics and verse narratives. Towards the end of his life, Blake's unique and irreducible talent was recognized by a group of younger artists, who rescued much of his achievement from oblivion. This selection represents the full range of Blake's accomplishment as a poet, ranging from early «Poetical Sketches» to late lyrics, and including such major works as «The Book of Thel», «Songs of Innocence», «The Marriage of Heaven and Hell», «Visions of the Daughters of Albion», «America», «Songs of Experience», and «Europe». The collection is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, with Michael Mason's introduction and notes providing the ideal guide to a remarkable oeuvre.» |
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«Byron was a legend in his own lifetime and the dominant influence on the Romantic movement. The most European of the English writers in an age of revolution, Byron was deeply involved in contemporary events, and a passionate supporter of the struggle for Greek independence. Describing himself as `born for opposition', his work was largely directed against what he called the `cant political, cant poetical, and cant moral' of the English and European worlds. He was rocketed to fame by the publication of «Childe Harold» in 1812, and lionized by society until his departure from England amid a whirlpool of private gossip and newspaper scandal in 1816. His is, in every sense, a poetry of experience, and a Romantic emphasis on the personality of the poet is the hallmark of all his verse. Relishing humour and irony, daring and flamboyant, sardonic yet idealistic, his work encompasses a sweeping range of topics, subjects, and models, embracing the most traditional and the most experimental poetic forms. This selection of the poetical works, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes such masterpieces as «The Corsair», «Manfred», «Bebbo», and «Don Juan». There are many other less familiar works and shorter lyrics, and Jerome J. McGann's introduction and notes give fascinating insight into Byron's world.» |
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«John Donne (1572-1631) is perhaps the most important poet of the seventeenth century. In his day it seemed to his admirers that Donne had changed the literary universe, and he is now widely regarded as the founder of the metaphysical `school'. Donne's poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of rhythms, images, forms, and personae, from irresistible seducer to devout believer. His greatness stems from the subtleties and ambivalences of tone that convey his remarkably modern awareness of the instability of the self. This collection of Donne's verse is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of his major works. It includes a wide selection from his secular and divine poems, such as the rebellious and libertine satires and love elegies, the virtuoso «Songs and Sonnets», and the desperate, passionate «Holy Sonnets». John Carey's introduction and extensive notes provide valuable insights into Donne's poetic genius.» |
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«'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still less without love.' Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', «A Sentimental Journey» (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus. A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling. This new edition includes a selection from «The Sermons of Mr Yorick», which shed light on the concerns of the «Journey», «The Journal to Eliza», which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and «A Political Romance», the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career.» |
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