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Oxford University Press
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'I lay in the garden and red the Browning love letters, and the figure of their dog made me laugh so I couldn't resist making him a Life.' Throughout her career, Woolf invokes the animal world both directly and metaphorically. She started to write a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel after finishing The Waves, tracing the life of the spaniel from his country origins, his puppyhood spent with the writer Mary Mitford, through his sheltered existence with Elizabeth Barrett in her sick room, and later travels in Florence. But Flush is much more than a playful writer's holiday. As well as offering an exploration of a life of the senses free from the tyranny of words, Flush can be read as an allegorical testimony to the inscrutable, discarded, unrepresentable lives of the Victorian women poets, who were barely discussed or read in the 1930s. From a quite literally low point of view, Woolf explores class and gender in Victorian London, with gently mocking humour. Charming yet also radical, Flush is a work of sensuous imagination, an apparently light text that opens up a range of questions concerning difference which are woven through the whole of Woolf's writing. |
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A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps Shakespeare's most popular play, particularly as a first introduction to Shakespeare for children--filled as it is with a marvelous mixture of aristocrats, workers, and fairies. For this edition, Peter Holland's introduction looks at dreams and dreamers, tracing the materials out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows. |
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«Usually classified as a «problem comedy», All's Well that Ends Well is a psychologically disturbing presentation of an aggressive, designing woman and a reluctant husband wooed by trickery. In her introduction Susan Snyder makes the play's clashing ideologies of class and gender newly accessible, and offers a fully reconsidered, annotated text for both readers and actors.» |
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Perhaps the most brilliant political play ever written, Coriolanus is a gripping psychological study of the relationship between personality and politics, and its Roman hero one of the most memorable Shakespeare ever created. The introduction to this new edition offers the first full stage history and analysis of the original production of Coriolanus at the Blackfriars theater, and also examines Shakespeare's adaptation of his historical material while emphasizing the wide range of interpretations that are possible in performance. |
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Wide-ranging and authoritative, this sociology dictionary is the most informative of its kind. Compiled by a team of experts, under the editorship of Gordon Marshall and John Scott, it contains over 2,500 entries. With terms taken from sociology and the related fields of psychology, economics, anthropology, philosophy, and political science, it provides widespread coverage of all aspects of sociology from adaptation to zero toleranceas well as biographies covering key figures, such as Gilles Deleuze and Erich Fromm. The jargon-free entries blend clear descriptions with in-depth analysis, and include many real-life examples, making even the most complicated topics easy to understand. This new edition has been revised to bring the dictionary completely up-to-date. Now boasting many entry-level web links, accessible via the regularly updated Dictionary of Sociology companion website, this volume offers more relevant and useful information than ever before, making it an invaluable introduction and a key reference work for students, teachers, and professionals in sociology and related fields. |
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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a man of extreme passions and a playwright of immense talent, is the most important of Shakespeare's contemporaries. This edition offers his five major plays, which show the radicalism and vitality of his writing in the few years before his violent death. Tamburlaine Part One and Part Two deal with the rise to world prominence of the great Scythian shepherd-robber; The Jew of Malta is a drama of villainy and revenge; Edward II was to influence Shakespeare's Richard II. Doctor Faustus, perhaps the first drama taken from the medieval legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil, is here in both its A- and its B- text, showing the enormous and fascinating differences between the two. Under the General Editorship of Dr. Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum 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, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. |
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The Oxford Study Italian Dictionary has many features including: Colour headwords and virtual alphabet tabs, alphabet strip on every page for easy navigation; clear examples showing the words in context; help with grammar; expressions and idioms highlighted; masculine and feminine forms given clearly and an introduction on how to use the dictionary. |
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La Reine Margot (1845) is a novel of suspense and drama which recreates the violent world of intrigue, murder and duplicity of the French Renaissance. Dumas fills his canvas with a gallery of unforgettable characters, unremitting action and the engaging generosity of spirit which has made him one of the world's greatest and best-loved story-tellers. This revised edition of the classic translation of 1846 is richly annotated. An introduction sets Dumas and his work in their literary, historical and cultural context. |
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On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about interpretation and the history of ethics which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both. This is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his characteristic concerns. The introduction places his ideas within the cultural context of his own time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience. |
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William Wordsworth (1770-1850) has long been one of the best-known and best-loved English poets. The Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge, is a landmark in the history of English romantic poetry. His celebration of nature and of the beauty and poetry in the commonplace embody a unified and coherent vision that was profoundly innovative. This volume presents the poems in their order of composition and in their earliest completed state, enabling the reader to trace Wordsworth's poetic development and to share the experience of his contemporaries. It includes a large sample of the finest lyrics, and also longer narratives such as The Ruined Cottage, Home at Grasmere, Peter Bell, and the autobiographical masterpiece, The Prelude (1805). All the major examples of Wordsworth's prose on the subject of poetry are also included. |
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Sparkling with the witty dialogue between Beatrice and Benedicts, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable and theatrically successful comedies. This edition offers a newly edited text and an exceptionally helpful and critically aware introduction. Paying particular attention to analysis of the play's minor characters, Sheldon P Zitner discusses Shakespeare's transformation of his source material. He rethinks the attitudes to gender relations that underlie the comedy and determine its view of marriage. |
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«This is an entirely new selection of Keats's finest poetry containing all his best known work as well as a sample of less familiar pieces. Keats published three volumes of poetry before his death at age twenty-five of tuberculosis and, while many of his contemporaries were prompt to recognize his greatness, snobbery and political hostility led the Tory press to vilify and patronize him as a «Cockney poet.» Financial anxieties and the loss of those he loved most had tried him persistently, yet he dismissed the concept of life as a vale of tears and substituted the concept of a «vale of Soul-making.» His poetry and his remarkable letters reveal a spirit of questing vitality and profound understanding and his final volume, which contains the great odes and the unfinished Hyperion, attests to an astonishing maturity of power.» |
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The novel that set the pattern for the modern Western, Riders of the Purple Sage was first published in 1912, immediately selling over a million copies. In the remote border country of southern Utah, a man is about to be whipped by the Mormons in order to pressure Jane Withersteen into marrying against her will. The punishment is halted by the arrival of the hero, Lassiter, a gunman in black leather, who routs the persecutors and then gradually recounts his own history of an endless search for a woman abducted long ago by the Mormons. Secrecy, seduction, captivity, and escape: out of these elements Zane Grey fashioned his magnificent classic of the American West. |
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The most famous of Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, Julius Caesar was written and first performed in 1599, and was apparently one the plays his contemporaries enjoyed most. Recounting the death of Caesar on the steps of the Senate house, the play offers some of Shakespeare's finest scenes: Antony's skillful speech at Caesar's funeral, and the quarrel and reconciliation between Brutus and Cassius with the news of Portia's death. This edition includes a fresh consideration of the play's date and its place in the Shakespeare canon and examines how Shakespeare reshaped his sources (primarily North's translation of Plutarch's Lives). |
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Pippi Longstocking is nine years old and lives all by herself with a horse, a monkey, a suitcase full of gold, and no grown-ups to tell her what to do. She's wild and funny and her crazy ideas are always getting her into trouble! In these three favourite stories, Pippi performs at the circus, is reunited with her long-lost father, and takes her friends Tommy and Annika on a trip to the Canny Canny Islands. She also finds a squeazle, gives a shark a good telling-off, and turns 43 somersaults in the air before breakfast! Everything's fun with Pippi around! This edition is illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings by best-selling artist, Tony Ross. |
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Developed using evidence from the Oxford English Corpus, this fully revised text offers more up-to-date and complete coverage of synonyms and antonyms than any other A-Z thesaurus. Increased coverage now includes hundreds of new phrases and idioms, and newly selected examples of real English showing how words are used, and helping to guide you to the right meaning. New features include the Word Toolkit which helps you choose the best word matches based on evidence from the Oxford English Corpus. In addition, the popular Word Link feature points you to related words. Look up 'sleep' and find the words 'sedative', 'hypnotic', and 'soporific', and find related prefixes. The redesigned centre section provides convenient lists of words by topic, from society and religion, to fashion and technology, in addition to lists of foreign, and archaic words and phrases. An invaluable resource for puzzlers, or anyone wishing to broaden their vocabulary. The Oxford Thesaurus of English is ideal for anyone who wants a comprehensive and authoritative thesaurus of current English, for use by writers and editors, students, and crossword and puzzle solvers at work or at home. |
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Grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary practice for every unit Extra vocabulary — More Words to Learn, Check What You Know, MultiROM with video, quizzes, audio, dictations, exam practice, and reference material. |
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Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Château d'If. Having endured years of incarceration, he stages a daring and dramatic escape and sets out to discover the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo, and to catch up with his enemies. A novel of enormous tension and excitement, The Count of Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge. Believing himself to be an 'Angel of Providence', Dantès pursues his vengeance to the bitter end, only then realizing that he himself is a victim of fate.This newly revised, unabridged translation is as unputdownable now as it was when the novel first appeared, and William Thackeray, enthralled, 'began to read Monte Cristo at six one morning and never stopped till eleven at night'. |
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Described variously as the greatest poem of the European Middle Ages and, because of the author's evangelical purpose, the 'fifth Gospel', the Divine Comedy is central to the culture of the west. The poem is a spiritual autobiography in the form of a journey — the poet travels from the dark circles of the Inferno, up the mountain of Purgatory, where Virgil, his guide leaves him to encounter Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise. Dante conceived the poem as the new epic of Christendom, and he creates a world in which reason and faith have transformed moral and social chaos into order. Charles Sisson's blank verse translation is remarkable for its lucidity and vigour, and the Introduction, diagrams, maps, and notes by David Higgins provide the reader with invaluable guidance. |
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'A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought...but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.' When Machiavelli's brief treatise on Renaissance statecraft and princely power was posthumously published in 1532, it generated a debate that has raged unabated until the present day. Based upon Machiavelli's first-hand experience as an emissary of the Florentine Republic to the courts of Europe, The Prince analyses the usually violent means by which men seize, retain, and lose political power. Machiavelli added a dimension of incisive realism to one of the major philosophical and political issues of his time, especially the relationship between public deeds and private morality. His book provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter in what era or by whom it is exercised. This fluent new translation is accompanied by comprehensive notes and an introduction that considers the true purpose of The Prince and dispels some of the myths associated with it. |
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