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Oxford University Press
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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. |
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Shewring's superb prose translation comes as close to the spirit of the original Greek as our language will allow. |
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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. |
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«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.» |
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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. |
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'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. |
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«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.» |
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«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».» |
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«`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'.» |
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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. |
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«'Yes, what is Dionysian? — This book provides an answer — «a man who knows» speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god'. «The Birth of Tragedy» (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy is the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational Apollonian form. In order to promote a return to these values, Nietzsche undertakes a critique of the complacent rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture and makes an impassioned plea for the regenerative potential of the music of Wagner. In its wide-ranging discussion of the nature of art, science and religion, Nietzsche's argument raises important questions about the problematic nature of cultural origins which are still of concern today.» |
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«This wide-ranging, jargon-free dictionary contains over 2,000 entries on all aspects of statistics, including terms used in computing, mathematics, and probability. It also includes biographical information on over 200 key figures in the field and coverage of statistical journals and societies. While embracing the whole multi-disciplinary spectrum of this complex subject, information is presented in a clear and practical manner. This revised and updated edition features recommended web links for many entries, accessible via the «Dictionary of Statistics» website, which provide valuable extra information. Entries are generously illustrated with useful figures and diagrams, and include worked examples where applicable. Appendices include a historical calendar of important statistical events, lists of statistical and mathematical notation, and statistical tables. An invaluable dictionary for statistics students and professionals from a wide range of disciplines, including economics, politics, market research, medicine, psychology, pharmaceuticals, and mathematics. Also provides a clear introduction to the subject for the general reader.» |
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«The very first Sherlock Holmes story, «A Study in Scarlet» was also the first of Conan Doyle's books to be published. His two creations, Holmes, the master of the science of detection and Watson, the great detective's faithful companion, are immediately in fine form. The mystery itself, its solution plucked unerringly by Holmes from the heart of Victorian London, proves to be the inevitable consequence of a tragedy of the American West. The story is harrowing in its alternating hope and despair, although Holmes himself was later to complain that the book `produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid'.» |
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«In these tales Gogol guides us through the elegant streets of St Petersburg, the city erected by force and ingenuity on the marshes of the Neva estuary. Something of the deception and violence of the city's creation seems to lurk beneath its harmonious facade, however, and it confounds its inhabitants with false dreams and absurd visions — `nothing is what it seems!' warns Gogol. St Petersburg is also the setting for «Marriage», Gogol's satire on courtship and cowardice. Finally, for «The Government Inspector», indisputably Russia's greatest comedy, we move to the provinces although even here St Petersburg's preoccupation with status and appearances makes its presence felt.» |
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''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. |
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Of all Jack London's fictions none have been so popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this edition includes White Fang, and five famous short stories — 'Batard', 'Moon-Face', 'Brown Wolf', 'That Top page Spot', and 'To Build a Fire. |
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'Rus! Russ!...Everything within you is open, desolate, and flat; your squat towns barely protrude above the level of your wide plains, marking them like little dots, like specks; here is nothing to entice and fascinate the onlooker's gaze. Yet whence this unfathomable, uncanny force that draws me to you?' Although Dead Souls (1842) was largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, his last work remains to this day the most essentially Russian of all the great novels in Russian literature. As we follow its hero Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned unscrupulous confidence man, about the Russian countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise, there unfolds before us a gallery of characters worthy in comic range of Chaucer, Rabelais, Fielding and Sterne. With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls stands as one of the most dazzling and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This brilliant new translation by Christopher English is complemented by Top page a superb introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire. |
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The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commerical upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Soames Forsyte is the brilliantly portrayed central figure, a Victorian who outlives the age, and whose baffled passion for his beautiful but unresponsive wife Irene reverberates throughout the saga. Written with both compassion and ironic detachment, Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only the family's fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women in an intensely competitive male world. Above all, Galsworthy is concerned with the conflict at the heart of English culture between the soulless materialism of wealth Top page and property and the humane instincts of love, beauty, and art. |
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'To love him was not enough for me after the happiness I had felt in falling in love. I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.' Leo Tolstoy, known to the world for his famous novels, also created throughout his sixty-year career as a writer a significant body of works of shorter ficiton. These fictions, like his novels, tend toward a uniqueness in form, even as they explore a set of themes common in the longer works. The four novellas selected here stand closest to the novels, and represent Tolstoy at his creative best, exploring in a specific and focused way his characteristic themes: life understood as a journey of the discovery of identity and vocation, the meaning of one's life in the face of death, and the redemptive role of suffering and compassion. Family Happiness (1859) traces the psychology of failed married love yet is written against the tradition of the novel of romance, marriage and adultery. The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) recounts a husband's addictions, jealousy, sinister guilt and subsequent isolation, while The Cossacks (1863) focuses on the experiences of a young Russian on in the Caucusus whose quest for romantic love becomes one for the love of 'the whole of God's world'. Finally, the superbly crafted Hadji Murad (1905) juxtaposes the military and civilian worlds, and relates a tale of the human violation of the natural through a series of parallel episodes. Written over a period of almost fifty years, these works display Tolstoy's changing views on art and sexuality, women and marriage, nationalism and ethnicity, war and empire. All four novellas develop, each in its own unique way, the central Tolystoyan theme of love. This edition, which updates a classic Top page translation, has explanatory notes and a substantial introduction based on the most recent scholarship in the field. |
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''The ordinary laws of Nature are suspended. The various checks with influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear.'' Headed by the larger than life figure of Professor Challenger, a scientific expedition sets out to explore a plateau in South America that remains frozen in time from the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Seemingly impossible to penetrate, this lost word holds great danger for the four men, whether from fiendish ape-men or terrifying prehistoric creatures. Arthur Conan Doyle's Top page classic tale of adventure and discovery still excites the reader today, just as dinosaurs continue to grip the popular imagination. |
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