Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

A Christmas Carol has gripped the public imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. This edition reprints the story alongside Dickens's four other Christmas Books: The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man.

This new edition contains Dickens's prefaces, working plans, and all the original illustrations. It is supplemented by a substantial new introduction, highlighting Dickens's engagement with his times, and the touching exploration of family relationships which give the novel added depth and relevance. The Notes and Bibliography have been substantially revised, extended, and updated.

A scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy, "Hard Times" is a daring novel of ideas--and ultimately a celebration of love, hope, and limitless possibilities of the imagination. Revised reissue.

The introduction reviews the few known facts about this early Shakespeare play and discusses the puzzling problems of its date and authorship. The text has been freshly edited with the aim of presenting the play as revised for the first recorded performance in 1594, with the addition of stage business from the prompt-copy from which the Folio edition derives.

'Heart of Darkness' is Conrad's finest tale and tells of Marlow's journey up the Congo River to meet Mr Kurtz. This volume also includes 'An Outpost of Progress', 'Karain', and 'Youth' in a revised edition using the English first edition texts and with new chronology and bibliography.

An invaluable source of pleasure to those English readers who wish to read this great medieval classic with true understanding, Sinclair's three-volume prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy provides both the original Italian text and the Sinclair translation, arranged on facing pages, and commentaries, appearing after each canto, which serve as brilliant examples of genuine literary criticism. This volume contains the complete translation of Dante's Paradiso.

The Clarendon edition of Adam Bede (1859) offers a critical edition of the work that established George Eliot's reputation. Its extensive textual apparatus lists manuscript and first edition variants from the copy-text, which is the corrected eighth edition of 1861 - her last revision of the book.

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.

Plautus was the single greatest influence on Western comedy. In fact, Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's the Miser are two subsequent classics directly based on Plautine originals. Plautus himself borrowed from the Greeks, but his jokes, rapid dialogue, bawdy humor, and irreverent characterizations are the original work of an undisputed genius. The comedies printed here show him at his best, and Professor Segal's translations keep their fast, rollicking pace intact, making these the most readable and actable versions available. This volume includes, The Braggart Soldier, e Brothers Menaechmus, The Haunted House, and The Pot of Gold.

Written in India in the early eighth century AD, Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara became one of the most popular accounts of the Buddhist spiritual path. Important as a manual of training among Mahayana Buddhists, especially in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it continues to be used as the basis for teaching by modern Buddhist teachers. This is a new translation from the original Sanskrit, with detailed annotations explaining allusions and technical references. The Introductions set Santideva's work in context, and for the first time explain its structure.

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able a judge whether the novel is as `diabolical' and `infamous' as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward's introduction explodes myths about Laclos's own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context.

Oscar Wilde was already one of the best known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and 1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays which spearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s and retain their power today.

Scenes of Clerical Life consists of three short novellas in which the lives of ordinary men and women in a provincial Midlands town are portrayed with tender sympathy and understanding. Eliot brought a new level of literary realism to her tales of Amos Barton, Mr Gilfil, and Janet Dempster in her first published work of fiction.

This edition of Paradise Lost is introduced by Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, whose debt to Milton he acknowledges in his personal tribute. Beautifully illustrated with the twelve engravings from the first illustrated edition of 1688, this is a special edition of Milton's epic poem.

The young sailor Edmond Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If. His daring escape, recovery of Monte Cristo's fabulous treasure, and revenge on his enemies make this one of the great thrillers of all time. This is a newly revised, unabridged translation.

Two Persian travellers arrive in Paris and report on the European society of the Enlightenment in their letters home. With biting satire they compare East and West, while unsettling news from the harem provides a suspenseful plot of jealousy and passion. This is the first English translation based on the original text.

The 11 tales of the Mabinogion combine Celtic mythology and Arthurian romance. This new translation recreates the storytelling world of medieval Wales and re-invests the tales with the power of performance.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is probably the most skillfuly told story in the whole of the English Arthurian cycle. Originating from the north-west midlands of England, it is based on two ancient Celtic motifs--the Beheading and the Exchange of Winnings--brought together by the anonymous 14th century author. Acclaimed poet Keith Harrison's new translation uses a modern alliterative pattern which subtly echoes the music of the original at the same time it strives for fidelity. This is the most generously annotated edition available, complete with a detailed introduction which situates the work in the context of Arthurian Romance and analyzes its poetics and narrative structure.

This revised edition of Sterne's great comic novel retains the first edition text incorporating Sterne's later changes, and adds two original Hogarth illustrations and a wealth of contextualizing information. Tristram's fictional autobiography features favourites including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Dr Slop and Widow Wadman.

In this enduring and internationally popular novel, Mark Twain combines social satire and dime-novel sensation with a rhapsody on boyhood and on America's pre-industrial past. Tom Sawyer, resilient, enterprising, and vainglorious, has long been a defining figure in the American cultural imagination.

Enormously influential in the development of American literature, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a controversial novel at the centre of impassioned critical debate. This edition discusses all the current issues and the evolution of Mark Twain's penetrating genius.

Henry V, the climax of Shakespeare's sequence of English history plays, is an inspiring, often comic celebration of a young warrior-king. But it is also a study of the costly exhilarations of war, and of the penalties as well as the glories of human greatness.

One of Shakespeare's final works, Cymbeline uses virtuoso theatrical and poetic means to dramatize a story of a marriage endangered by mistrust and painfully rebuilt, in a context of international conflict. This edition emphasizes the play's theatrical impact and pays close attention to its complex, evocative language.