Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

'Therese Raquin' is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower orders in nineteenth-century Paris. Zola's dispassionate dissection of the motivations of his characters, mere 'human beasts' who kill in order to satisfy their lust, is much more than an atmospheric Second Empire period-piece. 'Therese Raquin' stands as a key early manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which Zola was the founding father. Even today, this novel has lost none of its power to shock.

Originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series, this fine selection of Clare's writings, both verse and prose, illustrates all aspects of the poet's genius, from his bird and nature poems to his intense attempts at defining his own identity. This edition includes a new introduction by poet and scholar Tom Paulin.

`So you''re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!'' These words, said to have been uttered by Abraham Lincoln, signal the celebrity of Uncle Tom''s Cabin. The first American novel to become an international best-seller, Stowe''s novel charts the progress from slavery to freedom of fugitives who escape the chains of American chattel slavery, and of a martyr who transcends all earthly ties. At the middle of the nineteenth-century, the names of its characters - Little Eva, Topsy, Uncle Tom - were renowned. A hundred years later, `Uncle Tom''still had meaning, but, to Blacks everywhere it had become a curse. This edition firmly locates Uncle Tom''s Cabin within the context of African-American writing, the issues of race and the role of women. Its appendices include the most important contemporary African-American literary responses to the glorification of Uncle Tom''s Christian resignation as well as excerpts from popular slave narratives, quoted by Stowe in her justification of the dramatization of slavery, Key to Uncles Tom''s Cabin. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

First published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal''s voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation. At the centre of The Lusiads is Vasco da Gama''s pioneer voyage via southern Africa to India in 1497-98. The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes''s narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East. The poem''s twin symbols are the Cross and the Astrolabe, and its celebration of a turning point in mankind''s knowledge of the world unites the old map of the heavens with the newly discovered terrain on earth. Yet itspeaks powerfully, too, of the precariousness of power, and of the rise and decline of nationhood, threatened not only from without by enemies, but from within by loss of integrity and vision. The first translation of The Lusiads for almost half a century, this new edition is complemented by an illuminating introduction and extensive notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The four plays newly translated for this volume are among Euripides most exciting works. Iphigenia among the Taurians is a story of escape contrasting Greek and barbarian civilization, set on the Black Sea at the edge of the known world. Bacchae, a profound exploration of the human psyche, deals with the appalling consequences of resistance to Dionysus, god of wine and unfettered emotion. Iphigenia at Aulis centers on the ultimate dysfunctional family as emotion is tested in the crucible of the Greek expedition against Troy. And Rhesus, probably the work of another playwright, is an action-packed Iliad in miniature, dealing with a grisly event in the Trojan War.

Usually classifed as a ''problem comedy'', All''s Well that Ends Well invites a fresh assessment. Its psychologically disturbing presentation of an agressive, designing woman and a reluctant husband wooed by trickery won it little favour in earlier centuries, and both directors and critics have frequently tried to avoid or simplify its uncomfortable elements. More recently, several distinguished productions have revealed it as an exceptionally penetratingstudy of both personal and social issues. In her introduction Susan Snyder makes the play''s clashing ideologies of class and gender newly accessible. She explains how the very discords of style can be seen as a source of theatrical power and complexity, and offers a fully reconsidered, helpfully annotated text for both readers and actors. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was seriously ill at the beginning of the First World War. In it he introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an `ordinary fellow'', is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and spy-ring alike, and must outwit his intelligent and pitiless enemy in the corridors of Whitehall and,finally, at the site of the mysterious thirty-nine steps.The best-known of Buchan''s thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps has been continuously in print since first publication and has been filmed three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. In this, the only critical edition, Christopher Harvie''s introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spy-master and propaganda chief. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? In Flatland, A Square's linear world is invaded by a Sphere bringing the gospel of the third dimension. Part geometry lesson, part social satire, the novel enlarges readers' imaginations beyond the limits of our 'respective dimensional prejudices'.

According to many critics, Wives and Daughters is Elizabeth Gaskell's masterpiece. Set in a provincial English town, the novel is a subtle representation of historical change explored in human terms.

In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economic stresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling genius. The critically established text, the first to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscript readings which have never before appeared in print. The stories include The Three Strangers; A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion; The Withered Arm; Fellow-Townsmen; Interlopers at the Knap; The Distracted Preacher

This is a major new translation of a classic work of Greek literature - Apollonius of Rhodes' epic poem on the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The translation is both reliable and accurate, as well as gripping to read, and is designed to bring out the best of Apollonius' brilliant, highly original, and sometimes disturbing poem. With a full glossary, notes, and introduction, this edition has all the elements to satisfy classicists and general readersalike.

This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.

This bilingual edition provides all of Rimbaud's poems, with the exception of his Latin verses and some small fragments. It also includes some of his prose pieces, chosen because they offer a commentary on his poetic concerns.

A wealthy American man of business descends on Europe in search of a wife to make his fortune complete. His bid for Claire de Cintr'e hand receives an icy welcome from the heads of her aristocratic family. Can they stomach his manners for the sake of his dollars? Out of this classic collision between the old world and the new, James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama a fable which in the later version printed here takes on some of the subtleties associated with this greatest novels.

Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be transgressed, and what should be reverently preserved. Burke's generation was muchin need of advice on these matters. The Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and catastrophically, the French Revolution presented challenges of terrible proportions. They could promise paradise or threaten anarchy. Burke was acutely aware of how high the stakes were. The Reflections onthe Revolution in France was a dire warning of the consequences that would follow the mismanagement of change.

In this vigorous and fast-moving novel of post-Napoleonic France, Julien Sorel's plans to reach the higher echelons of society through the priesthood are defelected by his realization that the attainment of happiness is of greater consequence than the pursuit of ambition. Subtitled `A Chronicle of 1830', Stendhal's depiction of a nation of smug hypocrites scandalized contemporary readers, who recognized themselves or their peers and felt uncomfortable with the energy, imagination, and sincerity of a hero so patently inspired by their lately deposed Emperor. Julien's restless energy is fully captured in this specially commissioned translation of one of the world's great novels.

Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The compelling story and the machinations of the evil Aeneas Manston also raise the great questions underlying Hardy's major novels, and this edition shows for the first time that the sensation genre was always Hardy's natural medium. Based on first edition text, and includes later prefaces and the Wessex Poems 'dissolved' into prose.

Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Nietzsche passes under review all his previous books and reaches a final reckoning with his many enemies. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career.

Published in 1913, this harrowing, autobiographical 'A to Z' of drinking shattered London's reputation as a clean-living adventurer and massively successful author of such books as White Fang and The Call of the Wild.

Longus' romance tells the story of two teenagers, who love each other but do not know how to make love. Divine presences mingle with peasant life in this colourful story of the mystery of love and sexual initiation. Ronald McCail's new translation is immensely readable and does full justice to one of the most popular of classical romances, a precursor to the modern novel.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance is a highly influential defence of aestheticism. Pater redefined the practice of criticism through his readings of some of the paintings, sculptures, and poems of the Renaissance, and shocked contemporaries for sponsoring a hedonistic ethic with his infamous 'Conclusion'.

This new translation offers a more representative selection of the Grimms' tales by including fables and morality tales as well as all the best known 'fairy' tales. It faithfully conveys the Grimms' own texts and provides a wealth of information about the origins of the stories, their literary evolution at the hands of the Grimms, with examples of earlier versions and stories that were omitted as being unsuitable for children.

When beautiful Lucy Graham becomes Lady Audley, her future looks secure. But her past is shrouded in mystery, and the disappearance of a young man sparks an investigation that will reveal her dark secret... This new edition explores the novel in the context of nineteenth-century sensation fiction and the lively debates it provoked.

In the slum streets of the Jago, Dicky Perrott lives a life of petty crime and violence. With Father Sturt's arrival, he sees how his horizons might alter. Dicky's story highlights the terrible conditions of the Victorian underworld and the social policy that underpinned it. This edition provides rich contextual background material.

The three short fictions in this unique collection, Sarrasine, The Unknown Masterpiece, and The Girl with the Golden Eyes, deal with the relationship between artistic ideals and sexual desires. They show Balzac's mastery of the seductions of storytelling, and are among the 19th century's richest explorations of life and art.