Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

Drawing on psychology, philosophy, and literature, William James's classic survey of religious belief gathers testimony from a huge range of diverse sources to construct a defence of the individual religious experience. It speaks powerfully to the modern debate on atheism and faith, in the most critically up-to-date edition available.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Suspiria de Profundis, and 'The English Mail-Coach' are De Quincey's finest essays in autobiography, published here with three appendices containing a wealth of related manuscript material and a comprehensive introduction and notes.

In A Hero of Our Time, the first great Russian novel, a young officer, passionate and world-weary, is posted to the Caucasus and becomes involved in a series of adventures. A dazzlingly original work of fiction, the novel is newly translated together with Pushkin's travel narrative, A Journey to Arzrum, with introduction and notes.

Pirandello is a seminal figure in modern drama. This is the only one-volume edition of his two most famous plays, Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV, and his last unfinished masterpiece The Mountain Giants, in lively and performable new translations that remain faithful to the letter and spirit of the originals.

An ambitious and unscrupulous priest arrives in the provincial town of Plassans, intent on conquering its political and social life. His arrival has profound consequences for the Mouret family, whose lives are turned upside down. This is the fourth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, and the first modern translation for more than fifty years.

The Compleat Angler is the most famous work in the literature of sport and a unique celebration of the English countryside. This new edition highlights its celebration of natural history, the environment, conservation, and the power of friendship.

Arthur Machen is a significant figure in supernatural and horror literature, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This collection brings together his best horror tales with a full contextual introduction and which helps to illuminate Machen's place in the literary and cultural milieu of 1890s Britain.

When Pauline Quenu is taken to the seaside to live with her relatives, her love of life contrasts with the pessimism which infects the family. This is the twelfth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, remarkable for it's depictions of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering.

Crime and Punishment is one of the most important novels of the nineteenth century. It is the story of a murder committed on principle, of a killer who wishes to set himself outside and above society. It is marked by Dostoevsky's own harrowing experience in penal servitude, and yet contains moments of wild humour.

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written

This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology's books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, and with extensive notes on the history and myth that lie behind them.

The first of Chekhov's works to be published in a serious literary journal, `The Steppe', with its masterly account of a spectacular thunderstorm, signifies his maturation as a writer of short stories. While the majority of his tales focus on the privileged classes, this selection shows that Chekhov never forgot his origins as the son of a failed provincial grocer, and characters as varied as the brutal soldier in `Gusev', the downtrodden old constable in `OnOfficial Business', and the bemused peasants in `New Villa' testify to the power and flexibility of his art.

Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier, to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea-captain faces a succession of crises on his first command, for which he feels himself responsible. The novel is a work full of 'sudden passions', as well as a penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood.

The tales with which Sheherazade nightly postpones the murderous intent of the Sultan Schahriar have entered our language and our lives like no other collection before or since. This, the only edition to include the complete text of the earliest English translation of the Nights, also offers extensive textual apparatus such as explanatory notes and plot summaries to help readers follow the complex and interwoven stories.

For many centuries, Aristotle's Physics was the essential starting point for anyone who wished to study the natural sciences. Now, in the first translation into English since 1930, Aristotle's thought is presented accurately, with a lucid introduction and extensive notes to explain the general structure of eac section of the book, and shed light on particular problems. It simplifies and expands the style of the original, making for easier reading and better comprehension.

On Obligations was written by Cicero after the murder of Julius Caesar to provide principles of behaviour for aspiring politicians. Though written for first-century Romans it has been adopted as a guide to political conduct in every major era in the West: by the early Christians, in the high Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, and in the age of the Enlightenment.

In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to Margaret Sherwin, and the consequent horrors of betrayal, insanity, and death, Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the first half of the nineteenth century. Collins' treatment of adultery shocked contemporary reviewers, and even today the passionate and lurid atmosphere he created has the power to disturb the modern reader.

Magdalen Vanstone and her sister Norah learn the true meaning of social stigma in Victorian England only after the traumatic discovery that their dearly loved parents, whose sudden deaths have left them orphans, were not married at the time of their birth. Disinherited by law and brutally ousted from Combe-Raven, the idyllic country estate which has been their peaceful home since childhood, the two young women are left to fend for themselves. While the submissive Norah follows a path of duty and hardship as a governess, her high-spirited and rebellious younger sister has made other decisions. Determined to regain her rightful inheritance at any cost, Magdalen uses her unconventional beauty and dramatic talent in recklessly pursuing her revenge. Aided by the audacious swindler Captain Wragge, she braves a series of trials leading up to the climactic test: can she trade herself in marriage to the man she loathes? Written in the early 1860s, between The Woman in White and The Moonstone, No Name was rejected as immoral by critics of its time, but is today regarded as a novel of outstanding social insight, showing Collins at the height of his powers. 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 real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled "Thieftaker General," controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention; after his death balladeers sang of his exploits, and satirists made connections between his success and the triumph of corruption in high places. Fielding built on these narratives to produce one of the greatest sustained satires in the English language. Published in 1743, at a time when the modern novel had yet to establish itself as a fixed literary form, Jonathan Wild is at the same time a brilliant black comedy, an incisive political satire, and a profoundly serious exploration of human "greatness" and "goodness," as relevant today as it ever was.

For the most popular of his Scottish romances, published at the end of 1817, Scott drew on the legends and historical anecdotes about Rob Roy MacGregor he had collected in his youth. By turns thrilling and comic, Rob Roy contains Scott's most sophisticated treatment of the Scottish Highlands as an imaginary space where the modern and the primitive come together. Newly edited from the `Magnum Opus' text of 1829, this edition includes full explanatory notesand a critical introduction exploring the originality and complexity of Scott's achievement.

This volume offers excellent value by bringing together four of the most popular, most frequently studied and performed, city comedies by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries. Each of the plays features tradesmen - a shoemaker, goldsmith, merchant, shop-keepers - and depicts bustling city life.

Written by an eccentric Anglican curate, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new fever pitch of intensity. Its tormented villain seeks a victim to release from his fatal pact with the devil, and Maturin's bizarre narrative structure whirls the reader from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island, from a London madhouse to the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition. 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.

La Reine Margot (1845) is a novel of suspense and drama, re-creating 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 is a modernized version of a classic translation of 1846 by the award-winning translator, DavidCoward.

Machiavelli's commentary on Livy's history of Rome sets out his fundamental preference for a republican state. This translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic, and political information to understand and interpret the revolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence he found in Livy.