Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

Keats's letters are 'the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet' (T. S. Eliot). This new edition revises and updates Robert Gittings's selection and includes 170 letters, a new introduction and notes, list of correspondents and full index

Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, two of German literature's greatest historical dramas, deal with the timeless issues of power, freedom, and justice. Dating from 1787 and 1800 respectively, one play was written immediately before the French Revolution, the other in its aftermath. These new translations into blank verse are accurate, elegant, and playable. The Introduction, Notes, and Chronology set the plays in their cultural and intellectual background, while a family tree explains the historical relationship between Don Carlos and Mary Stuart.

This selection offers a cross-section from the 6,000 surviving sheets that constitute Leonardo's notebooks, including his thoughts on landscape, optics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture, and painting. Fully updated, this new edition includes some 70 line drawings and a Preface by Leonardo expert Martin Kemp.

This unique edition brings together four plays concerned with 'domestic' themes: Arden of Faversham, Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness and The English Traveller, and Dekker, Rowley and Ford's The Witch of Edmonton. Texts are in modern spelling, accompanied by a critical introduction, wide-ranging annotation and bibliography.

Critically and textually up-to-date, this new edition of the classic translation (Samuel Moore, 1888) features an introduction and notes by the eminent Marx scholar David McLellan, prefaces written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels subsequent to the original 1848 publication, and corrections of errors made in earlier versions. Regarded as one of the most influential political tracts ever written, The Communist Manifesto serves as the foundation document of the Marxist movement. This summary of the Marxist vision is an incisive account of the world-view Marx and Engels had evolved during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration of the previous few years.

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim investigated the enduring source of human social identity and fellowship by studying the simplest form of documented religion, totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. His book about the origin and nature of religion and society continues to enthrall sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians.

Wilkie Collins's fifth novel, The Dead Secret explores the relationship between a fallen woman, her illegitimate daughter and the recovery of a hidden secret. Set in rugged Cornwall, the novel blends romance with Gothic drama, and in characterization and setting, clearly anticipates the qualities of Collins's next novel, The Woman in White.

This edition of Pericles in the Oxford Shakespeare series is the only single-volume, modern-spelling edition both to offer a reconstruction of the original play and to reproduce the corrupt Quarto text of 1609 exactly as first printed.

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.

Cicero's The Republic is an impassioned plea for responsible government written just before the civil war that ended the Roman Republic in a dialogue following Plato. This is the first complete English translation of both works for over sixty years and features a lucid introduction, a table of dates, notes on the Roman constitution, and an index of names.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's choice of The Two Noble Kinsmen to open the Swan Theatre in 1986 demonstrated that this long-neglected play has at last come into its own as a stageworthy, humorous, and moving dramatization of the conflicting claims of love and friendship. It was first published in 1634 as `by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher, and Mr William Shakespeare, Gent' and was probably first performed soon after the wedding ofPrincess Elizabeth, daughter of the company's patron James I, to the Elector Palatine in February 1613. The exceptionally full introduction to this edition explains the relevance to the play of ideas of chivalry and of the classical idea of friendship. The edition (which is illuminatingly illustrated) also offers a discussion of the centuries-long debate about the play's authorship and a clarification of its stage action.

A unique edition of three early modern utopian texts, using a contemporary translation of More's Utopia and examining the Renaissance world view as shown by these writers. The edition includes the illustrative material that accompanied early editions of Utopia, full chronologies of the authors, notes, and glossary.

J M Synge was one of the key dramatists in the flourishing world of Irish literature at the turn of the century. This volume offers all of Synge's plays, which range from racy comedy to stark tragedy, all sharing a memorable lyricism. The introduction sets Synge's work in the context of the Irish literary movement, with special attention to his role as one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and his work alongside W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Includes: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Play of the Western World; Deirdre of the Sorrows

This selection of the Byron's poetical works includes such masterpieces as Childe Harold, The Corsair, Manfred, Bebbo, and Don Juan. There are many other less familiar works and shorter lyrics, and Jerome J. McGann's introduction and notes give fascinating insight into Byron's world.

These five works - George Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J; John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Robert Greene's Pandosto. The Triumph of Time; Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller and Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury - represent Elizabethan fiction at its best. The Adventures of Master F. J. is a comedy of manners with a sting in its tail. In Euphues John Lyly invented a new, elaboraterhetorical style which delighted its Elizabethan audience and has been praised or parodied ever since. Pandosto was Shakespeare's source for The Winter's Tale, but Greene's is a darker story designed to shock the reader accustomed to romantic conventions. The Unfortunate Traveller marks the peak of Nashe's gift for literary pastiche, mixing picaresque narrativewith mock-historical fantasy. Jack of Newbury dedicated to 'All famous cloth Workers in England', sums up important social contradictions in sharply observed comic scenes and brisk, witty dialogue.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance concerns a group of American expatriates in mid-nineteenth century Italy, and their tragic encounter with the faun-like Italian count, Donatello. It is both a murder story and a parable of the Fall of Man, dominated by the fragility and durability of human life and art.

This is the only edition of these four plays, which are otherwise unavailable, and introduces readers to some of the earliest published women dramatists, to compare and contrast with their better-known male counterparts.

Philip Sidney and his sister Mary translated the biblical psalms into some of the greatest lyric poems of the English Renaissance. This is the first complete edition for over forty years, providing the Psalms in an authoritative modernized text, with glosses and notes and an introduction setting the Psalms in their literary and cultural context.

The Man of Feeling (1771) is the foremost novel of sentiment in which the hero, Harley demonstrates his sensiblity in a series of episodes as he is tested against an uncaring world. This edition reprints Brian Vickers's authoritative text with a new introduction and notes discussing the work in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment and European sentimentalism.

Male, female, deft, fraudulent, constantly shifting: which of the masquerade' of passengers on the Mississippi steamboat Fid le is the confidence man'? The central motif of Melville's last and most modern' novel can be seen as a symbol of American cultural history.

This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets. During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests. It includes all his poetry, from best-known works such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and the recently discovered poem "Consule Jones." In addition there are excerpts from Hopkins's journals, letters, and spiritual writings. The poems are printed in chronological order to show Hopkins's changing preoccupations, and all the texts have been established from original manuscripts.

Livy's great history of Rome contains, in Books 21 to 30, the definitive ancient account of Hannibal's invasion of Italy in 218 BC, and the war he fought with the Romans over the following sixteen years. This new translation captures the brilliance of Livy's style, and is accompanied by a fascinating introduction and notes.

With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls (1842) stands as one of the most dazzling and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This brilliant new translation by Christopher English is complemented by a superb introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire.