Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

The first for forty years, this brillaint translation of a medieval classic offers a vivid and unique insight into the life of a great monastery in late twelfth-century England. At the centre of this community is Abbot Samson, a charismatic figure of enormous power, whose exploits include preventing an illegal tournament, excommunicating forty drunken knights who had escaped his enforced sanctuary, countless property disputes, and the opening of the tomb of StEdmund.

This is a verse translation of Lucretius' only known work, "On the Nature of the Universe", a didactic poem in six books of hexameters. Melville's particularly literal translation of the use of metaphor should be helpful to those looking at the text from a scientific or philosophical point of view.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs is a collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution. This modernized selection brings together some of the most stirring tales of the interrogation and execution of heretics burnt at the stake in the reign of Mary, with some of the original woodcut illustrations and an illuminating introduction.

This is the fourth volume of Euripides plays in new translation. The four plays it contains, Ion, Orestes, The Phoenician Women and The Suppliant Women, explore ethical and political themes, contrasting the claims of patriotism with family loyalty, pragmatism with justice, the idea that 'might is right' with the ideal of clemency.

This volume brings together extracts of the major political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft in the order in which they appeared in the revolutionary 1790s. It traces her passionate and indignant response to the excitement of the early days of the French Revolution and then her uneasiness at its later bloody phase. It reveals her developing understanding of women's involvement in the political and social life of the nation and her growing awareness of therelationship between politics and economics and between political institutions and the individual. In personal terms, the works show her struggling with a belief in the perfectibility of human nature through rational education, a doctrine that became weaker under the onslaught of her own miserable experience and the revolutionary massacres. Janet Todd's introduction illuminates the progress or Wollstonecraft's thought, showing that a reading of all three works allows her to emerge as a more substantial political writer than a study of The Rights of Woman alone can reveal.

Written by an emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an American Farmer (1782) posed the famous question `What, then, is the American, this new man?', as the new nation took shape before the eyes of the world. The Letters addresses some of American literature's most pressing concerns: the issue of American identity, personal determination, and freedom from institutional oppression. Celebrating the largeness and fertility of the land, Cr¿coeur's narrative also introduces darker and more symbolic elements, including slavery, and casts a long shadow of influence on subsequent writing about the moral, spiritual, and material topography of the new nation.

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71) was a goldsmith and sculptor whose autobiography is one of the most vivid and interesting ever written. In it he describes artistic techniques such as bronze casting as well as a fascinating account of life and intrigue in 16th century Italy. This new translation is based on the latest critical edition of the text.

In addition to its interest as one of Plato's dramatic masterpieces, the "Protagoras" presents a vivid picture of the crisis of 5th-century Greek thought. This revised edition contains revisions in the translation and commentary, and features a new preface and an updated bibliography.

Rasselas and his companions leave the 'happy valley' in search of 'the choice of life'. Johnson's philosophical tale considers such things as the nature of poetry, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and the pursuit of happiness. This new edition relates the novel to Johnson's life and the political and social context.

This selection brings together thirty of Woolf's best essays across a wide range of subjects including writing and reading, the role and reputation of women writers, the art of biography, and the London scene. They are enchanting in their own right, and indispensable to an understanding of this great writer.

McTeague (1899) tells the story of charlatan dentist McTeague and his wife Trina, and their spiralling descent into moral corruption. Norris is often considered to be the `American Zola', and this passionate tale of greed, degeneration, and death is one of the most purely naturalistic American novels of the nineteenth century. It also formed the basis for Erich von Stroheim's cult film, Greed (1923).

Tarr is the blackly comic story of the lives and loves of two artists, set against the backdrop of Paris before the start of the First World War. The first edition to do the novel justice, with an introduction and notes placing it in the context of social satire and avant-garde art movements, offering new insights into a major Modernist novel.

This unique edition of the Gospels presents the Authorized King James text in modernized spelling with invaluable Introduction and Notes, which provide historical and critical context, highlighting how each Gospel offers its own distinctive and memorable portrait of Jesus.

An unhappy orphaned girl is transformed by the redeeming power of nature into an unselfish child who transforms the lives of others in Burnett's classic children's story. This edition explores the relationship between the book and other literary genres and historical influences, and includes the companion-piece, 'My Robin'.

Set in the summer of 1765, Redgauntlet centres around a third, fictitious Jacobite rebellion and a plot to enthrone the exiled Prince Charles Edward Stewart. The last of Scott's major Scottish novels, this is the only available critical edition. It reprints the Magnum text of 1832.

Charity Royall yearns to escape her dull existence in the New England backwater where she lives with her guardian. When her sexual nature is awakened, darker undercurrents in the community threaten her future happiness. The 'hot' counterpart to Ethan Frome, and equally memorable, Summer was regarded by Wharton as one of her best works.

Horace exposes the vices and follies of his Roman contemporaries in his Satires, and the Epistles include the famous Art of Poetry, whose advice on poetic style influenced many later writers and dramatists. John Davie's new prose translations perfectly capture the ribald style of the original.

First published in the pages of a pulp-fiction magazine, Tarzan of the Apes has gone on to become one of America's most enduring cultural icons. The story of an orphaned child growing up among the apes is here set within its historical and literary contexts, and appendices include readers' letters and selections from related narratives.

The Eudemian Ethics is a major treatise on moral philosophy whose central concern is what makes life worth living. This is the first time it has been published in its entirety in any modern language. Anthony Kenny's fine translation is accompanied by a lucid introduction and explanatory notes.

Wordsworth and Coleridge's joint collection of poems has often been singled out as the founding text of English Romanticism. This is the only edition to print both the original 1798 collection and the expanded 1802 edition, with Wordsworth's famous Preface. It includes important letters, a wide-ranging introduction and generous notes.

Praeterita is the autobiography of John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic and social commentator and one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. An elegy for lost places and people, Praeterita recounts Ruskin's childhood, and his travels across Europe with passion and intimacy.

A unique edition of James's two complementary tales, 'Daisy Miller' and 'An International Episode', in which the young American girl irrupts into European society. This edition includes introduction and notes by Adrian Poole, and an Appendix on stage and screen versions of 'Daisy Miller'.

Justine's attachment to virtue attracts nothing but misfortune, and she is subjected to an unending catalogue of sexual abuse. Sade's best-known novel, it overturns all religious, moral, and political norms, and still has the power to shock. This new translation of the 1791version is the first for over 40 years, and the first critical edition.

Poetics

Rumi is the greatest mystic poet to have written in Persian, and the Masnavi, written in six books, is his masterpiece. It conveys a message of divine love in entertaining stories and homilies. The focus of Book Three is on epistemology; this is the first ever verse translation, and the first translation of any kind for over 80 years.

Based on the author's own experiences at an Austrian military academy; this novel is an intense study of an adolescent's psychological development as he struggles to come to terms with his conflicting emotions. Through his relationship with two other boys Törless is led into sadistic and sexual encounters with a third pupil which both repel and fascinate him. It is a disturbing exploration of a non-moral outlook on life and of dictatorial attitudes thatprefigure the outbreak of the First World War and the rise of fascism.

Theaetetus