Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

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.

A captivating fusion of elegy, autobiography, socio-political critique and visionary thrust, To the Lighthouse is the most accomplished of all Woolf's novels. This new edition includes a full contextualizing introduction and notes by David Bradshaw.

A unique collection of Moliere's four greatest verse comedies in new translation: The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The School for Wives and The Clever Women, plus two short plays, The School for Wives Criticized and The Impromptu at Versailles.

The Annals is a gripping account of the Roman emperors Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero and the brutality that marked their reigns. Tacitus deplores their depravity, proof of the corrupting force of absolute power. J.C. Yardley's vivid and accurate translation is complemented by a thorough introduction and notes.

Vita Nuova (1292-94) is regarded as Dante's most profound creation. The thirty-one poems in this, the first of his major writings, are linked by a lyrical prose narrative celebrating and debating the subject of love. Composed upon Dante's meeting with Beatrice and the "Lord of Love," it is a love story set to the task of confirming the "new life" this meeting inspired. With a critical introduction and explanatory notes, this is a new translation of a supreme work which has been read variously as biography, religious allegory, and a meditation on poetry itself.

Published at the dawn of the twentieth century, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) immediately captivated children and adult readers alike. This new edition is the only one to include many of W.W. Denslow's original illustrations. The Introduction considers both the famous MGM film version and recent literary theory in a fascinating discussion of this timeless classic of children's literature. The story of Dorothy and her friends from Oz remains as popular now as when it was first published in 1899.

The Civil War is Caesar's masterly account of the celebrated conflict between himself and his great rival Pompey, from the crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 B.C. to Pompey's death and the start of the Alexandrian War in the autumn of the following year. This new translation is the most fully annotated edition available, and also includes accounts of the Alexandrian War, the African War, and the Spanish War by other hands.

The story of Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism. Yet it is also one of Twain's finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years. This edition reproduces more than 40 of Dan Beard's original drawings.

The Revenge Tragedy flourished in Britain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Each of the four plays here defines the problems of the revenge genre, and deals with fundamental moral questions about justice and the individual, while registering the strains of life in an increasingly fragile social hierarchy.

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.

Although utterly convinced of the truth of Christianity, Anselm of Canterbury struggled to make sense of his religion. He considered the doctrines of faith an invitation to question, to think, and to learn; and he devoted his life to confronting and understanding the most elusive aspects of Christianity. His writings on matters such as free will, the nature of truth, and the existence of God make Anselm one of the greatest theologians and philosophers in history, and this translation provides readers with their first opportunity to read his most important works within a single volume.

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence.

This is the fullest collection of La Rochefoucauld's writings ever published in English, and includes the first complete translation of the Miscellaneous Reflections. A table of alternative maxim numbers and an index of topics help the reader to locate any maxim quickly.

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.