Books in the Oxford World's Classics series

Shakespeare's Henry VI plays dramatize contemporary as much as Elizabethan issues: the struggle for power, the manoeuvres of politicians, social unrest, civil war. This edition draws on experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to focus on both its theatricality and contemporary relevance in a wide-ranging introduction and detailed commentary.

This abridged edition of On War by Beatrice Heuser, using the acclaimed translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, selects the central books in which Clausewitz's views on the nature and theory of war are developed.

In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and, of course, Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness. And then into the partybursts the drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and notorious Athenian of the time, who insists on praising Socrates himself rather than love, and gives us a brilliant sketch of this enigmatic character.The power, humour, and pathos of Plato's creation engages the reader on every page. This new translation is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction.

Theocritus of Syracuse (first half of the third century BC) was the inventor of 'bucolic' poetry, the principal model for Virgil in the Eclogues and the foundational figure of the western pastoral tradition. The great variety of his other poems - hymns, short narrative epics, mimes, encomia, and epigrams - illustrates the rich and flourishing poetic culture of what was a golden age for Greek poetry.

Taken from The Oxford Chekhov, the stories in this collection include "The Butterfly," "Ariadne," "A Dreary Story," "Neighbours," "An Anonymous Story," and "Doctor Startsev," as well as the title story.

In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the Western world. The present edition provides a detailed discussion of his theories and adds an account of the responses of readers to the book on first publication. These cast light on recent controversies, such as questions of design and descent.

Dickens' last completed novel traces John Harmon's covert observation of Bella Wilfer, whom he must marry if he is to inherit a fortune.

The Oresteian trilogy (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides) established the themes of Greek tragedy - the inexorable nature of Fate, the relationship between justice, revenge, and religion. The plays dramatize the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, the revenge of her son Orestes, and his judgement by the court of Athens. This new translation seeks to preserve the plays' qualities as theatre and as literature.

This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Donne's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by rarely published letters and extracts from Donne's sermons - to give the essence of his work and thinking.

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zenia, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.

`If any man or woman should ask what I wish this romance... to be called, it is the Romance of the Rose, in which the whole art of love is contained'.Guillaume de Lorris's own introduction to his allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair gives no indication of the eventual scale and scope of the work, which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life, from predestination to the right way to deal with premature hair-loss. This new translation into modern English, based on the French edition by Félix Lecoy, is intended as much for the general reader as for students of French and English literature.

Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction and full notes that discuss the structure of the dialogue and elucidate issues that might puzzle the modern reader.

The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. His detailed description of the journey, set against the vast majesty of the Great Plains, has emerged through the generations as a classic narrative of one man's exploration of the American Wilderness.

Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson's Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parody. In both works Fielding demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste. This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C. Battestin for the definitive WesleyanEdition of Fielding's works. The text of Shamela is based on the first edition, and two substantial appendices reprint the preliminary matter from Conyers Middleton's Life of Cicero and the second edition of Richardson's Pamela (both closely parodied in Shamela). A new introduction by Thomas Keymer situates Fielding's works in their critical andhistorical contexts.

Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, Gissing's `odd' women range from the idealistic Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister's marriage that the novel reserves its most sinister critique. With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society's ambivalence towards its own period of transition. The Odd Women is a novel engaged with all the major sexual and social issues of the late-nineteenth century. Judged by contemporary reviewers as equal to Zola and Ibsen, Gissing was seen to have produced an `intensely modern' work and it is perhaps for this reason that the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.

David Hume is one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in English. His Dialogues ask if a belief in God can be inferred from what is known of the universe, or whether such a belief is even consistent with such knowledge. The Natural History of Religion investigates the origins of belief, and follows its development from polytheism to dogmatic monotheism. Together, these works constitute the most formidable attack upon religious belief ever mounted by a philosopher.This new edition includes Section XI of The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a letter by Hume in which he discusses Dialogues.

"The Pastons of Norfolk left behind them an incomparable picture of life in fifteenth-century England in the earliest great collection of family letters in English."--BOOK JACKET. "The letters span three generations and most were written during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III, in a period of political turmoil, local anarchy and war abroad and at home. They reveal personal hopes and anxieties, and contain as well as business matters a wealth of information on leisure pursuits, education, and domestic life. The writers express themselves with a clarity and vigour that is remarkable at this early date, and the letters illustrate, as no other documents can, the state of the language in daily use immediately before and after the introduction of printing."--BOOK JACKET. "This modernized selection prepared from the original manuscripts is designed to present the full range of the Pastons' principal concerns."--BOOK JACKET.

This novel, which has always been regarded as one of Scott's finest, opens with the Edinburgh riots of 1736. The people of the city have been infuriated by the actions of John Porteous, Captain of the Guard, and when they hear that his death has been reprieved by the distant monarch they ignore the Queen and resolve to take their own revenge. At the center of the story is Edinburgh's forbidding Tolbooth prison, known by all as the Heart of Midlothian.

Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material.

This is the first complete verse translation of Aristophanes' comedies to appear for more than twenty-five years and makes freshly available one of the most remarkable comic playwrights in the entire Western tradition, complete with an illuminating introduction including play by play analysis and detailed notes. Contains: Birds; Lysistrata; Assembly-Women; Wealth.

An accurate and highly readable new translation with introduction, extensive explanatory notes, and up-to-date bibliography of four of Aeschylus' plays, including the unique historical tragedy Persians and the hugely influential Prometheus Bound.

Letter-writing was something of an addiction for young women of Jane Austen's time and social position, and Austen's letters have a freedom and familiarity that only intimate writing can convey. Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of 'Little Matters', of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family through the medium of the letter. Ironic, acerbic, always entertaining, Jane Austen's letters are a fascinating record not only of her own day-to-day existence, but of the pleasures and frustrations experienced by women of her social class which are so central to her novels.Vivien Jones's selection includes very nearly two-thirds of Austen's surviving correspondence, and her lively introduction and notes set the novelist's most private writings in their wider cultural context.

The two 'Alice' books are masterpieces of carefree nonsense for children and also embody layers of satire and allusion and mathematical, linguistic, and philosophical jokes. This new edition explores their complex status and the many interpretations of them, taking account of the most recent research and critical opinion.

Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly-knit mining community, and his powerful description of Paul Morel's relationships make this novel as relevant now as when it was first published.

Strongly autobiographical, Mary and The Wrongs of Woman powerfully complement Wollstonecraft's non-fictional writing, inspired by the French Revolution and the social upheavals that followed.

This volume presents the most authentic Greek text of Cavafy's 154 authorized poems ever to be published, together with a new English translation that conveys the accent and rhythm of the poet's individual tone of voice.