Books published by Liverpool University Press

Life on Earth can be traced back over three thousand million years into the past. Many examples of the Earths past inhabitants are to be found in rocks, preserved as beautiful and fascinating fossils. The earliest life forms were bacteria and algae; these produced the oxygen that enabled more complex life forms to develop. About 600 million years ago multi-cellular organisms appeared on Earth, some of which could protect themselves with hard parts such as shells. Many of these life forms were readily fossilized and are used to subdivide geological time. Numerous species have evolved and most are now extinct. Lineages can be traced and extinctions explained as a consequence of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial events. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and explanatory diagrams Introducing Palaeontology provides a concise and accessible introduction to the science of palaeontology. The book is divided into two parts. The first explains what a fossil is; how fossils came to be preserved; how they are classified; and what information they can tell scientists about the rocks in which they are found. The second part introduces the major fossil groups taking a systematic view from algae and plants, through the numerous examples of invertebrate animals, to the vertebrates and finally to mans ancestors. Technical terms are kept to a minimum and a glossary is provided.

Over the past 25 years, Rwanda has undergone remarkable shifts and transitions: culturally, economically, and educationally the country has gone from strength to strength. While much scholarship has understandably been retrospective, seeking to understand, document and commemorate the Genocide against the Tutsi, this volume gathers diverse perspectives on the changing social and cultural fabric of Rwanda since 1994. Rwanda Since 1994 considers the context of these changes, particularly in relation to the ongoing importance of remembering and in wider developments in the Great Lakes and East Africa regions. Equally it explores what stories of change are emerging from Rwanda: creative writing and testimonies, as well as national, regional, and international political narratives. The contributors interrogate which frameworks and narratives might be most useful for understanding different kinds of change, what new directions are emerging, and how Rwanda's trajectory is shaped by>The international set of contributors includes creative writers, practitioners, activists, and scholars from African studies, history, anthropology, education, international relations, modern languages, law and politics. As well as delving into the shifting dynamics of religion and gender in Rwanda today, the book brings to light the experiences of lesser-discussed groups of people such as the Twa and the children of perpetrators.

This bilingual edition presents Luis Vélez de Guevara's 1613 play La Serrana de la Vera (The Mountain Girl from La Vera) for the first time ever in English translation. This long-forgotten tragedy has come back into focus in recent years because of its extraordinary protagonist, Gila, a peasant girl who calls herself a man, takes fierce pride in doing things men do, and falls in love with Queen Isabel. Her betrayal by an army captain who she has humiliated leads to lawlessness, violence and tragedy. Dramatized by the playwright as an heroic rebel, Gila has been variously described as feminist, homosexual, bisexual, lesbian, transsexual, hybrid, queer, and transgender. Highly relevant today, The Mountain Girl from La Vera is also a great piece of theatre, full of dramatic confrontations, colourful vignettes, striking moments of music and spectacle, and plentiful comic relief. This bilingual edition presents the entirety of the play, annotated, along with a Critical Introduction bythe translator that contextualizes the work.

A wonderfully illustrated book on the oldest surviving theatre in Liverpool, published as part of its eightieth birthday celebrations. With debut stage appearances of renowned actors such as Judi Dench and Richard Burton, this remarkable theatre is a vital part of the city's cultural identity.

Following Arshi's Forward prize-winning collection, Small Hands, this book continues in its lyrical exploration of grief. Moving and discomfiting, these poems tune to the dangers and violences of the contemporary world, yet, at the centre of this book is an overarching commitment to hope and its 'churning, broken song'.

Frank, conversational and suffused with a dry humour, this book is a record of poet and novelist Lieke Marsman's diagnosis, events and thoughts of having bone cancer. An energising mix of prose and lyric, the poems offer readings of both the writer and her environment. Translated by poet Sophie Collins.

The third edition of a best-selling book on the Port Sunlight Village, with a new chapter on the Lady Lever Art Gallery, further information on key individuals and an increase in the number of illustrations.

The first of two volumes presenting all the remnants of tragedies produced by contemporaries and successors of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Greek texts and sources are accompanied by English translations, historical background, detailed explanatory notes and bibliographies. Volume 1 includes amongst others Phrynichus, Aristarchus, Ion, Achaeus, Sophocles' son Iophon, Agathon and the doubtful cases of Neophron and Critias.

This book offers the first full-length study of Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets and clarifies its 'place' - in multiple ways - in literary history as a work celebrated for 'making it new', yet deeply engaged with the literary past. It argues that Smith's sonnets are constituted by three intertwined concerns: with tradition, place and the sonnet form itself, whereby the subjects of Smith's sonnets - across birds, rivers, the sea, plants and flowers - are bound up with the literary context in which she wrote. Charlotte Smith and the Sonnet shows that Smith's verse engages more deeply with tradition than has hitherto been realised and revises our understanding not only of Smith's career but also of the sonnet in eighteenth-century England. The book also illuminates Smith's place in posterity, as a popular poet - influencing figures ranging from Wordsworth and Coleridge to Constable - who was subsequently obscured in literary history. It reveals the complex processes underpinning Smith's reception and paradoxical position from the late eighteenth century to the present day, and shows that the appropriation of place itself was an important way in which aspects of literary tradition have been negotiated and understood by Smith, her predecessors, contemporaries and successors.

Book V of Herodotus' Histories begins the run-up to the Persian Wars of 490-479 B.C. with Persia's conquest of coastal Thrace after the Scythian expedition and the beginning of the Ionian Revolt against Persia, to which digressions on Sparta and Athens at the end of the sixth century are attached.

The Girl from Andros was the Roman comic playwright Terence's first play and shows him as already a master dramatist. It contains much plotting and counter-plotting, two boys in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl searching for her family. This is the first detailed commentary on the play for nearly sixty years.

Bridport is the home of an ancient industry, the manufacture of goods from flax and hemp. The local townscapes of this industry are of great historic significance and provide the building blocks for the regeneration of its historic industrial areas.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.