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The world’s best-selling adult English course – a perfectly-balanced syllabus with a strong grammar focus, and full support at all six levels.

The world’s best-selling adult English course – a perfectly-balanced syllabus with a strong grammar focus, and full support at all six levels.

The world’s best-selling adult English course – a perfectly-balanced syllabus with a strong grammar focus, and full support at all six levels.

You can drink it, and you can cook with it. You can even make buildings, dresses, and hats out of it. You can give it to somebody as a present, or you can buy it for yourself. And of course you can eat it. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, chocolates with gold on the outside - everybody loves chocolate. Follow its story, from the forests of Central America hundreds of years ago, through Africa, Europe, and the United States, to the growing markets of India and China. Perhaps you need a little something to eat while you read ...

The first of Chekhov's works to be published in a serious literary journal, `The Steppe', with its masterly account of a spectacular thunderstorm, signifies his maturation as a writer of short stories. While the majority of his tales focus on the pri vileged classes, this selection shows that Chekhov never forgot his origins as the son of a failed provincial grocer, and characters as varied as the brutal soldier in `Gusev', the downtrodden old constable in `On Official Business', and the bemused peasants in `New Villa' testify to the power and flexibility of his art.

Georg Buchner died in 1837 at a tragically early age, and his three works for the stage remained virtually unknown for half a century. Today all three, especially Danton's Death, his great play about the French Revolution are performed regularly.

Carmen, Merimee's classic tale of passion and power, provided the inspiration for one of the world's most enduringly popular operas, and numerous films. Like Carmen, the other stories in this book, including Mateo Falcone, The Etruscan Vase, and The Venus of Ille, explore the clash of primitive and civilized values. This is the only selection of Merimee's short stories available.

This new translation of The Princesse de Cleves also includes two shorter works also attributed to Mme de Lafayette, The Princesse de Montpensier and The Comtesse de Tende.

With Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon had established herself, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood, as one of the ruling triumvirate of 'sensation novelists'. Aurora Floyd (1862-3), following hot on its heels, achieved almost equal popularity and notoriety. Like Lady Audley, Aurora is a beautiful young woman bigamously married and threatened with exposure by a blackmailer. But in Aurora Floyd, and in many of the novels written in imitation of it, bigamy is little more than a euphemism, a device to enable the heroine, and vicariously the reader, to enjoy the forbidden sweets of adultery without adulterous intentions. Passionate, sometimes violent, Aurora does succeed in enjoying them, her desires scarcely chastened by her disastrous first marriage. She represents a challenge to the mid-Victorian sexual code, and particularly to the feminine ideal of simpering, angelic young ladyhood. P. D. Edward's introduction evaluates the novel's leading place among 'bigamy-novels' and Braddon's treatment of the power struggle between the sexes, as well as considering the similarities between the author and her heroine.

Coriolanus is perhaps the most brilliant political play ever written. Set in Ancient Rome, it remains a gripping psychological study of the relationship between personality and politics. The introduction to this new edition considers Shakespeare's adaptation of his historical material (Plutarch's Lives ) in relation to the social and political conditions in London and Stratford at the time of the play's composition, also offering new evidence that it was written in 1608. Professor Parker examines the play's history and particularly its staging at the Blackfriars theatre, where it was probably the first of Shakespeare's plays to be presented and for which it may have been written. A thorough commentary pays special attention to the needs of actors and directors. This book is intended for students at A-level up to postgraduate of English literature, Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama, drama and politics; playgoers, actors, directors.

Troilus and Cressida is perhaps Shakespeare's most philosophical play, and its preoccupation with war, sex, and time has seemed peculiarly relevant since World War I. Productions have demonstrated the play's theatrical power, and critics have explored and illuminated its ideas and its exceptionally complex language. Kenneth Muir, in his introduction, sets the play in its historical context, discusses its odd career in the theatre, examines Shakespeare's handling of his multiple sources, and assesses the contribution of interpretative criticism to a deeper understanding of this sombre examination of a fallen world. This book is intended for students from A-level to postgraduate of English literature, Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama; actors, directors, playgoers.

William Godwin was one of the most popular novelists of the Romantic era; P.B. Shelley praised him, Byron drew heavily on his narrative style, and Mary Shelley, Godwin’s daughter, dedicated Frankenstein to him. Caleb Williams is the riveting account of a young man whose curiosity leads him to pry into a murder from the past. The first novel of crime and detection in English literature, Caleb Williams is also a powerful exposé of the evils and inequities of the political and social system in 1790s Britain. In addition to the text itself, the editors have included an extensive selection of primary source materials from the period, ranging from Godwin’s original manuscript ending and excerpts from his political writings to contemporary reviews, the political writings of Burke and Paine, and materials on criminals and the English prison system.

Wilkie Collin's intriguing story about a blind girl, Lucilla Finch, and the identical twins who both fall in love with her, has the exciting complications of his better known novels, but it also overturns conventional expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth century realist fiction, Collins not only takes a blind person as his central character but also explores the idea of blindness and its implications. His sensitive presentation of the difficulties, disappointments, and occasional delights which follow the recovery of sight by someone blind since infancy is still one of the best accounts in fiction of a problem which continues to intrigue philosophers, psychologists, and the general public, as it has done since it was first discussed by Locke and Berkeley in the eighteenth century.

The only edition to use the 1802 text, this lively comedy challenges the conventions of courtship, examines questions of female independence, and exposes the limits of domesticity. The text used in this edition also confronts the difficult and fascinating issues of racism and mixed marriage, which Edgeworth toned down in later editions.

Georg Buchner died in 1837 at a tragically early age, and his three works for the stage remained virtually unknown for half a century. Today all three, especially Danton's Death, his great play about the French Revolution are performed regularly.

When it appeared in 1874, Lady Anna met with little success, and positively outraged the conservative - 'This is the sort of thing the reading public will never stand...a man must be embittered by some violent present exasperation who can like such disruptions of social order as this.' (Saturday Review") - although Trollope himself considered it 'the best novel I ever wrote! Very much! Quite far away above all others!!!' This tightly constructed and passionate study of enforced marriage in the world of Radical politics and social inequality, records the lifelong attempt of Countess Lovel to justify her claim to her title, and her daughter Anna's legitimacy, after her husband announces that he already has a wife. However, mother and daughter are driven apart when Anna defies her mother's wish that she marry her cousin, heir to her father's title, and falls in love with journeyman tailor and young Radical Daniel Thwaite. The outcome is never in doubt, but Trollope's ambivalence on the question is profound, and the novel both intense and powerful."