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The Revenge Tragedy flourished in Britain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy helped to establish the popularity of the genre, and it was followed by The Revenger's Tragedy, published anonymously an d ascribed first to Cyril Tourneur and then to Thomas Middleton. George Chapman's The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy appeared soon after. Each of the four plays printed here defines the problems of the revenge genre, o ften by exploiting its conventions in unexpected directions. All deal with fundamental moral questions about the meaning of justice and the lengths to which victimized individuals may go to obtain it, while registering the strains of life in a rigid but increasingly fragile social hierarchy. Under the General Editoriship of Dr Michael Cordner, of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation.

McTeague (1899) chronicles the demise of a San Francisco couple at the end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by an actual crime that was sensationalized in the San Francisco papers, it tells the story of charlatan dentist McTeague, his wife Trina, and their spiralling descent into moral corruption. Norris is often considered to be the 'American Zola', and this is one of the most purely naturalistic American novels of the nineteenth century. With its compelling portrayal of human nature at its most basic level, McTeague is a gripping and passionate tale of greed, degeneration and death. It is also one of the first major works of literature to set in California, and it provided the story for Erich von Stroheim's classic of the silent screen, Greed.

Fielding's comic masterpiece of 1749 was immediately attacked as 'A motley history of bastardism, fornication, and adultery'. Indeed, his populous novel overflows with a marvellous assortment of prudes, whores, libertines, bumpkins, misanthropes, hypocrites, scoundrels, virgins, and all too fallible humanitarians. At the centre of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. Expelled from Mr Allworthy's country estate for his wild temper and sexual conquests, the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones loses his money, joins the army, and pursues his beloved across Britain to London, where he becomes a kept lover and confronts the possibility of incest. Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. This carefully modernized edition is based on Fielding's emended fourth edition text and offers the most thorough notes, maps, and bibliography. The introduction uses the latest scholarship to examine how Tom Jones exemplifies the role of the novel in the emerging eighteenth-century public sphere.

The Masterpiece is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it provides a unique insight into his career as a writer and his relationship with Cézanne, a friend since their schoolday s in Aix-en-Provence. It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a generous selection of Clare's poetry and prose, including autobiographical writings and letters. John Clare (1793-1864) is now recognized as one of the greatest English Romantic poets, after years of indifference and neglect. Clare was an impoverished agricultural labourer, whose genius was generally not appreciated by his contemporaries, and his later mental instability further contributed to his loss of critical esteem. But the extraordinary range of his poetical gifts has restored him to the company of his contemporaries Byron, Keats, and Shelley, and this fine selection illustrates all aspects of his talent. It contains poems from all stages of his career, including love poetry, and bird and nature poems. Written in his native Northamptonshire, Clare's work provides a fascinating reflection of rural society, often underscored by his own sense of isolation and despair. Clare's writings are here presented with the minimum of editorial interference, and with a new Introduction by the poet and scholar Tom Paulin.

The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life as much as in business he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified. This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city.

'he sat down and wept, to think that even the rams knew more about the deeds of love than he did' Daphnis is fifteen years old, Chloe thirteen. They are drawn to each other and long to make love. But no one has told them what love is, nor do they know how to accomplish the physical act. Round their predicament Longus weaves a fantasy which entertains and instructs, but never errs in taste. The hard toil and precariousness of peasant life are here, but so are its compensations - revelry, music, dance, and storytelling. Above the action brood divine presences - Eros, Dionysus, Pan, the Nymphs - who collaborate to guide the adolescents into the mystery of Love, at once a sensual and a religious initiation. Daphnis and Chloe is the best known, and the best, of the early Greek romances, precursors to the modern novel. Admired by Goethe, it has been reinterpreted in music and art by Ravel and Chagall. This new translation is immensely readable, and does full justice to the humour and humanity of the story.

Harvey Cheyne is the over-indulged son of a millionaire. When he falls overboard from an ocean liner he is rescued by a Portuguese fisherman and, initially against his will, joins the crew of the We're Here for a summer. Through the medium of an exci ting adventure story, Captains Courageous (1897) deals with a boy who like Mowgli in The Jungle Book, is thrown into an entirely alien environment. The superstitious, magical world of the sea and the tough, orderly, physical world of the boat form a backdrop to Harvey's regeneration. Kipling describes the fascination skills of the schooner fishermen who would soon be made redundant by the twentieth century, and makes the ship function as a convincing model for a society engaged in a difficult an d dangerous task. The introduction to this edition examines its place among other maritime novels and among Kipling's own work, and explanatory notes clarify the seafaring terms and historical and geographical references.

Lord Clonbrony and his ambitious, worldly wife lead an extravagant social life in London on the proceeds of their estates in Ireland. Their son, Lord Colambre, refusing to marry the heiress arranged for him by his mother, decides instead to investigate, incognito, the management of the family estates in Ireland. Appalled by the corruption, mismanagement, and poverty he discovers, he sets about finding a solution to his father's debts and the family's wilful indifference. Maria Edgeworth's classic novel combines a fast-miving depiction of national manners with a brilliantly witty expose of the pernicious system of absentee landownership.

In Greenmantle (1916) Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic Messiah. He is joined by three more of Buchan's heroes: Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron , the American determined to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, Greenmantle himself, modelled on Lawrence of Arabia. The intrepid four move in disguise through Germany to Constantinople and the Russian border to face their enemies - the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty of Hilda von Einem. In this classic espionage adventure Buchan shows his mastery of the thriller and the Stevensonian romance, and also his enormous knowledge of world politics before and during the First World War. This ed ition illuminates for the first time the many levels beneath the stirring plot and romantic characters.

Pamela under the Notion of being a Virtuous Modest Girl will be introduced into all Familes,and when she gets there, what Scenes does she represent? Why a fine young Gentleman endeavouring to debauch a beautiful young Girl of Sixteen.' (Pamela Censured, 1741) One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world 'into two different Parties, Pamelists and Antipamelists', even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day. Preached up for its morality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine, but by a printer who fifteen years earlier had narrowly escaped imprisonment for the seditious output of his press, Pamela is not only a work of pioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse. Based on the original text of 1740, from which Richardson later retreated in a series of defensive revisions, this edition makes available the version of Pamela that aroused such widespread controversy on its first appearance.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America's leading feminist intellectual of the early twentieth century. The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories makes available the fullest selection of her short fiction ever printed. In addition to her pioneering masterpiece, 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' (1890), which draws on her own experience of depression and insanity, this edition features her Impress 'story studies', works in the manner of writers such as James, Twain, and Kipling. These stories, together with other fiction from her neglected California period (1890-5), throw new light on Gilman as a practitioner of the art of fiction. In her Forerunner stories she repeatedly explores the situation of 'the woman of fifty' and inspires reform by imagining workable solutions to a range of personal and social problems.

This richly illustrated series of retold fairy tales for children aged 5-12 years old will bring an extra dimension to your English teaching.

This richly illustrated series of retold fairy tales for children aged 5-12 years old will bring an extra dimension to your English teaching. With listening, speaking, reading, writing, and drama activities, Classic Tales graded readers make it easy for you to create complete language lessons around a popular and engaging traditional tale. Town Mouse goes to see his friend, Country Mouse. He thinks the food is strange. It's very dark and quiet. Then he sees a cow! Let's go to the town, Town Mouse says to Country Mouse. Does Country Mouse like the town? What does he see there? What does he think?

This richly illustrated series of retold fairy tales for children aged 5-12 years old will bring an extra dimension to your English teaching.

Dickson McCunn, a respectable, newly retired grocer of romantic heart, plans a modest walking holiday in the hills of south-west Scotland. He meets a young English poet and, contrary to his better sense, finds himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, who is held prisoner in the rambling mansion, Huntingtower. This modern fairy-tale is also a gripping adventure story, and in it Buchan introduces some of his best-loved characters, including the Gorbals Die-Har ds, who reappear in later novels. He also paints a remarkable picture of a man rejuvenated by joining much younger comrades in a challenging and often dangerous fight against tyranny and fear.