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You are going to entrust your soul to the care of a sophist. But I should be surprised if you even know what a sophist is.' In the fifth century BC professional educators, the sophists, travelled the Greek world claiming to teach success in public an d private life. In this dialogue Plato shows the pretensions of the leading sophist, Protagoras, challenged by the critical arguments of Socrates. From criticism of the educational aims and methods of the sophists the dialogue broadens out to conside r the nature of the good life, and the role of pleasure and intellect in the context of that life. The dialogue combines subtlety of argument with intricacy of dramatic construction and brilliant characterization. This translation achieves both preci sion and colloquial naturalness while the notes and introduction set the arguments in their historical and philosophical context.

'he carried Good-nature to that wonderful and uncommon Height, that he never did a single Injury to Man or Woman, by which he himself did not expect to reap some Advantage' The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled 'Thieftaker General', controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention; after his death balladeers sang of his exploits, and satirists made connections between his success and the triumph of corruption in high places. Henry Fielding built on these narratives to produce one of the greatest sustained satires in the English language. Published in 1743, at a time when the modern novel had yet to establish itself as a fixed literary form, Jonathan Wild is at the same time a brilliant black comedy, an incisive political satire, and a profoundly serious exploration of human 'greatness' and 'goodness'.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Milton's poetry and prose - all the English verse together with a gen erous selection from the major prose writings - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Milton's influence on English poetry and criticism has been incalculable, and this edition covers the full range of his poetic and political output. It incl udes Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes as well as major prose works such as Areopagitica and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. As well as all the English and Italian verse, the volume includes most of the Latin and Greek verse in parallel translation. Spelling has been modernized, and the poems are arranged in order of publication, essential to an understanding of the progress of Milton's career in relation to the political and religious upheavals of his time. The extensi ve notes cover syntax, vocabulary, historical context, and biblical and classical allusions.The introduction traces both Milton's changing conception of his own vocation, and the critical reception his work has received over the past four centuries.

Human nature may be easy to see through, but it is very hard to understand.' The ageing Catherine Vernon, jilted in her youth, has risen to power in a man's world as head of the family bank. She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a famil y of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relation with a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, Catherine's favourite, whom she treats like a son. Conflict between young and old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principal characters, Publishing October 2003 (exact date?) Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition establishes her rediscovered importance.

A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought...but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.' When Machiavelli's brief treatise on Renaissance statecraft and princely power wa s posthumously published in 1532, it generated a debate that has raged unabated until the present day. Based upon Machiavelli's first-hand experience as an emissary of the Florentine Republic to the courts of Europe, The Prince analyses the usually v iolent means by which men seize, retain, and lose political power. Machiavelli added a dimension of incisive realism to one of the major philosophical and political issues of his time, especially the relationship between public deeds and private mora lity. His book provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter in what era or by whom it is exercised. This fluent new translation is accompanied by comprehensive notes and an introduction that considers the true p urpose of The Prince and dispels some of the myths associated with it.

You can leave a forest, but you can never leave a cloister; you are free in the forest, but you are a slave in the cloister.' 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. A success de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance. This new translation includes Diderot' s all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

'In my own marriage I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity.' The book that was to become Married Love" grew from Marie Stopes's conviction that the state of modern middle-class marriage was, like her own, desperate, and that the cause of this desperation was sexual unhappiness. She knew her book would 'probably electrify this country' and it remains one of the best known sex manuals ever written. It combines a lyrical evocation of marital love with a no-nonsense and detailed account of sexual intercourse and sexual pleasure that was a sensation when it was published in 1918. Stopes advocated equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexuality and sexual desire, as well as openly supporting birth control. In this edition of Stopes's ground-breaking work, Ross McKibbin's introduction reveals fascinating insights into Stopes and prevailing attitudes to class, religion, science, and above all, sex."

'The present system means joyless drudgery, semi-starvation, rags and premature death; and they vote for it and uphold it. Let them have what they vote for! Let them drudge and let them starve!' There is no other novel quite like The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists". George Orwell called it 'a wonderful book'; its readers have become a living part of its remarkable history. Tressell's novel is about survival on the underside of the Edwardian Twilight, about exploitative employment when the only safety nets are charity, workhouse, and grave. Following the fortunes of a group of painters and decorators and their families, and the attempts to rouse their political will by the Socialist visionary Frank Owen, the book is both a highly entertaining story and a passionate appeal for a fairer way of life. It asks questions that are still being asked today: why do your wages bear no relation to the value of your work? Why do fat cats get richer when you don't? Tressell's answers are 'The Great Money Trick' and the 'philanthropy' of an unenlightened workforce, who give away their rights and aspirations to a decent life so freely. Intellectually enlightening, deeply moving and gloriously funny (complete with exploding clergyman), "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" is a book that changes lives."

If ever a human foot is to tread the Pole, it must be a British one!' First Mate Shandon receives a mysterious letter asking him to construct a reinforced steamship in Liverpool. As he heads out for Melville Bay and the Arctic labyrinth, a crewman re veals himself to be John Hatteras, and his lifelong obsession, the Pole. Despite experiencing appalling cold and hunger, the captain treks across the frozen wastes in search of fuel. Abandoned by his crew, Hatteras remains without resources at the co ldest spot on earth. How can he find food and explore the Polar Sea? And what will he find at the top of the world? This new translation by the father of Verne Studies brilliantly conveys the hypnotic mood and gripping authenticity of Verne's second novel. This edition also includes the original, censored ending, previously unpublished chapters, and evidence of Verne's plagiarism.

"Discourses on Livy" (1531) is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, "The Prince". Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans wit h that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics - the belief that a healthy body politic was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability. His discussion of conspiracies in "Discourses on Livy" is one of the most sophisticated treatments of archetypal political upheaval every written. In an a ge of increasing political absolutism, Machiavelli's theories became a dangerous ideology. This new translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic, and political information to understand and interpret the revolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence he found in Livy.

'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?' This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household , oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, b rings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel. Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and t he workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.

He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities int o his head...' The Victorian fin de siecle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in t he late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Got hic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.

Senneval, you see in me your sister, the girl you seduced at Nancy, the woman who murdered your son, the wife of your own father and the ignoble creature who sent your mother to the gallows...' Who but the Marquis de Sade would write, not of the pain , tragedy, and joy of love but of its crimes? Murder, seduction, and incest are among the cruel rewards for selfless love in his stories; tragedy, despair, and death the inevitable outcome. Sade's villains will stop at nothing to satisfy their deprav ed passions, and they in turn suffer under the thrall of love. Psychologically astute, and defiantly unconventional, these stories show Sade at his best. A skilled and artful storyteller, he is also an intellectual who asks questions about society, a bout ourselves, and about life, for which we have yet to find the answers. This new selection includes 'An Essay on Novels', Sade's penetrating survey of the novelist's art.

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 Dictionary of Business and Management is a wide-ranging and informative guide to all areas of business. It features up-to-date coverage of over 6,700 terms from marketing to taxation and accounting, business strategy and international finance. US business terms are covered, as well as financial jargon. The new, fourth edition of this established bestseller has been updated to include terms relating to human resources and management, reflecting the growing focus on these areas in modern busin ess. New entries include management concepts (e.g. competence, knowledge management), and named theories (e.g. Tannenbaum and Schmidt, Blake and Mouton). It also covers new terms from fast-changing fields such as current affairs (covering terms such as Private finance initiative and private-public partnership), and Internet business (including terms such as bricks-and-clicks, B2B and viral marketing). In addition to these areas, coverage of social psychology as it relates to management has been expanded, and now covers concepts such as group task theory, group productivity theory, role theory, and leadership theory.Written by a specialized team of contributors in a clear and accessible style, the dictionary will prove indispensable to both business students and professionals.

What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?' Ebenezer Scrooge is a bad-tempered skinflint who hates Christmas and all it stands for, but a ghostly visitor foretells three apparitions who will thaw Scrooge's frozen heart. 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. All five stories show Dickens at his unpredictable best, jumbling together comedy and melodrama, genial romance and urgent social satire, in pursuit of his aim 'to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land'.