Fiction is much more enlightening about a country and its people than are statistics, and if we want to find out and understand what a nation is really like, we must read its literature. In French Tal
Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, Welsh history--these are just some of the threads woven into the eleven magical tales that make up The Mabinogion. Here are stories full of colorful characters, su
John Locke's classic work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding laid the foundation of British empiricism and remains of enduring interest today. Rejecting doctrines of innate principles and ideas,
Most of what we know about Leonardo da Vinci, we know because of his notebooks. Some 6,000 sheets of notes and drawings survive, perhaps one-fifth of what he actually produced. With an artist's eye an
Here is the first new translation for over thirty years of Polybius' Histories, the major source for our knowledge of the Eternal City's early rise to power, covering the years of the Second Punic War
Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. Admired by George Orwell and W. B. Yeats, the stories include poign
This single volume, blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy includes an introduction, maps of Dante's Italy, Hell, Purgatory, Geocentric Universe, and political panorama of the thirteenth and ear
Critically and textually up-to-date, this new edition of the classic translation (Samuel Moore, 1888) features an introduction and notes by the eminent Marx scholar David McLellan, prefaces writte
In South Sea Tales Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society o
The only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity, the Library of Apollodorus is a unique guide to Greek mythology, from the origins of the universe to the Trojan War.Apollodorus' Library
An almost forgotten classic though a founding text of Victorian middle-class identity,Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management is a volume of insight and common sense. Written by what one might no
Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist
The introduction includes an examination of the Quarto and texts, and of the relationship between them; a critical discussion of the play's historical and literary sources; an examination of conflict
One of Shakespeare's most rollicking and beloved comedies, The Taming of the Shrew was also one of his earliest, probably written about 1592. The introduction to this edition offers a full and origi
Given the wealth of formal debate contained in this tragedy, Troilus and Cressida was probably written in 1602 for a performance at one of the Inns of the Court. Shakespeare's treatment of the age-o
Lucy Snowe, in flight from an unhappy past, leaves England and finds work as a teacher in Madame Beck's school in 'Villette'. Strongly drawn to the fiery autocratic schoolmaster Monsieur Paul Emanuel
The hero of Charlotte Bronte's first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous but manipulat
Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived." This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Ma
In January 1912, Britain's Captain Robert F. Scott reached the South Pole, only to find he had been beaten by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. Scott and his companions faced an 850-mile march t
When a new play was required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597, Shakespeare created The Merry Wives of Windsor, a warm-hearted and spirited "citizen comedy" filled with boisterous action,
