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Moll Flanders - whore, wife, thief, felon, penitent - tells the racy tale of her life in Defoe's extraordinary novel. An account of opportunism, endurance, and survival that speaks as strongly today as it did to its first readers, this new edition provides a full introduction and notes to explore the book's eighteenth-century context.

Hobson-Jobson is a unique lexicon of British India. Part dictionary, part encyclopedia it shows how words of Indian origin entered the English language and offers insight into Victorian views of Asia and the way cultures transform one another. Quirky and entertaining, this selected edition includes a fascinating introduction and notes.

Gaskell's depiction of a fallen woman as her heroine shocked contemporary readers. Ruth is seduced and heartlessly abandoned but finds shelter and love with her illegitimate child until a twist of fate brings her past back to haunt her. This new edition explores the novel's radicalism and cultural influence.

Anna Sewell's famous 'Autobiography of a Horse' is a Victorian and children's classic. Written to expose and prevent cruelty to horses in Victorian England, the novel's appeal as animal story, horse-care manual, protest work, feminist text and slave narrative is fully explored in this new edition.

As well as 'The Aspern Papers', this selection includes 'The Death of the Lion', 'The Figure in the Carpet', and 'The Birthplace'. All four stories concern the figure of the artist and the cult of celebrity. This new edition includes extracts from James's Prefaces and Notebooks that shed light on the genesis of the stories.

A fascinating study in sexual psychology and sexual politics, the novel focuses on Helene Grandjean, a widow, and her shifting emotional states. This is the eighth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, and the first modern translation for more than fifty years.

Swann in Love is the story of Charles Swann and his infatuation with Odette de Crecy and the revealing psychological turmoil his relations with her involves. A study in jealousy and the indirections of desire; it is here that Proust first works through his devastating theory of love.

Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, originally published in 1837, opens with the death of Louis XV in 1774 and ends in 1795 when Bonaparte quelled the insurrection of the Vendemiaire. It is a work of great narrative and descriptive power that was itself meant to be revolutionary.

A schoolteacher in a provincial town falls in love with and marries a young local woman. He thinks he's found a bliss only described in novels. But before long, his sharp points of bliss become blurred. The loss of ideals and poverty of actual experience are the themes of these stories. Chekhov's Russians, at the close of the 19th century are trapped in a prison of frustration, which he depicts with laconic power.

Our hero confronts a large and varied cast, including Wackford Squeers, the fantastic ogre of a schoolmaster, and Vincent Crummles, the grandiloquent ham actor, on his comic and satirical adventures up and down the country. Punishing wickedness, befriending the helpless, strutting the stage, and falling in love, Nicholas shares some of his creator's energy and earnestness as he faces the pressing issues of early Victorian society.

Of all Jack London's fictions none have been so popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this edition includes White Fang, and five famous short stories - 'Batard', 'Moon-Face', 'Brown Wolf', 'That Spot', and 'To Build a Fire'.

This volume offers John Webster's two great Jacobean tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, together with his brilliant tragicomedy, The Devil's Law-Case, and the comedy written with William Rowley, A Cure for a Cuckold. All four plays display the provocative intelligence of a profoundly original playwright. A critical introduction defends Webster against charges of over-indulgence in violence, and explores his sophisticated staging and scenic forms.

Lorca's poetry is steeped in the land and folklore of his native Andalusia, and he evokes a world of intense feelings. This selection balances his early poems with better-known later work to give a clear vision of his poetic development, in excellent translations and with an astute Introduction.

The Dhammapada, the Pali version of one of the most popular texts of the Buddhist canon, ranks among the classics of the world's great religious literature. Like all religious texts in Pali, the Dhammapada belongs to the Therevada school of the Buddhist tradition, adherents of which are now found primarily in Kampuchea, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Dhammapada, or "sayings of the dhamma," is taken to be a collection of the utterances of the Buddha himself. Taken together, the verses form a key body of teaching within Buddhism, a guiding voice along the struggle-laden path towards true enlightenment, or Nirvana. However, the appeal of these epithets of wisdom extends beyond its religious heritage to a general and universal spirituality. This edition provides an introduction and notes which examine the impact that the text has had within the Buddhist heritage through the centuries.

Henry of Huntingdon's History is a major source for events in England and Normandy during his lifetime, including the Battle of Hastings, the reigns of William II, Henry I, and Stephen, written with panache and passion and embellished with anecdotes such as Henry's death from a surfeit of lampreys, and Cnut and the waves.

This volume offers Burns's work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers, presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It includes the whole of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), a generous selection of songs with full scores, comprehensive notes, some important letters and a glossary.

Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) is one of the great classics of philosophy. Aristotle examines the nature of the soul-sense-perception, imagination, cognition, emotion, and desire, including, memory, dreams, and processes such as nutrition, growth, and death.

One of the great novels of London life and labour in the 1890s, Esther Waters is the story of a single mother struggling against prejudice and injustice. It vividly brings to life a world of horse racing, gambling, and public houses and was groundbreaking in its approach. This is the only available edition of this powerful novel.

The five plays in this collection are Everyman in his Humour, the tragedy Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. They represent the full range and complexity of Jonson's art as a playwright. The text is the modernized version of Herford and Simpson's edition (OUP 1925-52), with full annotation.

Veblen's landmark study of affluent American society exposes the 'pecuniary culture' and 'conspicuous consumption' that results when unessential goods are exploited at the expense of production of true value. This new edition examines Veblen's still pertinent arguments.

Shirley is Charlotte Bronte's only historical novel and her most topical one. The introduction to this new edition considers its autobiographical overtones as well as its social context, and includes revised notes and bibliography.

This excellent and accessible work includes many major texts in translation: Aristotle's Poetics, Longinus' On Sublimity, Horace's Art of Poetry, Tacitus' Dialogues, and extracts from Plato and Plutarch.

Juvenal, writing between AD 110 and 130, was one of the two great satirists of ancient Rome (the other being Horace). His powerful and witty attacks on the vices of the big city have been admired and used by many English writers including Dr Johnson. Niall Rudd's translation aims to reproduce Juvenal's livliness and energy whilst maintaining the poet's general stylistic and metrical effect.

Love and loyalty, hatred and revenge, fear, deprivation, and political ambition: these are the motives which thrust the characters portrayed in these three Sophoclean masterpieces on to their collision course with catastrophe. Recognized in his own day as perhaps the greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles's reputation has remained undimmed for two and a half thousand years. His greatest innovation in the tragic medium was his development of a central tragic figure, faced with a test of will and character, risking obloquy and death rather than compromise his or her principles: it is striking that Antigone and Electra both have a woman as their intransigent `hero'. Antigone dies rather thanneglect her duty to her family, Oedipus's determination to save his city results in the horrific discovery that he has committed both incest and parricide, and Electra's unremitting anger at her mother and her lover keeps her in servitude and despair. These vivid translations combine elegance and modernity, and are equally suitable for reading or theatrical performance.

Roderick Random (1748), Smollett's first novel, is full of the dazzling vitality characteristics of all his work, as well as of his own life. Roderick is the boisterous and unprincipled hero who answers life's many misfortunes with a sledgehammer. Left penniless, he leaves his native Scotland for London and on the way meets Strap, and old schoolfellow. Together they undergo many adventures at the hands of scoundrels and rogues. Roderick qualifies as a surgeon's mateand is pressed as a common soldier on bord the man-of-war Thunder. In a tale of romance as well as adventure, Roderick also finds time to fall in love... Smollett drew on his own experiences as a surgeon's mate in the navy for the memorable scenes on board ship, and the novel combines documentaryrealism with great humour and panache. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This novel is an unusual and disturbing love-story. In playing on the issue of the heroine's name, the novel illustrates the high cost of a patriarchal system. Burney exhibits her powers as a comic writer and a satirist in depicting Cecilia's dismaying entry into the gilded fashionable world. This edition presents 'Cecilia' as it first appeared in 1782, indicating changes Burney made to later editions.

Maupassant's second novel, Bel-Ami (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man making it to the top in fin-de-siecle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. This new translation is complemented by fullest introduction and notes of any edition.