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A wealthy American man of business descends on Europe in search of a wife to make his fortune complete. His bid for Claire de Cintr'e hand receives an icy welcome from the heads of her aristocratic family. Can they stomach his manners for the sake of his dollars? Out of this classic collision between the old world and the new, James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama a fable which in the later version printed here takes on some of the subtleties associated with this greatest novels.

Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be transgressed, and what should be reverently preserved. Burke's generation was muchin need of advice on these matters. The Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and catastrophically, the French Revolution presented challenges of terrible proportions. They could promise paradise or threaten anarchy. Burke was acutely aware of how high the stakes were. The Reflections onthe Revolution in France was a dire warning of the consequences that would follow the mismanagement of change.

In this vigorous and fast-moving novel of post-Napoleonic France, Julien Sorel's plans to reach the higher echelons of society through the priesthood are defelected by his realization that the attainment of happiness is of greater consequence than the pursuit of ambition. Subtitled `A Chronicle of 1830', Stendhal's depiction of a nation of smug hypocrites scandalized contemporary readers, who recognized themselves or their peers and felt uncomfortable with the energy, imagination, and sincerity of a hero so patently inspired by their lately deposed Emperor. Julien's restless energy is fully captured in this specially commissioned translation of one of the world's great novels.

Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The compelling story and the machinations of the evil Aeneas Manston also raise the great questions underlying Hardy's major novels, and this edition shows for the first time that the sensation genre was always Hardy's natural medium. Based on first edition text, and includes later prefaces and the Wessex Poems 'dissolved' into prose.

This selection of Coleridge's finest verse, chosen from the acclaimed Oxford Authors critical edition, includes Fears in Solitude, Frost at Midnight, Kubla Khan, and both earlier and later versions of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

A sweeping epic of the Viking Age, Grettir's Saga follows the life of the outlaw Grettir the Strong as he battles against sorcery, bad luck, and the vengefulness of his enemies. Among the most famous and widely read of Iceland's sagas, this new translation features extensive illustrative material to elucidate the story.

First published in 1894, the story of the diva Trilby O'Ferrall and her mesmeric mentor, Svengali, has entered the popular imagination. George Du Maurier's drawings for the novel form part of its appeal - this edition includes his most significant illustrations.

Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Nietzsche passes under review all his previous books and reaches a final reckoning with his many enemies. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career.

Published in 1913, this harrowing, autobiographical 'A to Z' of drinking shattered London's reputation as a clean-living adventurer and massively successful author of such books as White Fang and The Call of the Wild.

Longus' romance tells the story of two teenagers, who love each other but do not know how to make love. Divine presences mingle with peasant life in this colourful story of the mystery of love and sexual initiation. Ronald McCail's new translation is immensely readable and does full justice to one of the most popular of classical romances, a precursor to the modern novel.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance is a highly influential defence of aestheticism. Pater redefined the practice of criticism through his readings of some of the paintings, sculptures, and poems of the Renaissance, and shocked contemporaries for sponsoring a hedonistic ethic with his infamous 'Conclusion'.

When beautiful Lucy Graham becomes Lady Audley, her future looks secure. But her past is shrouded in mystery, and the disappearance of a young man sparks an investigation that will reveal her dark secret... This new edition explores the novel in the context of nineteenth-century sensation fiction and the lively debates it provoked.

In the slum streets of the Jago, Dicky Perrott lives a life of petty crime and violence. With Father Sturt's arrival, he sees how his horizons might alter. Dicky's story highlights the terrible conditions of the Victorian underworld and the social policy that underpinned it. This edition provides rich contextual background material.

A unique edition of the sayings of Diogenes, whose biting wit and eccentricity inspired the anecdotes that express his Cynic philosophy. It includes the accounts of his immediate successors, such as Crates and Hipparchia, and the witty moral preacher Bion. The contrasting teachings of the Cyrenaics and the hedonistic Aristippos complete the volume.

The three short fictions in this unique collection, Sarrasine, The Unknown Masterpiece, and The Girl with the Golden Eyes, deal with the relationship between artistic ideals and sexual desires. They show Balzac's mastery of the seductions of storytelling, and are among the 19th century's richest explorations of life and art.

Zola's novel of peasant life describes the disintegration of the Fouan family when Papa Fouan decides to divide his land between his three children. Greed and violence feed a bitter struggle for supremacy. This new translation captures the novel's blend of brutality and lyricism in its evocation of the inexorable cycle of the natural world.

Locke's Second Treatise is a classic of political philosophy. It helped entrench ideas of a social contract, human rights, and consent as guiding principles for modern Western democracy. His Letter calls for religious tolerance and separation of church and state. This edition offers an essential guide to these two foundational works.

My Bondage and My Freedom is the second of Frederick Douglass's full-length autobiographies. An important slave autobiography, it is significant both for what it tells us about slave life and about its author.

Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862.

Descartes's A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences marks a watershed in European thought; in it, the author provides an informal intellectual autobiography in the vernacular for a non-specialist readership, sweeps away all previous philosophical traditions, and sets out in brief his radical new philosophy.

Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to be seen as the epitome of English suburban life. This edition features Weedon Grossmith's hilarious illustrations and is complemented by an introduction detailing the book's social background.

Apuleius's Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel--the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived from antiquity. It tells the story of the hero Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic results in his transformation into an ass. After suffering a series of trials and humiliations, he is ultimately returned to human shape by the kindness of the goddess Isis. Simultaneously a blend of romantic adventure, fable, and religious testament, The Golden Ass is one of the truly seminal works of European literature, of intrinsic interest as a novel in its own right, and one of the earliest examples of the picaresque. This new translation is at once faithful to the meaning of the Latin, while reproducing all the exuberance of the original.

This unique edition brings together for the first time Austen-Leigh's memoir of his aunt Jane Austen, together with shorter recollections by James Edward's two sisters. It also includes Jane's brother Henry's two biographical accounts.

Captain Scott's own account of his tragic race with Roald Amundsen for the South Pole thrilled the world in 1913. This new edition of his Journals publishes for the first time a complete list of the changes made to Scott's original text before publication.

This is the first edition for nearly 200 years of an unduly neglected work, originally published in 1806, by an intriguing and unconventional woman writer. A Gothic tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in fifteenth-century Venice, the novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of the central character, Victoria's, intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron andShelley, it contradicts idealized stereotypes in women's writing and challenges the received idea of the Gothic genre's representation of passive, victimized women.

The central work of one of the West's greatest philosophers, The Republic of Plato is a masterpiece of insight and feeling, the finest of the Socratic dialogues, and one of the great books of Western culture. This new translation captures the dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power of Plato at the height of his powers. Deftly weaving three main strands of argument into an artistic whole--the ethical and political, the aesthetic and mystical, and the metaphysical--Plato explores in The Republic the elements of the ideal community, where morality can be achieved in a balance of wisdom, courage, and restraint.

This collection brings together seventeen of Kipling''s early stories, written between 1885 and 1888, when Kipling was working as a journalist in India. Wry comedies of British officialdom alternate with glimpses into the harsh lives of the common soldiers and the Indian poor, revealing Kipling''s legendary powers of observation and, in ''Baa Baa, Black Sheep'' his own miserable childhood. From Mrs Hauksbee''s Simla drawing-room to Mulvaney''s cot in barracks, to the wild hills of Kafiristan, Kipling re-creates the India he knew in stories by turns ironic and sentimental, compassionate and bitter, displaying the brilliance that has captivated readers for over a century. 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.