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Euripides wrote about timeless themes, of friendship and enmity, hope and despair, duty and betrayal. The first three plays in this volume are imbued with an atmosphere of violence, while the fourth, Cyclops, is our only surviving example of a genuine satyr play, with all the crude and slapstick humor that characterized the genre. Alcestis shows various reactions to death with pathos and grim humor while the blood-soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering. Children of Heracles deals with the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them.

The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) is a compelling novel of passion and daring. Set at the beginning of the 19th-century in northern Italy, it traces the joyous but ill-starred amorous exploits of a handsome young aristocrat called Fabrice del Dongo. The novel's great achievement is to conjure up the excitement and romance of youth while never losing sight of the harsh realities which beset the pursuit of happiness. This new translation captures Stendhal'snarrative verse, while the Introduction explores the novel's reception and the reasons for its enduring popularity and power.

This edition of one of Dickens's earlier novels is based on the accurate Clarendon edition of the text and includes the prefaces to the 1850 and 1867 editions and Dickens's Number Plans.

Flaubert's Three Tales offer an excellent introduction to the work of one of the world's greatest novelists.

The Greek satirist Lucian was a brilliantly entertaining writer who invented the comic dialogue as a vehicle for satiric comment. This lively new translation is both accurate and idiomatic, and the introduction highlights Lucian's importance in his own and later times.

The remarkable story of twelfth-century recluse Christina of Markyate, her trials and temptations, who eventually founded a priory. The anonymous Life is a vivid social portrait of a medieval religious woman, a dramatic record of spiritual conviction against all odds.

Sima Qian tells the story of the First Emperor, founder of the Qin dynasty, in whose reign the Great Wall was built and whose tomb was guarded by the famous terracotta warriors excavated in 1974. His account details the ruthless exercise of power but also the creation of an empire that endured until 1911.

This edition, previously published in the Oxford Authors series, includes all Tennyson's classic poems and The Princess, In Memoriam, Maud, Enoch Arden in full, as well as several of the Idylls of the King. It includes letters and extracts from Hallam Tennyson's Memoir of his father.

This comprehensive selection includes over eighty of Browning's shorter poems, amongst them his most famous and best-loved dramatic monologues, as well as the complete text of many of his longer poems. This edition also selects generously from the love letters between Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, as well as from Browning's more general correspondence.

In these four dialogues Plato considers virtue and its definition. Charmides, Laches, and Lysis investigate the specific virtues of self-control, courage, and friendship; the laterMeno discusses the concept of virtue as a whole, and whether it is something that can be taught.

Schopenhauer's two essays On the Freedom of the Will and On the Basis of Morals form his complete system of ethics. Their doctrines are here presented in more accessible, self-contained form than in his larger work, and in a new translation, introduced by Christopher Janaway, that preserves Schopenhauer's style in modern English.

Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. In this revised and updated version of the definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy's genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader.

This translation brings together ancient classical texts derived from Eratosthenes' handbook of astral mythology, Hyginus' guide to astronomy, and Aratus's astronomical poem Phaenomena to provide a complete collection of Greek astral myths.

Phineas Finn, the handsome Irishman, is intent on making a career in government. His love life marches hand in hand with his political career, and in both he must decide whether to stay true to his principles. The second ofTrollope's Palliser novels, Phineas Finn paints a vivid picture of some very topical dilemmas.

Tibullus was one of the great Roman elegists, alongside Ovid and Propertius. His poems of love, addressed to his mistresses Delia and Nemesis and the boy Marathus portray idealism, anguish, and betrayal, newly translated into stylish English by A. M. Juster, with parallel Latin text, introduction, and notes by Tibullus scholar Robert Maltby.

This unique edition of the Book of Common Prayer includes the texts of three different versions, 1549, 1559, and 1662, to provide a panorama of the history of ritual in England from the Reformation to the present day. The first edition for the common reader, with full notes and introduction, this is one of the seminal texts of human experience.

The first of Trollope's six Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her? explores the dilemma of Alice Vavasor, torn between two suitors, and the choices faced by two other independent women. The tensions within Victorian society highlighted by the plot are illuminated in the introduction and notes to this new edition.

Young immigrant Karl Rossmann has a series of adventures in a vision of an ultra-modern America that is both fantasy and social satire. Full of incident, and blackly humorous, Kafka's first novel is newly translated by Ritchie Robertson in an edition that includes a full introduction and notes.

This groundbreaking investigation into the lives of London's underclass was undertaken by Henry Mayhew in the 1850s. His interviews with street traders, beggars, and thieves results in a work as vivid as a Victorian novel. This new selection includes original illustrations and an illluminating introduction and notes.

Drawing on his own unhappy experiences, Goethe's account of Werther's passionate love for Lotte, who is promised to another, is one of the first great Romantic tragic novels. David Constantine's new translation captures the novel's lyric intensity, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes that illuminate Goethe's achievement.

Drawing on psychology, philosophy, and literature, William James's classic survey of religious belief gathers testimony from a huge range of diverse sources to construct a defence of the individual religious experience. It speaks powerfully to the modern debate on atheism and faith, in the most critically up-to-date edition available.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Suspiria de Profundis, and 'The English Mail-Coach' are De Quincey's finest essays in autobiography, published here with three appendices containing a wealth of related manuscript material and a comprehensive introduction and notes.

In A Hero of Our Time, the first great Russian novel, a young officer, passionate and world-weary, is posted to the Caucasus and becomes involved in a series of adventures. A dazzlingly original work of fiction, the novel is newly translated together with Pushkin's travel narrative, A Journey to Arzrum, with introduction and notes.

Pirandello is a seminal figure in modern drama. This is the only one-volume edition of his two most famous plays, Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV, and his last unfinished masterpiece The Mountain Giants, in lively and performable new translations that remain faithful to the letter and spirit of the originals.

An ambitious and unscrupulous priest arrives in the provincial town of Plassans, intent on conquering its political and social life. His arrival has profound consequences for the Mouret family, whose lives are turned upside down. This is the fourth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, and the first modern translation for more than fifty years.

In these six late stories Tolstoy explores human relationships and moral choices, raising profound questions about life in gripping fictional form. 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is an existential masterpiece, a harrowing tale of the final illness and death of a bourgeois lawyer. Newly translated, and with a wide-ranging Introduction.

The Compleat Angler is the most famous work in the literature of sport and a unique celebration of the English countryside. This new edition highlights its celebration of natural history, the environment, conservation, and the power of friendship.

Cicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a leading politician of the closing era of the Roman republic. These three dialogues here are among the most accessible of Cicero's philosophical works.

Arthur Machen is a significant figure in supernatural and horror literature, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This collection brings together his best horror tales with a full contextual introduction and which helps to illuminate Machen's place in the literary and cultural milieu of 1890s Britain.