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Armadale tells the devastating story of the independent, murderous, and adulterous Lydia Gwilt. This traditional melodrama also considers the modern theme of the role of women in society.

Poised between the fading world of chivalric romance and a new psychological realism, Madame de Lafayette's novel of passion and self-deception marks a turning point in the history of the novel. When it first appeared - anonymously - in 1678 in the heyday of French classicism, it aroused fierce controversy among critics and readers, in particular for the extraordinary confession which forms the climax of the story. Having long been considered a classic, it is now regarded as a landmark in the history of women's writing.In this entirely new translation, The Princesse de Cl`eves is accompanied by two shorter works also attributed to Mme de Lafayette, The Princesse de Montpensier and The Comtesse de Tende; the Introduction and ample notes take account of the latest critical and scholarly work.

This was Kipling's first published volume of fiction. The stories with their brevity and concentration of effect are a landmark in the history of the short story.

"The sweetness of her glance, or rather my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin, did not allow me to hesitate for a moment."So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris--with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses-via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a thief and a whore, the image of love itself, or a thoroughly modern woman? Prevost is careful to leave the ambiguities unresolved, and to lay bare the disorders of passion.This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were approved by Prevost and first published in the edition of 1753.

First published in 1869, Culture and Anarchy debates questions about the nature of culture and society. Arnold asks what good culture can do and how it can best be disseminated. This edition reproduces the first book version and enables readers to appreciate its historical context and its continued importance.

This volume contains the four plays by Thomas Middleton which have most impressed the modern world: "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" is the most complex amd effective of the city comedies; "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies outside of Shakespeare -- studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology; "A Game at Chess" was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical expos'e of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played tp pacifist houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it. The best-value collection available with the most officially up-to-date introduction; all the play texts are newly edited with richly informative annotation.

This anthology brings together a generous selection of scientific and literary material to explore the exchanges and interactions between them. It shows how scientists and creative writers alike fed from a common imagination in their language, style, metaphors and imagery. It includes writing by Michael Faraday, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and many others.

Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian, was inspired to take up his pen when the assassination of Domitian ended `fifteen years of enforced silence'. Agricola is the biography of his late father-in-law and an account of Roman Britain. Germania gives insight into Rome's most dangerous enemies, the Germans, and is the only surviving specimen from the ancient world of an ethnographic study. Each in its way has had immense influence on ourperception of Rome and the northern `barbarians' and the edition reflects recent research in Roman-British and Roman-German history.

Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr: Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life. This book examines the rich interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work in film, stage, and the media in the century following his death.

Kipling portrays school as the first stage of a much larger game, a pattern-maker for the experiences of life. Implied throughout the stories is the question 'What happened to these fifteen-year-old boys, and how did the lessons they learned at school apply to the world of warfare and imperial government?'

Against Nature is Huysmans's great fin-de-siecle novel anticipating many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarme and Poe. This new translation is supplemented by a critically up-to-date introduction and indispensable notes which enhance the understanding of a highly allusive work.

Of all the great classical love poets, Propertius is surely one of those with most immediate appeal for the twentieth century reader. His poetry centres on a helpless infatuation for the sinister figure of his mistress, Cynthia, and it is analysed with a tormented but witty grandeur in all its changing moods - from ecstasy to suicidal despair.

An international children's classic, The Wind in the Willows grew from the author's letters to his young son, yet it is concerned almost exclusively with adult themes. This new edition explores a profoundly English book with a world following; a book for adults adopted by children; a timeless masterpiece and a vital portrait of an age.

These three works exemplify the Roman historian Sallust's condemnation of the excesses of the late Republic. In the conspiracy of Catiline and the war against Jugurtha he sees moral and political corruption and the tragedy of civil strife. This new translation captures Sallust's distinctive style and considers his work as history and literature.

In this new edition the writings of the young Brontes - Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell - are presented together for the first time in a single volume. The fantasy worlds of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, experiments in romance and realism, provided a rich source for their later work and offer an insight into their developing creativity.

The death of his beloved wife leaves the Duke of Omnium, former Primer Minister, struggling to impose his will on his three children: in debt, and in love with unsuitable marriage partners, they seek to go their own way, and the novel explores family conflict, principle, and the conquering power of love. The last in the superb Palliser series.

Set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who transforms into a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist- the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The first of Maupassant's six novels, A Life (Une Vie) (1883) is the story of Jeanne de Lamare, the only daughter of wealthy Norman aristocrats whose life is beset by treachery and disillusion.

Keats's letters are 'the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet' (T. S. Eliot). This new edition revises and updates Robert Gittings's selection and includes 170 letters, a new introduction and notes, list of correspondents and full index

The Condition of the Working Class in England is the best known work of Engels, and still in many ways the best study of the working class in Victorian England. It was the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution, and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature ofhis insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make this account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change into a classic - a historical study that parallels and complements the fictional works of the time by such writers as Gaskell and Dickens. What Cobbett had done for agriculturalpoverty in his Rural Rides, Engels did - and more - in this work on the plight of industrial workers in England in the 1840s. This edition includes the prefaces to the English and American editions, and a map of Manchester c.1845.

This selection offers a cross-section from the 6,000 surviving sheets that constitute Leonardo's notebooks, including his thoughts on landscape, optics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture, and painting. Fully updated, this new edition includes some 70 line drawings and a Preface by Leonardo expert Martin Kemp.

This unique edition brings together four plays concerned with 'domestic' themes: Arden of Faversham, Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness and The English Traveller, and Dekker, Rowley and Ford's The Witch of Edmonton. Texts are in modern spelling, accompanied by a critical introduction, wide-ranging annotation and bibliography.