The scope of his genius is indicated in this volume by the inclusion of the period’s most scintillating comedy – The Importance of Being Earnest; its most notorious novel – The Picture of Dorian Gray; and its most haunting elegy – The Ballad of Reading Gaol; together with a selection of his most acclaimed essays and stories. This expanded new edition now includes the complete version of De Profundis and Wilde’s teasing parable about Shakespeare, The Portrait of Mr. W.H.Introduction by Terry Eagleton

    Much of his poetry consists of deeply felt lyrical meditations on a variety of themes—love, death, the transience of joy, the impermanence of youth and beauty, the immortality of art, and other topics—expressed in verse of exquisite delicacy, originality, and sensuous richness.This collection contains 30 of his finest poems, including such favorites as "On first looking into Chapman's Homer," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "On seeing the Elgin Marbles," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Isabella; or, the pot of Basil" and the celebrated Odes: "To a Nightingale," "On a Grecian Urn," "On Melancholy," "On Indolence," "To Psyche," and "To Autumn." These and many other poems, reproduced here from a standard edition, represent a treasury of time-honored poetry that ranks among the glories of English verse.

    Conan Doyle loved the idea of creating a third novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which Holmes must decipher the otherworld. Sure, there is a supernatural and terrifying air that makes a logical solution seem impossible, but Holmes cannot be deterred. In the second book of this collection, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, several cases put the mental agility of the detective to test. Holmes will have to deal with his first error in judgment and with his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, who sends an assassin to kill the detective.

    To-morrow.--Amy Foster.--Youth: A narrative.--Heart of darkness.--The end of the tether.--Karain: A memory.--The idiots.--An outpost of progress.--The return.--The lagoon.--Gaspar Ruiz.--The informer.--The brute.--An anarchist.--The duel.--Il conde.--A smile of fortune.--The secret sharer.--Freya of the seven isles.--The planter of Malata.--The partner.--The inn of the two witches.--Because of the dollars.--The warrior's soul.--Prince Roman.--The tale.--The black mate.

    When Vorne Asleigh, the successor to his father's fortune and Knightshill, the ancestral home, meets a hero's death at Khartoum leaving his family without a suitable successor, the Ashleighs begin a passionate fight for survival.

    Praised for his eloquence, he was also reviled by conservatives for his radical politics. This edition, thematically organized for ease of access, contains some of his best-known essays, such as The Indian Jugglers and The Fight, as well as more obscure pieces on politics, philosophy, and culture.

    Using the language and props of our modernity with cinematic speed and haunting lyric power, Logue gives a close-up view of war unlike anything else in recent poetry.

    Paperback book - #1 International Bestseller

    Though by modern standards this small work covers no new ground, it attests to the logical rigor and powers of elucidation of a scientific genius, whose insights into electromagnetism and the chemistry of gases were pivotal to the great discoveries in physics during the 20th century. Einstein described Maxwell's influence on the scientific understanding of the physical universe as "the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton." Maxwell's ideas also laid the groundwork for Max Planck's subsequent development of the quantum hypothesis.In seven concise and lucidly written chapters, Maxwell covers all the basic concepts of physics: time, space, matter, mass, force, momentum, velocity, acceleration, laws of motion, work, energy, gravitation, and many other ideas. This edition also includes a chapter on equations of motion from Maxwell's classic Electricity and Magnetism, plus two appendices, one on the relativity of motion and the other on the Principle of Least Action.Complete with many useful illustrations to clarify the concepts discussed in the text, this accessible work is well suited for history of science courses or as a still-relevant introduction to basic physics for the average reader.

    In After You with a Pistol Mortdecai is roped into a marriage with a beautiful Viennese heiress, who is willing to blissfully accompany him on his life of taste and intrigue as long as he can help her with one little errand: assassinate the Queen of England. Something Nasty in the Woodshed features Charlie, exiled in London due to his growing unpopularity fueled by the aforementioned shady art deal, taking refuge on the island of Jersey. What begins as a epicurean interlude morphs into a macabre manhunt as Charlie seeks to expose a local rapist.

    Patna Hall is as beautiful and timeless as India itself, ruled over firmly and wise by proprietor Auntie Sanni. For Mary it feels strangely like home.In a week that will change the young couple's destiny, election fever grips the Southern Indian state and Mary falls under the spell of the people, the country - and Krishnan, godlike candidate for the Root and Flower party . . .

    Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, and Brian Friel. The texts are fully annotated with explanatory notes on Anglo-Irish usage, place names, historical figures, and literary allusions. "Backgrounds and Criticism" contains almost fifty texts relevant to the twelve plays represented. Included are prefaces by the authors, reports by spectators on original productions, memoirs concerning playwrights and performances, and recent critical assessments by American, British, and Irish scholars. From its collection of documents relevant to the origin of the Irish Literary Revival in the midst of Ireland's republican revolution to the recent formation of the Field Day Company in Northern Ireland, Modern Irish Drama charts the rise and development of one of the most powerful national dramas of the twentieth century. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

    We follow the fortunes of Minnie’s family and her sister, Netty, whose marriage takes her away from the cave to Sheffield where she is eventually joined by Minnie. Their experiences in a town at the start of the industrial revolution are described in compelling and touching detail.

    Renowned scholar of medieval literature, Lee Patterson,  presents a compelling vision of the shape and direction of Geoffrey Chaucer’s entire career in Chaucer and the Subject of History.    Chaucer's interest in individuality was strikingly modern.  At the same time he was profoundly aware of the pressures on individuality exerted by the past and by society—by history.  This tension between the subject and history is Patterson's topic.  He begins by showing how Chaucer’s understanding of history as a subject for poetry—a world to be represented and a cultural force affecting human action—began to take shape in his poems on classical themes, especially in Troilus and Criseyde.  Patterson's extended analysis of this profound yet deeply conflicted exploration of the relationship between "history" and "the subject" provides the basis for understanding Chaucer's shift to his contemporary world in the Canterbury Tales.  There, in the shrewdest and most wide-ranging analysis of late medieval society we possess, Chaucer investigated not just the idea of history but the historical world intimately related to his own political and literary career.    Patterson's chapters on individual tales clarify and confirm his provocative arguments.   He shows, for example, how the Knight's Tale represents the contemporary crisis of governance in terms of a crisis in chivalric identity itself; how the Miller’s Tale reflects the social pressures and rhetoric of peasant movements generally and the Rising of 1381 in particular; and how the tales of the Merchant and Shipman register the paradoxical placement of a bourgeois class lacking class identity.  And Patterson's brilliant readings of the Wife of Bath’s Tale—"the triumph of the subject"—and the Pardoner’s Tale —"the subject of confession"—reveal how Chaucer reworked traditional materials to accomplish stunning innovations that make visible unmistakably social meanings.  Chaucer and the Subject of History is a landmark book, one that will shape the way that Chaucer is read for years to come.

    As moving today as when he wrote them as a young man nearly two centuries ago, Shelley's love-filled persuasions are accompanied by 24 full-color paintings in the Victorian and Edwardian traditions.

    

    Folk Narratives contains tales told for edification or delight, but not thought to be factually true. Folk Legends presents tales the tellers believed to be records of actual events.

    Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books help students to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers and exams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature.Each volume:-- Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text-- Uses clear, conversational language-- Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages-- Includes a chronology of the author's life and era-- Provides an overview of the historical context-- Offers a summary of its critical reception-- Lists primary and secondary sources and index

    It is a long essay on the life and work of Dickens in which Ackroyd demonstrates his argument for connecting the life and work, and, in the process, throws light upon both. In addition he has written 20 introductions to the whole range of Dickens' published work, from novels to journalism, in which he analyzes the writings themselves while at the same time providing an account of the novelist's career. Chatterton and First Light and his biography of T.S. Eliot was awarded the Whitbread PRize for the best biography of 1984.

    

    Now, in what is surely the definitive biography, the world's leading expert on Trollope provides an amusing, insightful, and authoritative portrait of this remarkable figure. N. John Hall writes with an unparalleled knowledge of his subject--he is already the general editor of the 62-volume Selected Works of Anthony Trollope, and the editor of Letters of Anthony Trollope, which Victoria Glendinning (herself a Trollopian) suggested in The Spectator already constitutes a biography by other means simply by virtue of its brilliant footnotes. In this volume, Hall draws on Trollope's works themselves, as well as all pertinent historical evidence, and interweaves Trollope's public and social life--as a civil servant, devoted hunter, and extensive traveler--with lucid accounts of his writing. Starting with Trollope's early days on the family farm and at the famous Harrow School (studying with Byron's former tutor), we learn of Trollope's marriage, his politics (Hall calls him a conservative liberal), his career at the Post Office, and his last decade (which gets full treatment, although many have ignored it). We trace his initial attempts at writing (his first three novels were resounding failures), and follow his eventual popular success (beginning with The Warden and Barchester Towers--the latter of which, Hall shows, boasts Trollope's rich comic dialogue and distinctive characterization). In Hall's telling, Trollope's life almost approaches that of his novels, as when we watch him swoop down into a small village on his horse to interview the surprised residents about their mail service. (Trollope once claimed that his life's ambition was to cover the country with rural letter carriers.) Trollope's legendary prolific output--nearly seventy books in a thirty-five year career--attests to the rigor of his writing schedule. Every morning, he would produce a certain number of words (recording his output in a ledger he devised for the purpose), and then head off to work. To increase his efficiency he took to writing on trains (for which he designed a special writing tablet), and later had carpenters build him desks in his steamer cabins during ocean crossings. And, as Hall points out, Trollope was not simply a prodigious writer, but also more of a scholar than has been recognized. Nevertheless, his genius lay especially in his comic sensibility, and in the care and judgment of his writing (despite the fact that he almost never rewrote a line). Hall's complex, but sharply focused, narrative portrays this daunting figure in vivid detail, combining humor with subtle insight into a mysterious personality. Those who have enjoyed the Barsetshire chronicles or the Palliser novels, and who want to know more about one of the greats of 19th-century literature, will be richly rewarded by this comprehensive biography.

    L. Kennedy's first collection of stories, are small people - the kind who inhabit the silence in libraries, who never appear on screen and who never make the headlines. Often alone and sometimes lonely, her characters ponder the mysteries of sex and death-and the ability of public transport to affect our lives.