Hinduism is practised by eighty per cent of India's population, and by thirty million people outside India. In this Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott combines a succinct and authoritative overview of a major religion with an analysis of the challenges facing it in the twentieth century. She discusses key preoccupations of Hinduism such as the centrality of the Veda as religious texts, the role of brahmins, gurus, and storytellers in the transmission of divine truths, and the importance of epics such as the Ramayana. Issues such as the place of women and dalits (untouchables) in contemporary society are also addressed, making this book stimulating reading for Hindus and non-Hindus alike.

In this provocative but balanced essay, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He prompts us to consider why political systems evolve, how politics offers both power and order in our society, whether democracy is always a good thing, and what future politics may have in the twenty-first century.

Don Carlos and Mary Stuart, two of German literature's greatest dramas, deal with the timeless issues of power, freedom, and justice. Dating from 1787 and 1800 respectively, one play was written before the French Revolution, the other in its aftermath. Both dramatize periods of crisis in sixteenth-century Europe, and in doing so reflect Schiller's passionate engagement with the great themes of his own age — justice, power, freedom of conscience, legitimacy of government. A youthful work, Don Carlos shows the victory of the forces of reaction over the representatives of a new age. Mary Stuart shows the struggle of the Scottish queen in her last days of her life, not only for her freedom, but also for peace with her conscience, and that of her English rival, Elizabeth I, with the challenge of ruling justly. A vivid imaginative experience when read, these plays, with their starkly contrasting characters and thrilling confrontations, also demonstrate Schiller's brilliant stagecraft. These new translations into blank verse are accurate, elegant, and playable. The introduction, notes, and chronology set the plays in their cultural and intellectual background, while a family tree explains the historical relationship bewteen Don Carlos and Mary Stuart.

The daughter of a Swedish minister, growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's adolescent ability on the piano is encouraged by her eccentric German music teacher, Professor Wuncsch and by the kindly but unhappily married Dr Howard Archie. Set apart from the townspeople by her talents, Thea's friends are far from conventional. At 17 she leaves them and her mother's influence to go to Chicago where she studies with the pianist Andor Harsanyi. Overhearing her singing in a church he is the mentor who discovers the potential of her singing voice and sends her to study with the chill and selfish Madison Bowers, whom she dislikes. Her story moves to Arizona when she and a wealthy young brewer, Fred Ottenburg fall in love. A tension between her relationship with him and the driving artistic impulse that has always ruled her develops and becomes the novel's compelling central theme. Cather's lyrical, atmospheric and moving novel is a thinly veiled autobiography of a female artist in America at the turn of the century. A mature work filled with memorable characters all of whom influence Thea in different ways, The Song of the Lark deserves to be read alongside O Pioneers! and My Antonia and fully justifies Cather's status as one of America's greatest twentieth-century writers.

I was born in Tuckahoe I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. Thus begins the autobiography of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) who was born into slavery in Maryland and after his escape to Massachusetts in 1838 became an ardent abolitionist and campaigner for women's rights. His Narrative, which became an instant bestseller on publication in 1845, describes his life as a slave, the cruelty he suffered at the hands of his masters, his struggle to educate himself and his fight for freedom. Passionately written, often using striking biblical imagery, the Narrative came to assume epic proportions as a founding anti-slavery text in which Douglass carefully crafted both his life story and his persona. This new edition examines Douglass, the man and the myth, his complex relationship with women and the enduring power of his book. It includes extracts from Douglass's primary sources and examples of his writing on women's rights.

In a famous passage in A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf asked why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age. She went on to speculate about an imaginary Judith Shakespeare who might have been destined for a career as illustrious as that of her brother William, except that she had none of his chances. The truth is that many women wrote during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and this collection will serve to introduce modern readers to the full variety of women's writing in this period from poems, prose and fiction to prophecies, letters, tracts and philosophy. The collection begins with the poetry of Isabella Whitney, who worked in a gentlewoman's household in London in the late 1560s, and ends with Aphra Behn who was employed as a spy in Amsterdam by Charles II. Here are examples of the work of twelve women writers, allowing the reader to sample the diverse and lively output of all classes and opinions, from artistcrats such as Mary Wroth, Anne Clifford and Margaret Cavendish to women of obscure background caught up in the religious ferment of the mid seventeenth century like Hester Biddle, Pricscilla Cotton and Mary Cole. The collection includes three plays, and a generous selection of poetry, letters, diary, prose fiction, religious polemic, prohecy and scienticficic speculation, offering the reader the possibilility of tracing patterns through the works collected and some sense of historical shifts and changes. All the extracts are edited afresh from original sources and the anthology includes comprehensive notes, both explanatory and textual.

Alexandre Dumas's novels are notable for their suspense and excitement, their foul deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, and glorious victories. In The Black Tulip, the shortest of Dumas's most famous tales, the real hero is no Musketeer, but a flower. The novel — a deceptively simple story — is set in Holland in 1672, and weaves the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of John de Witte and his brother Cornelius into a tale of romantic love. The novel is also a timeless political allegory in which Dumas, drawing on the violence and crimes of history, makes his case against tyranny and puts all his energies into creating a symbol of justice and tolerance: the fateful tulipa negra. This edition reprints the first, classic English translation. David Coward sets the novel in the context of its author's life, the turbulent history of the Dutch Republic, and the amazing tulipmania of the 17th century which brought wealth to some and ruin to many.

Mrs. Gareth, widowed chatelaine of Poynton, is fighting to keep her house with its priceless objets d'art from her son Owen and his lovely, utterly philistine fiancee. When she discovers that her young friend and sympathized Fleda Vetch is secretly in love with Owen, she thrusts her into the battle-line. The power struggle that ensues between the three women leaves Owen vacillating. What is at stake is not the mere possession of tables and chairs; it is, for Fleda, a conflict between aesthetic ideals, ethical imperatives, and her innermost feelings, in which she risks betraying, and being betrayed by, all that she holds most dear.

The greatest classic of angling literature and a unique celebration of the English countryside, Izaak Walton's IThe Compleat AnglerR was originally published in 1653 and first appeared with Charles Cotton's continuation in 1676. No book, apart from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, has been more often reprinted. As a treatise on the art of fishing it has never wholly been superseded. For its advice on the catching and cooking of fish, the rules for baits, and the making of artificial flies, it remains a valuable and engrossing guide. As a graceful and affectionate portrait of rural England its charm is irresistible and in Walton and Cotton we could not wish for more congenial companions. This illustrated edition, with an Introduction by the novelist John Buchan, has been expanded and revised by John Buxton.

Boethius composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae in the 6th century AD whilst awaiting death under torture, condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, and Dante were inspired by it. In England it was rendered in to Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the Menippean texture of part prose, part verse have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and literature ever since.

She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. Kate Chopin was one of the most individual and adventurous of nineteenth-century american writers, whose fiction explored new and often startling territory. When her most famous story, The Awakening, was first published in 1899, it stunned readers with its frank portrayal of the inner word of Edna Pontellier, and its daring criticisms of the limits of marriage and motherhood. The subtle beauty of her writing was contrasted with her unwomanly and sordid subject-matter: Edna's rejection of her domestic role, and her passionate quest for spiritual, sexual, and artistic freedom. From her first stories, Chopin was interested in independent characters who challenged convention. This selection, freshly edited form the first printing of each text, enables readers to follow her unfolding career as she experimented with a broad range of writing, from tales for children to decadent fin-de siecle sketches. The Awakening is set alongside thirty-two short stories, illustrating the spectrum of the fiction from her first published stories to her 1898 secret masterpiece, The Storm.

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs — Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the litigating fiend; Sir Kit, the brutal husband and gambling absentee; and Sir Condy, the lovable and improvident dupe of Thady's own son, Jason. With this satire on Anglo-Irish landlords Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverly (1814). She also changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicted the rise of the Irish Catholic Bourgeoisie.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. For half a century from its publication in 1901 Up from Slavery was the best known book written by an African American. The life of ex-slave Booker T Washington embodied the legendary rise of the American self-made man, and his autobiography gave prominence for the first time to the voice of a group which had to pull itself up from extreme adversity. Washington attributes his success to his belief in many of the virtues celebrated by Benjamin Franklin: selflessness, industry, pragmatism, and optimism. But from behind the mask of the humble, plainspoken schoolmaster come hints that reveal Washington the ambitious and tough-minded analyst of power who had to balance the demands of blacks with the constraints imposed on him by whites. To read Up from Slavery is to explore the means by which Washington rose to become the most influential and powerful black American of his time. How far he compromised African American rights in order to achieve his aims remains a matter of controversy.

This new translation in free verse conveys the full force of Lucan's writing and his grimly realistic view of the subject. The Introduction sets the scene for the reader unfamiliar with Lucan and explores his relationship with earlier writers of Latin epic, and his interest in the sensational.

Iphigenia among the Taurians Bacchae Iphigenia at Aulis Rhesus The four plays newly translated in this volume are among Euripides' most exciting works. Iphigenia among the Taurians is a story of escape and contrasting Greek and barbarian civilization, set on the Black Sea at the edge of the known world. Bacchae, a profound exploration of the human psyche, deals with the appalling consequences of resistance to Dionysus, god of wine and unfettered emotion. This tragedy, which above all others speaks to our post-Freudian era, is one of Euripides' two last surviving plays. The second, Iphigenia at Aulis, centres on the ultimate dysfunctional family as natural emotion is tested in the tragic crucible of the Greek expedition against Troy. Lastly, Rhesus, probably the work of another playwright, is a thrilling, action-packed Iliad in miniature, dealing with a grisly event in the Trojan War.

In 1843, after three years of voyaging in the South Seas, Melville signed up as an ordinary seaman on the man-of-war United States, and headed for home. What he observed on that trip formed the basis of White-Jacket, a success both as a story and as an expose of certain naval practices of which the public was only dimly aware. Melville's subtitle, The World in a Man-of-War, points to its broad theme: the autocratic, male regime aboard the Neversink is perhaps no more than a microcosm of pre-Civil War America. But under his scandalized liberalism, his desire to expose and to reform a barbaric system which reflects badly on the Declaration of Independence, runs an unspoken connection. The treatment meted out to the white men on the man-of-war is the same as that experienced by black slaves in every state. With hindsight, Melville's novel is double-edged. This is the only paperback edition currently available.

A moving tale of a young woman caught between the attractions of two very different men, set in the time of Napoleon, against the tensions of wartime. As the author depicts Sylvia's fateful decision to marry one man while loving the other, she deftly interweaves the eternal themes of jealousy, unrequited love, and the consequences of individual choice.

Wilkie Collin's intriguing story about a blind girl, Lucilla Finch, and the identical twins who both fall in love with her, has the exciting complications of his better known novels, but it also overturns conventional expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth century realist fiction, Collins not only takes a blind person as his central character but also explores the idea of blindness and its implications. His sensitive presentation of the difficulties, disappointments, and occasional delights which follow the recovery of sight by someone blind since infancy is still one of the best accounts in fiction of a problem which continues to intrigue philosophers, psychologists, and the general public, as it has done since it was first discussed by Locke and Berkeley in the eighteenth century.

This is a reissue of the previous World's Classics edition in the new, larger format and with the series name changed to Oxford World's Classics.

Sybilla considered beauty as all in all. And this child — her child and Angus's, would be a deformity on the face of the earth, a shame to its parents, a dishonour to its race. First published in 1850, Olive traces its eponymous heroine's progress from her ill-starred birth to maturity as a painter and wife. The crippled child of parents who are disgusted by her physical imperfection, a curvature of the spine, Olive struggles to take her place in the world as artist and woman. Published three years after Jane Eyre, Olive's swift fictional response to Charlotte Bronte's novel raises questions of family, race and nation. This edition also includes The Half-Caste, a story that confronts questions of miscegenation and racial prejudice in Victorian Britain.