La Dame aux Camelias still has the power to cast the spell that has fascinated generations of readers. Dumas's marvellously beautiful, intelligent, and vibrant heroine lives on in revivals of the stage version, in film and television adaptations, and inLa Traviata, Verdi's perennially popular opera. For Marguerite has long since attained the status of a myth. Dumas's subtle and moving portrait of a woman in love is a timeless antidote to the cynicism of every age.

The Decameron (c.1351) was written in the wake of the Black Death, a shattering epidemic which had shaken Florence's confident entrepreneurial society to its core. In a country villa outside the city, ten young noble men and women who have escaped the plague decide to tell each other stories. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in this virtuoso performance of one hundred tales, vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots which revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions. Themes are playfully restated from one story to another within an elegant and refined framework. One of Chaucer's most fruitful sources for the Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio's work artfully combines the essential ingredients of narrative: fate and desire, crises and quick-thinking. This new translation by Guido Waldman captures the exuberance and variety and tone of Boccaccio's masterpiece.

'I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'. Joyce's aim was to tell the truth — to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country. Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners — a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled — and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers — a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608 — on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much else — detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances and changing critical attitudes to the play — illustrated with production photographs and related art — includes 'The Ballad of King Lear' and related offshoots — full index to introduction and commentary — durable sewn binding for lasting use 'not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.'

'Such a strange book! Imagine a novel with a little swarthy governess for heroine, and a middle-aged ruffian for hero.' Sharpe's London Magazine (June 1855) Jane Eyre is an orphan grown up under the harsh regime first of her aunt and then as a pupil at Lowood Institution. She leaves to become a governess to the daughter of the mysterious Mr Rochester; gradually their relationship deepens, but Jane's passionate nature has yet to endure its deepest blows. In this new edition Sally Shuttleworth explores the power of a narrative that questions the rights of women, the nature of servitude and madness, martyrdom and rebellion in a story whose emotional charge is a strong today as it was more than 150 years ago.

'My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield in one of the most celebrated and controversial correspondences between a father and son. Chesterfield wrote almost daily to his natural son, Philip, from 1737 onwards, providing him with instruction in etiquette and the worldly arts. Praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching 'the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master', these letters reflect the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift. The letters reveal Chesterfield's political cynicism and his belief that his country had 'always been goverened by the only two or three people, out of two or three millions, totally incapable of governing', as well as his views on good breeding. Not originally intended for publication, this entertaining correspondence illuminates fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century life and manners.

'Other works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature: other books may rival it in originality and size; but, for hopeless and incurable vivacity, nothing yet discovered can surpass it.' (Jerome, Preface to Three Men in a Boat). Three Men in a Boat describes a comic expedition by middle-class Victorians up the Thames to Oxford. It provides brilliant snap-shots of London's playground in the late 1880s, where the fashionable steam-launches of river swells encounter the hired skiffs of city clerks. The medley of social vignettes, farcical incidents, descriptions of river fashions, and reflections on the Thames's history, is interspersed with humorous anecdotes told by a natural raconteur. Three Men on the Bummel records a similar escapade, a break from the claustrophobia of suburban life some ten years later; their cycling tour in the Black Forest, at the height of the new bicycling craze, affords Jerome the opportunity for a light-hearted scrutiny of German social customs at a time of increasing general interest in a country that he loved. This account of middle-aged Englishmen abroad is spiced with typical Jeromian humour.

Providing a wealth of synonyms and antonyms for everyday use, this revised edition of the Compact Oxford Thesaurus is ideal in helping you find the right word when writing, or for other language queries. The Compact Oxford Thesaurus provides you with the most useful synonym first, so that you can find the information you are looking for easily. It also features a two-colour layout and a very clear, open design, so that you can navigate around the thesaurus quickly. New vocabulary has been added in this revised edition, so you can be sure that your Oxford thesaurus reflects the very latest changes in the English language. Notes on frequently confused words such as affect and effect, or compliment and complement can be found throughout the text, helping you to avoid common pitfalls when writing. The centre section of the thesaurus provides practical help in using a thesaurus to improve your choice of words and to refine your writing style, as well as new material for word game and puzzle enthusiasts.The Compact Oxford Thesaurus is an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to write reports or memos at work, essays at school or college, or letters or emails to friends, and is ideal for creative writing too. It can help to expand your vocabulary, or give you vital clues in solving language puzzles and crosswords.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the Strand magazine, in which they were first published, and won immense popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The detective is at the height of his powers and the volume is full of famous cases, including 'The Red-Headed League', 'The Blue Carbuncle', and 'The Speckled Band'. Although Holmes gained a reputation for infallibility, Conan Doyle showed his own realism and feminism by having the great detective defeated by Irene Adler — the woman — in the very first story, 'A Scandal in Bohemia'. The editor of this volume, Richard Lancelyn Green is editor of The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes and The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. With John Michael Gibson, he compiled the Soho Series Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle.

'I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD,' wrote Dickens of what is the most personal, certainly one of the most popular, of all his novels. Dickens wrote the book after the completion of a fragment of autobiography recalling his employment as a child in a London warehouse, and in the first-person narrative, a new departure for him, realized marvellously the workings of memory. The embodiment of his boyhood experience in the novel involved a 'complicated interweaving of truth and fiction', at its most subtle in the portrait of his father as Mr Micawber, one of Dickens's greatest comic creations. Enjoying a humour that never becomes caricature, the reader shares David's affection for the eccentric Betsey Trotwood and her protege Mr Dick, and smiles with the narrator at the trials he endures in his love for the delightfully silly Dora. Settings, (East Anglia, the London of the 1820s), people, and events are unified by their relationship to the story of Steerforth's treachery, which reaches its powerful climax in the storm scene.This edition, which has the accurate Clarendon text, includes Dickens's trial titles and working notes, and eight of the original illustrations by 'Phiz'.

Grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary practice for every unit. Extra vocabulary — More Words to Learn Check What You Know.

Some sisters are good friends, some are not. Sometimes there is more hate in a family than there is love. Karin is beautiful and has lots of men friends, but she can be very unkind to her sister Marcia. Perhaps when they were small, there was love between them, but that was a long time ago. They say that everybody has one crime in them. Perhaps they only take an umbrella that does not belong to them. Perhaps they steal from a shop, perhaps they get angry and hit someone, perhaps they kill...

The Leander pearls were stolen nineteen years ago. The thief was caught, but the pearls were never found, and there is still a $25,000 reward for anyone who finds them. Then somebody comes to private detective Carmady with a story about a guy who knows where the pearls are hidden. Carmady agrees to talk to the guy who says he knows. But he finds him dead in his bed, with burned feet, and it seems there are quite a lot of people in Los Angeles who have heard the story, and who are out looking for the Leander pearls...

On a stormy winter night, a stranger knocks at the door of a shepherd's cottage. He is cold and hungry, and wants to get out of the rain. He is welcomed inside, but he does not give his name or his business. Who is he, and where has he come from? And he is only the first visitor to call at the cottage that night... In these three short stories, Thomas Hardy gives us pictures of the lives of shepherds and hangmen, dukes and teachers. But rich or poor, young or old, they all have the same feelings of fear, hope, love, jealousy...

'My brother preferred being with mother and me. He used to help us prepare vegetables in the kitchen or make the bread. But what he liked best was listening to my mother's stories.' But those childhood days are long gone, and now a great distance divides sister and brother, children and mother. The stories in this volume of World Stories come from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The writers are Romesh Gunesekera, M. Athar Tahir, Chitra Divakaruni, Anu Kumar, Anne Ranasinghe, Ruskin Bond, Anita Desai, Vijita Fernando, and Amara Bavani Dev.

When Carruthers joins his friend Arthur Davies on his yacht Dulcibella, he is expecting a pleasant sailing holiday in the Baltic Sea. But the holiday turns into an adventure of a different kind. He and Davies soon find themselves sailing in the stormy waters of the North Sea, exploring the channels and sandbanks around the German Frisian Islands, and looking for a secret — a secret that could mean great danger for England. Erskine Childers' novel, published in 1903, was the first great modern spy story, and is still as exciting to read today as it was a hundred years ago.

Winnie the Witch is ready for anything life throws at her! In 'Winnie's Awful Auntie' Winnie and Wilbur have to deal with an unbearably fussy relative on an unexpected visit; in 'Winnie Gets Cleaning' Winnie offers her janitorial services to the local school with hilarious results; in 'Winnie and the Ghost in the Post' Winnie and Wilbur find themselves the surprise winners of a television poetry competition and in 'Mini Winnie' there's an unusual solution to a laundry problem. Four crazily funny stories featuring everyone's favourite witch, her big black cat, Wilbur, and a zany supporting cast of new characters. Korky Paul's exuberant black line illustrations complement the humour, slapstick, and moments of real drama that run through each story. Pure magic!

Captain Teachum has a reputation as a wicked and terrible pirate. He has, so his readers are told, led a life of crime: capturing ships, making his enemies walk the plank, and burying stolen treasure all over the world. But then we discover some unexpected secrets about Captain Teachum's home life: he is more than a little hen-pecked, he has twenty five children, and his memory is rather unreliable... Hardly surprising, then, that Captain Teachum has not been able to find his buried treasure. So, by the time Captain Teachum's story is finished and we see his mischievous grin as he lies in his hammock, we're left wondering how much of his boastful bluster about past dastardly deeds is true and how much of it is wishful thinking!

Sanji lives above a baker's shop. Every morning, he steps on to his balcony and enjoys the delicious aroma of freshly-baked breads and pastries. But the Baker is a mean-spirited, greedy and selfish man. 'Thief!' he cries at Sanji's door. 'You are stealing my smells!' Poor Sanji is taken to court to pay a hefty fine. How will the Judge make sure the Baker gets what he deserves? The riveting story is great to read aloud and Korky Paul's illustrations take to you to an exotic faraway location. With its clever courtroom-drama finale, this is a book that children will just love to hear over and over again.

Professor Puffendorf is a world-class inventor: where would any of us be without her Unburnable Toast or her Smell-o-Telephone? She shares her laboratory with her much-loved guinea pig, Chip, and Enzo, her rather lazy assistant. One day, when the professor goes out to address a conference, Enzo opens her 'top secret' cabinet. Inside he discovers an array of potions promising to deliver anything from curly, luxuriant hair to a beautiful singing voice. Enzo realizes the secret formulas for these potions could make him unbelievably rich but first he decides to test them on poor Chip. However his devious plan does not quite go as he imagined and it is the villainous Enzo who ends up as the guinea pig — quite literally — in this entertaining cautionary tale of role reversal.