Books in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen series

One of the first of Jane Austen's novels to be written, and one of the last to be published, Northanger Abbey is both an amusing story of how a naive girl enters society and wins the affection of a witty young clergyman, and a high-spirited parody of the lurid Gothic novels that were popular during Austen's youth. In the process it features a vivid account of social life in late eighteenth-century Bath, and Austen's famous defence of the novel as a literary form. This edition, based on the text of the novel as published posthumously in 1818, is accompanied by explanatory notes, and an appendix summarising the plots and situations of the Gothic fictions that form the basis of much of Austen's comedy. In addition there is an extensive critical introduction covering the context, publication, and critical history of the novel, a chronology of Austen's life, and authoritative textual apparatus.

Emma is Austen's most technically accomplished novel. The full implications of its hidden plot are only revealed by a second reading. Presented here for the first time with the spelling and the punctuation of the first edition of 1816, the text allows readers to see the novel as Austen's contemporaries first encountered it. The volume includes comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, and a chronology of Austen's life as well. This edition is an indispensable resource for all scholars and readers of Austen.

In recent years, Mansfield Park has come to be regarded as Austen's most controversial novel. It was published in two editions in her lifetime and the 1814 and 1816 texts are fully collated in this work--allowing readers to see the differences between the first edition and the second. This includes some important amendments made by Jane Austen herself. Also included, with a brief note on Elizabeth Inchbald, is the text of Lovers' Vows, the play around which much of the plot of Mansfield Park revolves.

Orlando, a novel loosely based on the life of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's lover and friend, is one of Woolf's most playful and tantalizing works. This edition provides readers with a fully collated and annotated text. A substantial introduction charts the birth of the novel in the romance between Woolf and Sackville-West, and the role it played in the evolution and eventual fading of that romance. Extensive explanatory notes reveal the extent to which the novel is embedded in Woolf's knowledge of Sackville-West, her family history and her writings. Thorough annotation of every literary and historical allusion in the text establishes its significance as a parodic literary and social history of England, as well as a spoof of one of Woolf's favorite forms, the biography. It also includes all variants from the extant proofs, as well as editions of the novel produced during Woolf's lifetime.

The Plumed Serpent is set in Mexico in the 1920s, an era of political turmoil, and centres on a revolutionary movement to revive the religion of the ancient Aztecs. The brilliant vision of place, the violent action and the rituals and myth for the new religion all combine to make it one of Lawrence's most vivid novels. The Cambridge edition establishes for the first time a meticulously edited text based on the manuscript, typescript and proof material, nearly all of which survives. Several lengthy passages rejected in the course of composition and here included in the textual apparatus offer a close look at the intricacies of Lawrence's progress toward a final conception of the novel. Full annotation and appendixes on Mexican politics and Aztec religion are also provided to assist in comprehending the often arcane concepts to which Lawrence applied his imaginative power.

Virginia Woolf's extraordinary last novel, Between the Acts, was published in July 1941. In the weeks before she died in March that year, Woolf wrote that she planned to continue revising the book and that it was not ready for publication. Her husband prepared the work for publication after her death, and his revisions have become part of the text now widely read by students and scholars. Unlike most previous editions, the Cambridge edition returns to the final version of the novel as Woolf left it, examining the stages of composition and publication. Using the final typescript as a guide, this edition fully collates all variants and thus accounts for all the editorial decisions made by Leonard Woolf for the first published edition. With detailed explanatory notes, a chronology and an informative critical introduction, this volume will allow scholars to develop a fuller understanding of Woolf's last work.

A romantic comedy in which the central characters have a distinctly unromantic disposition, Night and Day was Virginia Woolf's second novel. Written during the First World War, the novel is set in the suffrage campaign of the pre-war years. Often understood as a deliberate exercise in classicism, it has been neglected by critics drawn to Woolf's later more overtly experimental fictions. This edition provides a substantial introduction, which traces the chronology of the novel's composition and publication, and which draws on previously neglected sources to trace its reception. Its extensive explanatory notes clarify the novel's relation to Woolf's reading and to the literary, cultural, and historical context of its time, with attention both to the time of its setting and its composition. Maps locate the key settings in London and England. The introduction and textual apparatus trace the complex history of the impressions and editions issued during Woolf's lifetime.

Set in the South of France during the waning days of the French Revolution and the early years of Napoleonic rule, The Rover (1923) is the last novel that Conrad completed in his lifetime. A popular success on its publication, it explores, against the backdrop of dramatic political change and the Anglo-French hostilities leading up to the Battle of Trafalgar, the themes of personal and national identity, loyalty and love. The 'Introduction' situates the novel in Conrad's career and traces its sources and contemporary reception. Explanatory notes illuminate literary and historical references and indicate Conrad's sources. The essay on the text and the apparatus lay out the history of the work's composition and publication, detail the interventions in the text by Conrad's typists, compositors and editors and explain editorial policy. This edition of The Rover, established through modern textual scholarship, presents the novel in a form more authoritative than any so far printed.

Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories gathers together all of Lawrence's short stories not collected in the Prussian Officer volume. It offers a range of work from Lawrence's earliest surviving published story, 'A Prelude', to 'New Eve and Old Adam' written at the height of his early maturity in 1913. Each story in this edition appears in a new, authoritative text based on the manuscripts, typescripts, corrected proofs and early printings drawn from libraries and private collections in England, Italy and America. All the stories have thus been stripped of the layers of errors introduced by typists, editors and printers in their previous publication. John Worthen's introduction sets out the composition and publication history of each story, and gives a full account of the context in which it was created. A textual apparatus records all variant readings and explanatory notes explain allusions, dialect forms and foreign words.

An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Conrad's second novel, returns to the Malay world of Almayer's Folly (1895). Focusing on the collapse of Western values and morals in a colonial setting, the novel daringly portrays the power of erotic attraction and exposes the venal ambitions behind small- and large-scale political intrigues. The introduction situates the novel in Conrad's career as a writer and traces its origins and reception. The essay on the text and the apparatus explain the history of the work's composition and publication, and detail the interventions of Conrad's compositors and editors. There are notes explaining literary and historical references, a glossary of nautical terms, illustrations including pictures of early drafts, and appendixes. This edition presents the novel and its preface in forms more authoritative than any so far printed, and restores a text that has circulated in defective forms since its original publication.

D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love - 'the beginning of a new world', as he called it - suffered in the course of its revision, transcription, and publication some of the most spectacular damage ever inflicted upon one of his books. Until now no text of Women in Love has ever been published which is faithful to all of Lawrence's revisions. This edition, edited by scholars in England and America, clears the text of literally thousands of accumulated errors allowing its readers to read and understand the novelist's work as he himself created it. The edition includes the 'Foreword' Lawrence wrote in 1919 and two preliminary and discarded chapters which have attracted widespread critical and biographical discussion. The introduction gives a full history of the novel's composition, revision, publication and reception, and notes explain allusions and references; the textual apparatus records all variants between the base-text and the first printed editions.