Books in World Classics series

“All for one, one for all!”--Alexandre Dumas, The Three MusketeersThe Three Musketeers, by French writer Alexandre Dumas, was first released in serial form in 1844, a year before Dumas’ publication of The Count of Monte Cristo. The story was an instant success, largely due to Dumas’ transformation of the historical fiction genre. In The Three Musketeers, contrary to popular practice at the time, history acted as a backdrop for the story rather than the primary element, making it a fun and accessible read. The story follows young d’Artagnan and his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis as they defend honor amidst the power struggles of 17th century France. Still popular with readers today, this classic is now available in a chic and affordable edition as part of the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics.

Three contentious and enduring plays about the clash of the individual and societyFire Raisers (1958) tells the tale of a respectable bourgeois whose house is one day visited by three strangers. It "is successful on every level; the story is as gripping as an adventure story; each line is fraught with several meanings: as an allegory it is unique" (Edna O'Brien); Andorra is based on the author's own experience of anti-semitism in Switzerland and is about Andri, a young man who is believed to be a Jew and who is persecuted by his community as a result; Triptych is a portrait of a writer grappling with his own mortality. The flexible and contemporary translations by Michael Bullock (The Fire Raisers, Andorra) and Geoffrey Skelton (Triptych) are here complemented by an introduction by Peter Loeffler.

All the "muchness" of Wonderland captured in one book!Follow Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland and enjoy tea with the Mad Hatter, find your way with the Cheshire Cat, and play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. On the other side of the looking-glass, meet Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a host of other characters that share a different reality. A heat-burnished, flexibound cover, small trim size, and lovely illustrations by Sir John Tenniel will make this one of your most treasured volumes in the collectible Word Cloud Classics series.

Beyond all doubt the greatest work of English literature before Shakespeare, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales brings together an unforgettable group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, pilgrims who came from all ranks of society, from the crusading Knight and burly Miller to the worldly Monk and the famously lusty Wife of Bath. Their tales are as various as the tellers, including romance, bawdy comedy, beast fable, learned debate, parable, and Eastern adventure. The resulting collection gives us a set of characters so vivid that they have often been taken as portraits from real life, and a series of stories as hilarious in their comedy as they are affecting in their tragedy. Even after 600 years, their account of the human condition is fresh and true. David Wright's verse translation has long been admired for its brilliance and fidelity. This new edition adds representative passages from the important but overlooked prose tales, Melibee and the Parson's Tale, in new translations by Christopher Cannon, who also provides a new critical introduction and invaluable notes.

This pioneering work was a cause celebre when it appeared in London, transforming the shape and course of the late Victorian novel. Lynall, Schreiner's articulate young feminist, marks the entry of the controversial New Woman into nineteenth-century fiction. From the haunting plains of South Africa's high Karoo, Schreiner boldly addresses her society's greatest fears: the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women's social and political independence. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature. First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf? This new translation is the first to represent all the main fable collections in ancient Latin and Greek, arranged according to the fables' contents and themes. It includes 600 fables, many of which come from sources never before translated into English.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This edition of one of Dickens's earlier novels is based on the accurate Clarendon edition of the text and includes the prefaces to the 1850 and 1867 editions and Dickens's Number Plans.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Dickens' second historical novel, which he considered "the best story I have written," provides a highly-charged examination of human suffering and human sacrifice. Private experience and public history paralled one another as the political activities and personal responsibilities of these fictional characters, during the French Revolution, draw them into the Paris of the Terror.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist is one of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century, and one of the most innovative. Its originality shocked contemporary readers on its publication in 1916 who found its treating of the minutiae of daily life as indecorous, and its central character unappealing. Was it art or was it filth?The novel charts the intellectual, moral, and sexual development of Stephen Dedalus, from his childhood listening to his father's stories through his schooldays and adolescence to the brink of adulthood and independence, and his awakening as an artist. Growing up in a Catholic family in Dublin in the final years of the nineteenth century, Stephen's consciousness is forged by Irish history and politics, by Catholicism and culture, language and art. Stephen's story mirrors that of Joyce himself, and the novel is both startlingly realistic and brilliantly crafted, not to mention that it is one of the founding texts of Modernism and the precursor of the acclaimed Ulysses. For this edition Jeri Johnson, an eminent Joyce scholar, has written an introduction and notes which together provide a comprehensive and illuminating appreciation of Joyce's artistry.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece, but this is no orthodox Bildungsroman. Jacob is presented in glimpses, in fragments, as Woolf breaks down traditional ways of representing character and experience.The novel's composition coincided with the consolidation of Woolf's interest in feminism, and she criticizes the privilege thoughtless smugness of patriarchy, "the other side," "the men in clubs and Cabinets." Her stylistic innovations are conscious attempts to realize and develop women's writing and the novel dramatizes her interest in the ways both language and social environments shape differently the lives of men and women.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

One of the classics of English children's literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, this novel's steady popularity has given it an influence well beyond the upper middle-class world that it describes. It tells a story central to an understanding of Victorian life, but its freshness helps to distinguish it from the narrow schoolboy adventures that it later inspired. The book includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Sanders.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.