Series: Norton Critical Editions

Few works of literature are as familiar and beloved as The Arabian Nights. Yet few remain also as unknown. In English, The Arabian Nights is a literary work of relatively recent date—the first versions of the tales appeared in English barely two hundred years ago. The tales are accompanied by a preface, a note on the text, and explanatory annotations....

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The texts and original illustrations from the 1897 editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as well as the 1878 edition of The Hunting of the Snark. Revised and updated footnotes, headnotes, and introductory materials by Donald J. Gray. Selections from Carroll's diaries, letters, and other source materials examining three distinct periods...

Intrigued by the possibilities of time travel as a student and inspired as a journalist by the great scientific advances of the Victorian Age, Wells drew on his own scientific publications—on evolution, degeneration, species extinction, geologic time, and biology—in writing The Time Machine. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the first London edition of the novel. It is accompanied...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: - The first English book edition of the novel (1907), accompanied by explanatory footnotes. - Four illustrations. - Contemporary sources that informed Conrad's writing of the novel, including newspaper accounts of the "Greenwich Bomb Outrage," articles from the anarchist press, earlier fictional treatments of the Martial Bourdin case (the inspiration for Adolph Verloc), and important...

The text of The Mill on the Floss, based on the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions. Backgrounds includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centring on the novel's content and composition; Brother and Sister (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The New York Edition of the novel, accompanied by Michael Gorra's introduction and explanatory footnotes. Background and contextual materials centering on James as a writer, The Portrait of a Lady in revision, and reviews of the novel by James's contemporaries. Seven important critical essays, chosen for their accessibility. A Chronology and Suggestions for Further Reading....

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition of the novel, published in 1851 by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. Robert S. Levine's insightful introduction, revised headnotes, expanded explanatory footnotes, and note on the text and annotations. A generous selection of carefully chosen primary materials—three of them new to the Second Edition—intended to provide readers with essential backgrounds on the novel's...

Briefly imprisoned for preaching without a license, John Bunyan is believed to have begun writing the most famous Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, while in jail. The Pilgrim's Progress was published in 1678 (Part I) and 1684 (Part II). Edited and annotated with the student reader in mind, this Norton Critical Edition is the indispensable guide to the language, allusions,...

Hannah Webster Foster's two major Early American works with a wealth of primary materials are now available in a Norton Critical Edition. Published anonymously in 1797, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette grabbed American interest with its ripped-from-the-headlines story of sex and scandal. A steady bestseller for decades, the seduction novel was passed down through generations; indeed, its heroine became better...

Fourteen conjure tales by one of America's most influential African American fiction writers. This Norton Critical Edition of The Conjure Stories arranges the tales chronologically by composition date, allowing readers to discern how Chesnutt experimented with plots and characters and with the idea of the conjure story over time. With one exception, the text of each tale is that of...

This Norton Critical Edition of The Blithedale Romance is based on the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, widely considered the best available edition. It is accompanied by explanatory annotations to help readers with Hawthorne's many historical and literary references, as well as with other possible sources of difficulty in the text. The section on "Contexts" is thematically...

Known only as the "Ex-Colored Man," the protagonist in Johnson's novel is forced to choose between celebrating his African American heritage or "passing" as an average white man in a post-Reconstruction America that is rapidly changing. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 text. It is accompanied by a detailed introduction, explanatory footnotes, and a note on the...

Michael Shinagel has collated the reprint with all six authorised editions published by Taylor in 1719 to achieve a text that is faithful to Defoe's original edition. Annotations assist the reader with obscure words and idioms, biblical references, and nautical terms. Contexts helps the reader understand the novel's historical and religious significance. Included are four contemporary accounts of marooned men,...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition text of the novel (dated 1818, but likely issued in late 1817), accompanied by Rae Greiner's revised and expanded explanatory footnotes. The two cancelled chapters that compose the original ending of Persuasion. A rich selection of background material—all but one item new to the Third Edition—centering on the British navy, slavery, and...

The text is accompanied by an introduction, textual annotations by the editor, and a map of Paris. Père Goriot has had a profound impact on literature, as illustrated in "Responses: Contemporaries and Other Novelists," highlighting Balzac's immense influence on other writers such as Charles Baudelaire, Hippolyte Taine, Émile Zola, and Marcel Proust. "Twentieth-Century Criticism" presents a superb selection of critical...

The editor supplies explanatory annotations and textual notes. Historical Backgrounds is an especially rich collection of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century documents about colonisers and slaves in the new world. Topically arranged—"Montaigne on America," "The Settling of Surinam," "Observers of Slavery, 1654–1712," "After Oroonoko: Noble Africans in Europe," and "Opinions on Slavery"—these selections create a revealing context for Behn's unusual story. Illustrations and...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition (1928) text of Orlando: A Biography, with an introduction and explanatory annotations by Madelyn Detloff, accompanied by illustrations from earlier editions. Provocative reviews from Woolf's contemporaries and various written materials that place Orlando within a changing epoch. Seven critical essays on the novel's major themes: gender, sexuality, class, feminism, and performance. A...

This Norton Critical Edition is the most extensively annotated student edition available. Backgrounds features material carefully chosen to enhance readers' appreciation of the novel, including biographical commentary, early works, and correspondence related to Northanger Abbey, and excerpts by Ann Radcliffe, Frances Burney, and William Wordsworth, among others, tracing Austen's connection to her Romantic contemporaries. Criticism collects thirteen assessments of Northanger...

Contexts focuses on the novel's sources and composition. Included are newspaper accounts of a San Francisco murder, a description of Norris' Polk Street neighbourhood, which figures prominently in McTeague, an examination of the relationship between the novel and naturalism, and a discussion of the book's genesis, from its origin as a Harvard assignment to Norris's revision of it upon his...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: - Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative, the most influential autobiography of its kind. - A preface and explanatory footnotes by William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely. - Contemporary perspectives by Douglass, Margaret Fuller, James Monroe Gregory, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. - Essays by William L. Andrews, William S. McFeely, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Deborah E....

Moll Flanders is one of the best-selling novels of all time. This Norton Critical Edition is again based on the first edition text (1722), the only text known to be Defoe's own. It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and the editor’s essay outlining the novel's textual history. Contexts collects related documents on criminal transport, contemporary accounts of lives of...

Each text has been carefully edited and annotated for student readers. As his writing reflects, Melville was extraordinarily well read. Contexts collects important sources for each novel, including writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amasa Delano, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Criticism includes twenty-eight essays about the novels sure to promote classroom discussion. Contributors include Leo Marx, Elizabeth Hardwick, Frederick Busch, Robert Lowell,...

This edition reprints the first published version from 1893. Misprints and errors have been corrected and are identified in "A Note on the Text." Footnotes indicate changes in wording that Crane made for the 1896 edition and explain slang expressions and customs of the day. Maps of the novel's New York City locales are also provided. "Backgrounds and Sources" includes...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The authoritative text of Light in August, established by Noel Polk in 1985 and accompanied by Melanie Benson Taylor's preface and explanatory footnotes. A rich selection of background and contextual materials, thoughtfully and practically arranged to draw readers into the American South of Faulkner's imagination. Topics include "The Writer's World and Words," "Reception and Influence,"...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: - Sylvère Monod's superbly edited text, based on the 1854 edition and accompanied by Fred Kaplan's expanded annotations. - Fourteen illustrations from 1854 to circa 1890. - Contextual pieces by social critics and theorists of Dickens' time that give readers outstanding examples of views on industrialism, education, and utilitarianism in the nineteenth century. - Eight...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Newly edited texts of the 1604 (A-Text) and the 1616 (B-Text) versions of the play. Editorial matter by David Scott Kastan and Matthew Hunter. Sources and background materials related to Christopher Marlowe, the composition and publication of Doctor Faustus, early performance of the play, the Faust legend, and Renaissance magic, including a new selection from...

The newly established text of Great Expectations is based on all extant materials and is accompanied by several textual essays. Backgrounds provides readers with an understanding of Great Expectations's inception and internal chronology. A discussion of the public-reading version of the novel is also included. A wonderfully rich Contexts section collects thirteen pieces, centering on the novel's major themes: the...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition of the novel, published by Archibald Constable in London in 1897, chosen by the editors to provide readers, insofar as possible, with a more historically authentic reading experience than has been generally available. Arcane words and usages are footnoted at first appearance. Editorial matter by John Edgar Browning and David J. Skal....

The English rendition of the title of this novel has been problematic since the book's publication in 1862. In his prefatory note to the Second Edition, Katz explains his decision to return to the original title, the one preferred by the author himself: Ottsy i deti, literally Fathers and Children. The novel is accompanied by a rich selection of Turgenev's...

Castle Rackrent's publication in 1800 signalled many firsts: the first historical novel, the first regional novel in English, the first "big house" novel, the first Anglo-Irish novel, and the first novel with a narrator who is neither reliable nor part of the action. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the Baldwin & Cradock edition that appeared as part of...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: A newly edited text based on the first English book edition (1902), the last version to which Conrad is known to have actively contributed. Textual History and Editing Principles provides an overview of the textual controversies and ambiguities perpetually surrounding Heart of Darkness. Background and source materials on colonialism and the Congo, nineteenth-century attitudes toward...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: - The third-edition text (1848), the last corrected by Charlotte Brontë, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory footnotes. - "Contexts," highlighting Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman through diary entries and letters by the author about her experiences as a student, teacher, and governess, as well as her feelings about friendship, love, and writing. - Five...

Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane remains an innovative literary work—part drama, part poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the field of African American studies. The Second Edition begins with the editors' introduction, a major work of scholarship...

The text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, a pronunciation and explanation key for the novel's main characters, and greatly revised and expanded explanatory annotations. Contexts presents a wealth of background and source materials relating to The Brothers Karamazov, to Dostoevsky's own experiences, to current events, and to observations on a changing society. Included are the correspondence of influential literary...

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound exploration of the human psyche, set in the mid-19th century. The novel is a first-person narrative by an unnamed narrator, often referred to as the Underground Man. He is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg, who is consumed by intense introspection and psychological struggle. The narrative is split into...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1818 first edition text of the novel, introduced and annotated by J. Paul Hunter. Three maps and eight illustrations. A wealth of source and contextual materials, thematically arranged to promote classroom discussion. Topics include "Sources, Influences, Analogues," "Circumstances, Composition, Revision," and "Reception, Impact, Adaptation." Eleven critical essays on Frankenstein's major themes, six of them...

Ovid's epic poem—whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages—is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's time to the present. Writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. The text is accompanied by a preface, a note on the translation, and detailed explanatory annotations....

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Susan Bernofsky's acclaimed new translation, along with her Translator's Note. Introductory materials and explanatory footnotes by Mark M. Anderson. Three illustrations. Related texts by Kafka, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others. Eight critical essays by Günther Anders, Walter H. Sokel, Nina Pelikan Straus, Mark M. Anderson, Elizabeth Boa, Carolin Duttlinger,...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition of the novel (1847), accompanied by a new preface and revised explanatory footnotes. Key excerpts from Emily Brontë's diary papers and devoirs, along with thirteen of her sister Charlotte Brontë's letters regarding publication of both the 1847 and 1850 editions, and Charlotte's notes of introduction to the posthumous 1850 edition. Thirteen of...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The First Folio text (1623). An introduction, explanatory footnotes, note on the text, and textual notes by Edward Pechter. Fifteen illustrations. Giraldi Cinthio's sixteenth-century story in its entirety, which Shakespeare used for both the plot and many details of Othello. A generous selection of interpretive responses to Othello from its origins to the present day,...

Act and scene divisions are not indicated in the Quarto; those of the First Folio have been incorporated, with one exception: scene ii of Act V has been divided into two scenes, with the concluding scenes numbered accordingly. The Third Edition includes expanded annotations. Contexts and Sources includes duelling arguments on the play's completeness (one play or one half of...

Few writers have transformed literature and theatre so dramatically. Based on Henry J. Schmidt's translations of The Hessian Messenger, Danton's Death, Lenz, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck. The Georg Büchner Prize is the highest literary honour for German language writers, and the full extent of Büchner’s influence—from Gerhart Hauptmann to Christa Wolf, Max Reinhardt to Robert Wilson, Alban Berg to...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Nick Bromell and R. Blakeslee Gilpin’s introduction to Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography, providing the deep contextualisation teachers want and students need. The first edition text (1855), accompanied by the editors’ detailed explanatory footnotes. Twelve contemporary works that relate to My Bondage and My Freedom, including writings by Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1633 quarto (Q) text—the only authoritative version—featuring modernised spelling and detailed explanatory annotations. An unusually rich selection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contexts, thematically organised to promote classroom discussion. Topics include "Theatre and Marlowe," "Machiavelli and Mediterranean Identities," and "Ideas of the Jew." Twenty-eight critical interpretations spanning three centuries, including several considerations of The Jew...

This Norton Critical Edition of one of Shakespeare's earliest and best-loved comedies is based on the First Folio (1623). It is accompanied by "A Note on the Text" and detailed explanatory annotations. "Sources and Contexts" provides three possible analogues to Shakespeare's controversial, high-spirited play from Ovid's Metamorphoses, George Gascoigne's "Supposes," and "A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s poetic translation of the great Anglo-Saxon epic—winner of the Whitbread Prize—along with his translator’s introduction. Detailed explanatory annotations and an introduction to Old English language and prosody by Daniel Donoghue. More than two dozen visuals, including, new to the Second Edition, a fine selection of objects from the Staffordshire Hoard. A...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The Second Quarto text, edited by Robert S. Miola and accompanied by his footnotes, headnotes, and introductory materials. Eighteen illustrations from 1604 to 2008, three of them new to the Second Edition. The Actors' Gallery, presenting actors from Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry to Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, two of them new to the...

The Norton Critical Edition includes five major plays spanning Ibsen's long career in recent translations by Brian Johnston (Peer Gynt, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder) and Brian Johnston and Rick Davis (A Doll House and Hedda Gabler). The translation of Peer Gynt appears for the first time in this Norton Critical Edition. Backgrounds gives students an understanding of...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The medieval masterpiece's most popular tales, including—new to the Third Edition—The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale and The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale. Extensive marginal glosses, explanatory footnotes, a preface, and a guide to Chaucer's language by V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. Sources and analogues arranged by tale. Twelve critical essays, seven of...

"Neill's edit of the play is very well done. … If there's a more knowledgeable or erudite unraveling of the play, I haven't seen it." -Steve Sohmer, Comitatus This Norton Critical Edition of John Webster's 1612–13 tragedy offers a newly edited and annotated text together with a full introduction and illustrative materials intended for student readers. The Duchess of Malfi's...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: An expanded translation from the Akkadian by Benjamin R. Foster based on new discoveries, adding lines throughout the world's oldest epic masterpiece. Benjamin R. Foster's full introduction and expanded explanatory annotations. Eleven illustrations. Analogues from the Sumerian and Hittite narrative traditions along with The Gilgamesh Letter, a parody of the epic enjoyed by Mesopotamian schoolchildren...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The Eversley Edition text of the poem, accompanied by Erik Gray's preface, full introduction, and detailed explanatory footnotes. One illustration. A generous selection (new to the Third Edition) of background materials on In Memoriam's subject, Arthur Henry Hallam, as well as its literary and scientific contexts. Twelve contemporary reviews spanning 1850–55 (also new to this...

This Norton Critical Edition has been carefully edited to make The Merchant of Venice, its surrounding history, and the history of its critical reception and rewritings accessible to readers. The text of this edition is based on the 1600 First Quarto, with light editing and substantial explanatory annotations by Leah S. Marcus. Sources and Contexts largely focuses on the character...

An accurate text of Shamela (Fielding's satire of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, the most popular epistolary novel of the eighteenth century) is included, as well as An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, selections from The Champion, and the Preface to The Adventures of David Simple. All of the texts are fully annotated. Backgrounds contains generous extracts from...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Wayne A. Rebhorn's thorough and thought-provoking introduction to Machiavelli, his world, and his famous political treatise. An accurate and highly readable translation, detailed explanatory annotations, and a map of North Central Italy in Machiavelli's time. A judicious selection of Machiavelli's other writings that inform his immense influence as a diplomat, democrat, and correspondent. Twelve interpretative...

"Corngold's new translation is of the very highest quality, punctiliously faithful to Goethe's German and sensitive to gradations of style in this extraordinary, trail-blazing first novel." — J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books A masterpiece of the European imagination, The Sufferings of Young Werther is the classic strum und drang tale of youthful angst and tragedy. The acclaimed...

This Norton Critical Edition seeks to return Keats—one of the most beloved poets of the English language—to his cultural moment by tracking his emergence as a public poet. For this reason, this volume presents the writings in the order of publication rather than composition. Readers can trace the poems through letters, reviews, and related material chronologically interleaved with the texts...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a modernist novel of marital infidelity, set in New Orleans and Grande Isle, Louisiana. This edition features the annotated text of the novel. A preface, a critical essay, and explanatory annotations by Margo Culley enrich the reading experience. It includes essays by acclaimed Chopin biographers Per Seyersted and Emily...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Jared Gardner's insightful introduction and explanatory notes. Generous selections from four of Will Eisner's major graphic novels and story collections, carefully chosen with student readers in mind. Will Eisner's interviews and published writing on comics and the graphic novel genre from 1978 to 2000. Thirteen wide-ranging reviews and assessments of Eisner's works. Critical essays by...

The text is accompanied by both explanatory annotations and textual notes. Aurora Leigh is enriched with "Backgrounds and Contexts," featuring thirty letters or letter excerpts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. These documents trace the book's inception, evolution, and publication. Seven contemporary documents on the "woman question," prostitution, socialism, and poetic theory place the text historically. "Criticism" collects twenty-five...

Accurate and literally faithful, the Donaldson translation conveys the full meaning and spirit of the original. Backgrounds and Contexts provides readers with the historical, linguistic, and literary settings of Beowulf, including Robert C. Hughes on the origins of the Old English language, E. Talbot Donaldson's presentation of the major features of Old English poetry, new material on Beowulf's tribes and...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The text of Toomer's genre-bending masterpiece as edited by Darwin T. Turner for the First Norton Critical Edition (1988). A revised and expanded introduction, featuring new archival discoveries, and annotations by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Jesse McCarthy. Thirteen illustrations related to Toomer's life, which are new to the Third Edition, and the map of...

The text—that of the 1901 Sussex Edition—is fully annotated and accompanied by three maps that help students place the novel in geographical and historical contexts. Backgrounds explores the novel's complicated issues of multiculturalism, imperialism, and racism, allowing readers to glimpse Kipling's personal thoughts about British expansionism. Included are two short stories, poems, and letters by Kipling, as well as autobiographical...

This Norton Critical Edition is based on Ilan Stavans' new translation, which accurately captures the verve of the original. The Norton Critical Edition also includes: An introduction and explanatory annotations by Ilan Stavans. Contextual materials highlighting the novella's strong anticlerical views and its affinities with Don Quixote in depictions of social hierarchy in Renaissance Spain, as well as excerpts from...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The texts of eleven complete, authoritative romances—four new to the Second Edition: Havelok, Ywain and Gawain, Of Kyng Robert of Cisyle, Hou Pride dude Him Begyle, Sir Orfeo, Sir Launfal, Athelston, The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne, The Weddyng of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell for Helpyng of Kyng Arthoure, The Grene Knight,...

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is arguably the best known of Horatio Alger’s American rags-to-riches stories. It is canonical as a cultural text, rather than a purely literary one, as this Norton Critical Edition reflects. An extensive "Contexts" section includes maps, photographs, and documents showing how and why Alger used the backdrop of...

His biting satire, witty dialogue, and irreverent staging have made him a favourite with theatre-goers for four centuries. This Norton Critical Edition of Molière's most controversial and most often-performed play is based on Constance Congdon's acclaimed new verse translation. It is accompanied by explanatory annotations and nine illustrations of the seventeenth-century farce. Backgrounds and Sources draws readers' attention to the...

In a time of financial and political anxiety, Paul Petrie has reestablished the power of one of the great realist novels of business and ethics. This new edition of The Rise of Silas Lapham deserves to be read and reread for the messages it can deliver about our own morality. -DANIEL J. MROZOWSKI, Trinity College This Norton Critical Edition includes:...

In this Norton Critical Edition, G. R. Thompson has fully introduced, annotated, and edited each text. The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe includes "Backgrounds and Contexts" with fifty-seven carefully chosen documents that illuminate Poe's prolific but short career, among them reviews, prefaces, and correspondence by Poe. It also covers thematic pieces dealing with Transcendentalism and alternative romanticism, sciences of...

"Sources" helps readers navigate King Lear's rich history and includes the nine essential primary sources from which Shakespeare borrowed significantly in creating his play, along with two additional likely sources. "Criticism" provides thirteen major critical interpretations and three provocative adaptations and responses to King Lear. Critical interpretation is provided by Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb, Peter Brook, Michael Warren, Lynda E....

The texts of the seven romances included—Havelok, Ywain and Gawain, Sir Orfeo, Sir Launfal, The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne, The Weddyng of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell, and The Sege off Melayne—are complete, authoritative (rendered from the best manuscripts), and comprehensively glossed and annotated for undergraduate readers. In addition to their literary importance, the seven romances were...

In both poetry and prose, the editors have chosen selections intended to give readers a clear sense of Rich's evolution and accomplishment. Many of the poems in this expanded collection are from Rich's five recent volumes—The Dream of a Common Language (1978), A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981), Your Native Land, Your Life (1986), Time's Power: Poems...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Sheila Murnaghan's celebrated new translation of Sophocles' famed Greek tragedy depicting the deadly conflict between Antigone—daughter of Oedipus—and her uncle Creon, the unyielding new ruler of Thebes. A full introduction exploring the themes and performance history of the play, a detailed note on the translation, and explanatory annotations by Sheila Murnaghan. In "Contexts," ancient sources...

This Norton Critical Edition looks at the full range of opinion and interpretation of this major play from its origins to the present day, from its "genius" (William Hazlitt) to its being a "hateful work, although Shakespearean throughout" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and beyond. The Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1623 First Folio text, the only authoritative edition of...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1925 first American edition text, introduced and annotated by Anne Fernald. A map of Mrs. Dalloway's London. An unusually rich selection of contextual materials, including diary entries and letters related to the composition of the novel, essays, short stories, and biographical excerpts, and the only introduction that Virginia Woolf wrote to any of her...

By carefully selecting extracts from sources, scholars and scriptwriters, Gordon McMullan tells a series of stories about Romeo and Juliet, globally and from their legend's origins to the present day. This edition includes: Introductory materials and explanatory annotations by Gordon McMullan as well as numerous images; Sources and early rewritings by Luigi Da Porto, Matteo Bandello, Pierre Boaistuau, Kareen Klein,...

Marie Borroff's acclaimed verse translation, marginal glosses, and explanatory footnotes. Laura L. Howes's full introduction along with Borroff's seminal essay, "The Metrical Forms," as well as her "Translator's Note." For comparative study and classroom discussion, two French tales of Sir Gawain, four selections from the original Middle English poem, and a passage from the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Nine critical essays...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The new and internationally acclaimed translation by Michael Nylan, accompanied by her detailed explanatory footnotes. A richly informative introduction by Michael Nylan. Fourteen illustrations. Seven interpretative essays on The Art of War's central themes by Michael Nylan and Shoufu Yin, Benjamin Daniels, Trenton Wilson, Joseph Passman, Alfreda Murck, Li Ling, and Richard Curt Kraus. A...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The Classic Fairy Tales features seven different tale types: "Little Red Riding Hood," "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White," "Sleeping Beauty," "Cinderella," "Bluebeard," and "Tricksters." These groupings include multicultural versions, literary rescriptings, and introductions and annotations by Maria Tatar. The edition also contains tales by Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde. Readers will find more...

The tales—116 in all—are thematically grouped. Each grouping is introduced and annotated by Jack Zipes, the genre's reigning expert. Twenty illustrations accompany the texts. Criticism includes seven important assessments of different aspects of the fairy tale tradition, written by W. G. Waters, Benedetto Croce, Lewis Seifert, Patricia Hannon, Harry Velten, Siegfried Neumann, and Jack Zipes. Brief biographies of the storytellers...