Burton Raffel

A kind-hearted and idealistic youth enters the grasping Parisian society of the 1820s, where his education in the realities and costs of city life begin among the residents of a shabby but respectable boardinghouse. Père Goriot - one of the outstanding novels in The Human Comedy, Balzac's panoramic study of Parisian life - features richly detailed settings, a skillfully related plot, and a vibrant cast of characters. Acclaimed by critic Leslie Stephen...

It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this 'optimism' concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the 'all for the best' approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters - such as the recent earthquakes in Lima and Lisbon - not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging...

This edition of Othello has a new, illustrated introduction by leading American scholar Ayanna Thompson, which addresses such key issues as race, religion and gender, as well as looking at ways in which the play has been adapted in more recent times. Othello is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies-written in the same five-year period as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. The new introduction attends to the play's different meanings throughout history,...

"For this updated critical edition of Romeo and Juliet, Hester Lees-Jeffries has written a completely new Introduction. It draws on recent research in theatre to set Romeo and Juliet in its mid-1590s context,making connections with other plays by Shakespeare and other literature of the period, as well as with the social and cultural contexts of the day, with discussions of London and Italy; dancing and duelling; marriage, gender and sexuality. It...

The Merchant of Venice is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition includes new and revised activities throughout, new black and white photos from the widest selection of stage and film interpretations of the plays, and a larger glossary providing extra support with the language of Shakespeare. In addition, expanded sections on characters, language,...