Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is the fate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteen centuries - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that led to its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes three and four, Gibbon vividly recounts the waves of barbarian invaders under commanders such as Alaric and Attila, who overran and eventually destroyed the West. He then turns his gaze to events in the East, where even the achievements...

This volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as "The Rambler" in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary character and forged the distinctive prose style that established him as a public figure. Also included here is the best of Johnson's later journalism, including essays from the periodicals "The Adventurer" and "The Idler."
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf...

The subject of this book is the story of the conflict between Gibbon and those he mockingly dubbed the "Watchmen of the Holy City," and it explores the ramifications of an elusive aspect of authorship. By considering the sequence of interactions between the historian and his readership, Womersley makes possible a more intimate understanding of what might be called Gibbon's experience of himself. At the same time he deepens our knowledge of the conditions of English authorship during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This new anthology provides seventeen key plays by twelve dramatists of the Restoration period in an anthology designed specifically for course use, with annotations and judiciously modernized texts. It offers a representative sampling of the types of play of the period, including plays by both men and women - sex comedy, moral comedy, heroic drama, Shakespearean adaptation and political history.

This definitive companion provides a critical overview of literary culture in the period from John Milton to William Blake. Its broad chronological range responds to recent configurations of the canon and points to new directions of study.

The two plays presented in full in this volume - Wycherley's The Country Wife and Congreve's The Way of the World - illustrate the evolution of Restoration comedy between 1675 and 1700.

• Includes full texts of Wycherley's The Country Wife and Congreve's The Way of the World.


• Demonstrates how Restoration comedy evolved between 1675 and 1700.


• Introduces general readers or students to the genre.


• An editorial introduction guides readers through the plays and the period.
...

The two plays presented in full in this volume - Wycherley's The Country Wife and Congreve's The Way of the World - illustrate the evolution of Restoration comedy between 1675 and 1700.

• Includes full texts of Wycherley's The Country Wife and Congreve's The Way of the World.


• Demonstrates how Restoration comedy evolved between 1675 and 1700.


• Introduces general readers or students to the genre.


• An editorial introduction guides readers through the plays and the period.
...

David Womersley's book investigates Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as both a work of literature and a work of history, examining its style and irony, tracing its classical and French sources, and highlighting the importance of its composition in three instalments over a period of twenty years. Dr Womersley discusses each of these instalments in detail, plotting the work's transformation from conception to completion, and relating this to the achievements and limitations of the philosophic historiography which Gibbon inherited from Montesquieu and Hume, but finally...

In 1589 the Privy Council encouraged the Archbishop of Canterbury to take steps to control the theatres, which had offended authority by putting on plays which addressed 'certen matters of Divinytie and of State unfitt to be suffred'.
How had questions of divinity and state become entangled? The Reformation had invested the English Crown with supremacy over the Church, and religious belief had thus been transformed into a political statement. In the plentiful chronicle literature of the sixteenth-century, questions of monarchical legitimacy and religious orthodoxy became intertwined as a...

The Samuel Johnson volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers a generous selection of Johnson's most important writings, drawn from all periods of his life. It reflects almost completely the range of literary forms in which Johnson wrote. In keeping with the the approach of the series, the texts are presented in chronological order and the text chosen is, wherever possible, the text of the first published version. As well as an expansive introduction and a detailed chronology of Johnson's life, David Womersley provides helpful annotation to guide and orient the reader.