"This edition is wonderfully rich. It is a pleasure to know that the text that made Opie's reputation in her own day is back in print and prepared by such able hands." -- Christine M. Cooper, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was a prominent eighteenth-century printer and businessman as well as an important and influential English novelist. He was also a prolific letter writer. This volume in the first ever full edition of Richardson's correspondence offers a fascinating glimpse of the writer in his final years - at the height of his professional powers but facing the challenging circumstances of physical decline and commercial conflict. The collection of miscellaneous letters addresses a variety of issues ranging from details of Richardson's printing operation to his mentorship of women writers including Sarah Fielding, Anna Meades and Frances Sheridan. Other correspondents of note include Samuel Johnson, Meta Klopstock, Thomas Sheridan and Tobias Smollett. Taken together this series of letters draws an intimate picture of Richardson's professional and personal circles as they exchange family gossip, business advice, literary anecdotes and news of the day.

George MacDonald's Victorian fairy tales transformed the genre of fantasy. His work also shaped the next generation of children's literature: C.S. Lewis regarded MacDonald as a major influence, and writers as diverse as G.K. Chesterton and W.H. Auden acknowledged his significance. His best known story for children, The Princess and the Goblin, tells the story of a lonely child princess and her friend, a brave miner boy, in their battle with subterranean monsters. But MacDonald engages readers with more than the plot: enigmatic narrative asides and simple, but strikingly poetic language show why his work was an inspiration for modernist writers as well as those in fantasy and children's literature. Along with The Princess and the Goblin, this edition includes four other major fairy stories by MacDonald, as well as a selection of historical documents on the works' composition and reception, Victorian fairy tales, and MacDonald's other literary criticism.