Jane Austen is one of England's most enduringly popular authors, renowned for her subtle observations of the provincial middle classes of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England.
This guide to Austen's much-loved work offers:

• an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of Austen's texts, including film adaptations, from publication to the present
• an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Austen's life and work, situated within a broader critical history
• cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
• suggestions for further reading.

Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Jane Austen and seeking not only a guide to her works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.

Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's most liberated and appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen's most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and especially on Elizabeth's prejudice against the proud and distant Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pride and Prejudice is a romantic comedy that has been read as conservative and feminist, reactionary and revolutionary, rooted in the time of its composition and deliberately timeless. Robert Irvine's introduction sets the novel in the context of the literary and intellectual history of the period, dealing with such crucial background issues as class relations in Britain, female exclusion from property and power, and the impact of the French Revolution. The introduction and annotations have been expanded and updated for the new edition, and a new appendix of Austen's juvenilia has been added.

Offers Galt's most successful novel, a microcosm of fifty years of Scottish history Provides a comprehensive Introduction by the volume editor which tells the story of this novel's production and reception; describes the literary and intellectual traditions on which it drew; and explains its relation to the social and political turmoil of the years in which it was written and published Includes extensive Explanatory Notes which identify Galt's biblical allusions, references to historical events, and social and cultural practices of the period in which the novel is set The appendices identify Galt's real-life sources for some of his incidents, and explain the history and institutions of the Church of Scotland as relevant to the story Maps assist the reader to understand the geography on which the novel is acted out: south-west Scotland and its relation to the British Isles John Galt's Annals of the Parish is the first novel of the Industrial Revolution. Narrated by the minister of a rural Scottish parish, it chronicles with humour and pathos the fifty years 1760-1810 from the perspective of ordinary people swept up in social and economic transformation.

'The Poetic Genius of my Country...bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my natal Soil, in my native tongue.' Many of the poems and songs of Robert Burns (1759-96) are familiar to readers the world over: lyrical, acerbic, comic, bawdy, democratic. They include 'To a Mouse', 'John Anderson my Jo', 'A red red Rose', 'Auld lang syne', 'Tam o 'Shanter' and many more, whose vernacular energy and simple beauty have ensured lasting popularity. This generous new selection offers Burns's work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers, presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It reproduces the whole of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock in 1786, the volume which made Burns famous; and it reunites a generous selection of songs from The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Scottish Airs with their full scores. Comprehensive notes describe the circumstances in which other poems and songs found their way into print, both before and after the poet's death. The edition also includes some important letters, and a full glossary to explain Scots words. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Jane Austen is one of England's most enduringly popular authors, renowned for her subtle observations of the provincial middle classes of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England.
This guide to Austen's much-loved work offers:

• an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of Austen's texts, including film adaptations, from publication to the present
• an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Austen's life and work, situated within a broader critical history
• cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
• suggestions for further reading.

Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Jane Austen and seeking not only a guide to her works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.

This study places the novels of Tobias Smollett and Walter Scott in two critical contexts: the rise, from the middle of the eighteenth century, of the discourses of the human or social sciences; and the dominance of the novel by women writers throughout the eighteenth century. It argues that both authors, so often seen as paradigmatically masculine, in fact use the discourses of feminine romance or the domestic novel to figure authorial control over narrative structure. It suggests that they do so in order to combine utopian plot-endings, enacting a nostalgic tory ideology, with an essentially deterministic account of history and society, borrowed from the human sciences of the Scottish Enlightenment.