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Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes.

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Uniquely bizarre, unsettling and suffused with a sly with and outright laughter, Walpole's Hieroglyphic Tales - according to him 'incontestably the most ancient work in the world' - are some of the rarest writings of the eighteenth century, and a literary counterpart to the sham battlements and paper gargoyles of Walpole's enchanting architecture. This edition was prepared by Professor Kenneth Gross of the University of Rochester, and includes an extra story preserved only in manuscript transcri...

Morrison's descriptions of the fearful physical conditions are based directly on what he saw. He conjures up an extraordinarily vivid picture of a world which, even as he wrote, was about to vanish in one of the first of the slum clearance schemes.

The Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus was written in the 1130s or 1140s, probably in the diocese of Liege, a recognized centre of religious and intellectual activity at the time. It is a description of the similarities and differences among the various orders of monks, canons, and hermits, and, though clearly a contribution to a contemporary debate, is more analytical than polemical. Its unknown author, 'R', perhaps a regular canon, builds his case by demonstrating how each order and profession co...

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a prolific Scots man of letters, a poet, novelist, literary critic and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of the day. Lang was one of the founders of the study of "Psychical Research," and his other w...

This is a full-scale edition (the first in nearly 70 years) of the first book of Lucan's De Bello Civili, an important and influential epic poem written in the 60s AD, which recounts the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey in the years 49-45 BC. The volume includes an introduction, text with apparatus criticus, and commentary. The introduction provides the reader with a number of the most important contexts for understanding Lucan's subject matter and his approach to this material. The co...

"Selections from Ystorya Bown o Hamtwn" provides edited selections, together with an introduction, notes, and glossary, from a long and entertaining thirteenth century Welsh text which belongs to the genre of medieval translations. The source of "Ystorya Bown" is the "Anglo-Norman Geste de Boeve de Haumtone". This was a very popular tale in the Middle Ages and was translated not only into Welsh, but also into Middle English and Old Norse, and, via an English intermediary, into Early Modern Irish...

These thirteen essays by distinguished Chaucerians deal with the most neglected genre of the Canterbury Tales, the religious tales. Although the prose works are also discussed, the primary focus of the volume is on Chaucer's four poems in rhyme royal: the Clerk's Tale, the Man of Law's Tale, the Second Nun's Tale and the Prioress's Tale. Almost all of Chaucer's tales are religious in some sense, but these four works deal specifically and deeply with faith and spiritual transcendence. They ap...