Bedford College Editions reprint enduring literary works in a handsome, readable, and affordable format. The text of each work is lightly but helpfully... annotated. Prepared by eminent scholars and teachers, the editorial matter in each volume includes a chronology of the life of the author; an illustrated introduction to the contexts and major issues of the text in its time and ours; an annotated bibliography for further reading (contexts, criticism, and Internet resources); and a concise glossary of literary terms.

"What has cast such a shadow upon you?""The Negro."With its intense mix of mystery, adventure, and a surprise ending, Benito Cereno at first seems... merely a provocative example from the genre Herman Melville created with his early best-selling novels of the sea. However, most Melville scholars consider it his most sophisticated work, and many, such as novelist Ralph Ellison, have hailed it as the most piercing look at slavery in all of American literature. Based on a real life incident—the character names remain unchanged—Benito Cereno tells what happens when an American merchant ship comes upon a mysterious Spanish ship where the nearly all-black crew and their white captain are starving and yet hostile to offers of help. Melville's most focused political work, it is rife with allusions (a ship named after Santo Domingo, site of the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture), analogies (does the good-hearted yet obtuse American captain refer to the American character itself?), and mirroring images that deepen our reflections on human oppression and its resultant depravities. It is, in short, a multi-layered masterpiece that rewards repeated readings, and deepens our appreciation of Melville's genius. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

This new addition to the Longman World Biography series integrates the latest scholarship on the life of Mussolini with the story of Italian Fascism. ...   Combines the story of Mussolini, the man, with the story of Italian Fascism. Explores the larger legacy of Mussolini outside of Europe and since 1945. Situates Fascism in a global context and exposes students to debates on historical interpretation. Provides students with a comparative framework for understanding European Fascism.

The American Revolution was a civil war as well as a war for independence. The experience of Benjamin Franklin and his son, William, royal governor of... New Jersey, reveals America's internal struggle over the question of loyalty to England. A collection of letters accompanies Sheila Skemp's narrative of the two men, bonded by blood, divided by political cause.

A reissue of a classic that represents the culmination of over 40 years in Schoenberg's life devoted to the teaching of musical principles to students... and composers in Europe and America. For his classes, he developed a manner of presentation in which "every technical matter is discussed in a very fundamental way, so that at the same time it is both simple and thorough". This book can be used for analysis as well as for composition. On the one hand, it has the practical objective of introducing students to the process of composing in a systematic way, from the smallest to the largest forms; on the other hand, the author analyzes in detail, with numerous illustrations, those particular sections in the works of the masters which relate to the compositional problem under discussion.

"Writing has been of Great Use to me in the Course of my Life," Benjamin Franklin said in his famous Autobiography. With characteristically calculated... understatement, he attributed his enormous and varied successes to "my having learnt a little to scribble." This collection of Franklin's works begins with letters sent from London (1757-1775) describing the events and diplomacy preceding the Revolutionary War. The volume also contains political satires, bagatelles, pamphlets, and letters written in Paris (1776-1785), where he represented the revolutionary United States at the court of Louis XVI, as well as his speeches given in the Constitutional Convention and other works written in Philadelphia (1785-1790), including his last published article, a searing satire against slavery. Also included are the delightfully shrewd prefaces to Poor Richard's Almanack (1733-1758) and their worldly, pungent maxims that have entered our American culture. Finally, the classic Autobiography, Franklin's last word on his greatest literary creation-his own invented personality-is presented here in a new edition, completely faithful to Franklin's manuscript. A companion volume includes the complete "Silence Dogood" series, "Busy-Body" essays, and a generous selection of his early writings, including letters to the press, satires, and pamphlets.

The only edition of the celebrated Autobiography that includes the long-missing and recently identified “Wagon Letters.”Written during the most... eventful years of Benjamin Franklin's life (1771–90), the Autobiography is one of the most influential memoirs in history. This newly edited Norton Critical Edition includes an introduction that explains the history of the Autobiography within the larger history of the life-writing genre as well as within the history of celebrity. The text is accompanied by new and expanded explanatory annotations and by a map, an illustration, and six facsimiles.“Contexts” presents a broader view of Franklin’s life with a journal entry from a 1726 voyage, correspondence, a Poor Richard piece on ambition and fame, Franklin’s views on self-improvement, and his last will (and codicil).“Criticism” draws on a wealth of material that reflects both the wide range of Franklin’s achievements and the global impact of his life and memoirs. New international voices in “Contemporary Opinions” include Immanuel Kant, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, and José Francisco Correia da Serra. “Nineteenth-Century Opinions” includes Humphry Davy on Franklin’s discovery of electricity as well as Empress Shōken of Japan’s Franklin-inspired poem. Finally, “Modern Opinions” reprints important pieces: I. B. Cohen on Franklin and the Autobiography's importance to science; Michael Warner’s theoretical interpretation of the practices of writing and printing and what they tell us about Franklin; and Peter Stallybrass’s insightful and engaging history-of-the-book perspective on Franklin’s writing generally and the Autobiography specifically.A Chronology of Franklin’s life, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index are also included.

Franklin’s Autobiography is the only enduring best-seller written in America before the nineteenth century, as well as the most popular autobiography... ever written.As such it deserves to be offered to twentieth-century readers in the most accurate form possible, and so it is, in this Norton Critical Edition, the first text to be edited directly from the manuscripts, rather than perpetuating the errors of previous editions. The text is fully annotated, and the reading is assisted by helpful footnotes, biographical sketches, and two maps. In "Backgrounds", the editors collect Franklin’s most important reflections on the Autobiography’s purpose, some anecdotes, and a number of Franklin’s statements on wealth, the art of virtue, and perfection.  Materials in "Criticism" range from contemporary opinions—which reveal that readers were divided then as they are now about the art of the Autobiography—to essays written in the twentieth century. Nineteenth-century opinions include those of John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells, among others. The twentieth-century materials include D. H. Lawrence’s celebrated essay, an excerpt from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and the perspectives of such recent critics as Charles L. Sanford, Robert Freeman Sayre, John William Ward, and David Devin.

Statesman, scientist, philosopher, printer, and civic leader, Benjamin Franklin was also the most powerful writer of his time. From his first appearance... in print, in the guise of the eccentric, opinionated, voluble "Silence Dogood" (1722), to his last published article, a searing satire against slavery (1790), he covered every aspect of "the question of America" with radiant clarity, wit, and penetration. This collection begins with items written by Franklin during his early years in Boston and London (1722- 1726), including the complete "Silence Dogood" essay series. The volume also includes the famous "Busy-Body" essays (1728-1729); many of the news articles and essays he penned after he purchased the failing Pennsylvania Gazette (which eventually became the most widely read newspaper in the colonies); and various political satires, pamphlets, and personal correspondence written while he lived in Philadelphia from 1726 to 1757. The book concludes with material he published while a diplomat in London from 1757 to 1775 (including letters to the press, satires, and pamphlets). Controversial in his own time, and the subject of vigorous debate ever since-to Matthew Arnold he exemplified "victorious good sense," while to D. H. Lawrence he was "the first dummy American"-Franklin emerges in this collection as a figure of extraordinary complexity for readers to discover, consider, and appreciate anew. A companion volume includes Poor Richard's Almanack, Franklin's classic Autobiography, and his later writings.

OTHER WRITINGS INCLUDE: A RECEIPT TO MAKE A NEW ENGLAND FUNERAL ELEGY; ADVICE TO A FRIEND ON CHOOSING A MISTRESS; THE SPEECH OF MISS POLLY BAKER; HOW TO... SECURE HOUSES, &C. FROM LIGHTNING; THE KITE EXPERIMENT; THE WAY TO WEALTH; AN EDICT BY THE KING OF PRUSSIA; THE MORALS OF CHESS (EXCERPT); THE ELYSIAN FIELDS; INFORMATION TO THOSE WHO WOULD REMOVE TO AMERICA (EXCERPT); AN ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY; A MISCELLANY OF FRANKLIN'S OPINIONS.

The greatest statesman of his age, Benjamin Franklin was also a pioneering scientist, a successful author, the first American postmaster general, a... printer and a bon vivant. In addition, he was a man of vast contradictions. This biography offers a compact and provocative portrait of America's most extraordinary patriot.

The scion of a political dynasty ushers in the era of big government Politics was in Benjamin Harrison's blood. His great-grandfather signed the... Declaration and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States. Harrison, a leading Indiana lawyer, became a Republican Party champion, even taking a leave from the Civil War to campaign for Lincoln. After a scandal-free term in the Senate-no small feat in the Gilded Age-the Republicans chose Harrison as their presidential candidate in 1888. Despite losing the popular vote, he trounced the incumbent, Grover Cleveland, in the electoral college. In contrast to standard histories, which dismiss Harrison's presidency as corrupt and inactive, Charles W. Calhoun sweeps away the stereotypes of the age to reveal the accomplishments of our twenty-third president. With Congress under Republican control, he exemplified the activist president, working feverishly to put the Party's planks into law and approving the first billion-dollar peacetime budget. But the Democrats won Congress in 1890, stalling his legislative agenda, and with the First Lady ill, his race for reelection proceeded quietly. (She died just before the election.) In the end, Harrison could not beat Cleveland in their unprecedented rematch.With dazzling attention to this president's life and the social tapestry of his times, Calhoun compellingly reconsiders Harrison's legacy.

Although his name is little known today outside Iowa, during the early part of the twentieth century Benjamin Shambaugh (1871–1940) was a key figure... in the historical profession. Using his distinguished career as a lens, Conard's seminal work is the first book to consider public history as an integral part of the intellectual development of the historical profession as a whole in the United States. Conard draws upon an unpublished, mid-1940s biography by research historian Jacob Swisher to trace the forces that shaped Shambaugh's early years, his administration of the State Historical Society of Iowa, his development of applied history and commonwealth history in the 1910s and 1920s, and the transformations in his thinking and career during the 1930s. Framing this intriguingly interwoven narrative are chapters that contextualize Shambaugh's professional development within the development of the historical profession as a whole in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and assess his career within the post-World War II emergence of the modern public history movement. Shambaugh's career speaks to those who believe in the power of history to engage and inspire local audiences as well as those who believe that historians should apply their knowledge and methods outside the academy in pursuit of the greater public good.

This volume offers an abundant and representative selection of the verse of Ben Jonson and the Cavalier poets.Jonson is represented by a wide selection... from the Epigrams, including the mock epic "On the Famous Voyage"; The Forest, complete; extensive selections from Underwood, including such well-known pieces as "A Celebration of Charis" and the Cary-Morison ode, together with the "Epithalamion" on the Weston-Stuart nuptials and "An Execration Upon Vulcan"; and more. Also included is a copious selection from the works of Richard Corbett, Robert Herrick (eighty-two poems from Hesperides and fifteen from His Noble Numbers), Thomas Carew, James Shirley, Mildmay Fane, Thomas Randolph, Edmund Waller, William Harbington, Sir John Suckling, Sidney Godolphin, William Cartwright, James Graham (Marquis of Montrose), Sir John Denham, Richard Lovelace, Abraham Cowley, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Stanley. The spelling and punctuation of the poems have been made consistent with modern practice. These and other alterations are discussed in the Textual Notes. Footnotes serve primarily to gloss unfamiliar terms, to clarify syntax, and to explain allusions to mythological and historical figures and episodes. Among the critics represented are Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, Edmund Bolton, James Howell, Thomas Fuller, Edward Hyde, Samuel Butler, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Patrick Cruttwell, Joseph Summers, Earl Miner, Geoffrey Walton, G. A. E. Parfitt, L. A. Beaurline, Stephen Orgel, Ronald Berman, Bruce King, Hugh Richmond, Earl Wasserman, D. C. Allen, T. S. Eliot, and Hugh Maclean.

This collection features three of Jonson's masterpieces: Volpone, Epicoene, and The Alchemist.Also included are three masques: Mercury Vindicated from... the Alchemist at Court, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and—new to the Second Edition—The Masque of Blackness, Jonson's first masque and one that deals with issues of interest to contemporary culture. Each text includes expanded annotations. Jonson on His Work collects statements by the author on plays and on poetry taken from some of the plays, from Discoveries, and from Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Contemporary Readers on Jonson includes tributes and poems about the author and his work. A new section—"Backgrounds and Sources"—includes selections from texts that helped shaped the dramatist's vision. Criticism includes twelve essays—nine of them new to the Second Edition—by Jonas A. Barish, Robert C. Evans, Anne Barton, John Dryden, Robert Watson, Edward B. Partridge, Ian Donaldson, Richard Harp, D. J. Gordon, Stephen Orgel, John Mulryan, and Leah S. Marcus.