How well do you know these spooky Oxford World’s Classics?
To help put you in the apt mood for Halloween this year, we have created a quiz to test your knowledge on some of Oxford World’s Classics scariest tales. Are you up for the challenge?
Rumi’s subversive poetry and his sexually explicit stories
Rumi, the thirteenth-century Muslim poet, has become a household name in the last few decades, even becoming the best-selling poet in North America thanks to translations of his work into English. Verses of his poetry are used to begin yoga sessions, religious ceremonies, and weddings, and are ubiquitous throughout social media, in addition to actual […]
Comparing Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Beethoven’s Third
How does the formal originality of Jacob’s Room, its dark tenor, fit into the arc of Woolf’s career? I found unexpected and illuminating answers to this question in an all-Beethoven concert at Carnegie Hall.
A summer playlist inspired by Oxford World’s Classics
To help curate your summer playlist and reading list, here are 10 songs and Oxford World’s Classics we recommend you add to your rotation:
Moby-Dick is the answer. What is the question?
In December 2021, I was a contestant on the popular American quiz show Jeopardy! Every Jeopardy! game has a brief segment in which contestants share anecdotes about themselves, and I used my time to proselytize reading Moby-Dick. I talked about my work on the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of the novel, and emphasized that Melville’s novel is unexpectedly weird, moving, and hilarious despite its monumental reputation.
10 books to immerse yourself in the world of classical literature [reading list]
Here are 10 books that we recommend you read if you’re looking to immerse yourself in the world of classical literature, but don’t know where to start:
Five little-known facts about Dracula
The 26th May 2022 marks the 125th anniversary of Dracula’s publication. Despite its reputation as one of the great Gothic novels, there are facts about Dracula that might surprise even the most hardcore fans.
A literary history of Modernism [timeline]
In this timeline, we explore key figures and events that contributed to shaping modernism and celebrate 100 years since 1922: the pinnacle year of modernist publishing!
Five classics to read if you enjoy shows like Bridgerton or Sanditon [reading list]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged…” that there is no such thing as too many period dramas—at least, this remains true for those of us who are drawn to them, time and time again. Watching period dramas bring with them a sense of comfort as they transport the viewer to a world that is so […]
How well do you know these literary classics by women? [Quiz]
Test your knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary classics penned by women!
Introducing Shakespeare to young readers
No one has a duty to like Shakespeare, just as no one is obliged to prefer coffee to tea, or classical music to pop, or soap operas to documentaries. On the other hand, just as it is highly inconvenient to know nothing about the internet, or how to boil an egg, so it is liable […]
Five things to know about F. Scott Fitzgerald
Synonymous with the Jazz Age of the American 1920s which his novels did so much to define, F. Scott Fitzgerald hardly needs any introduction. Reading The Great Gatsby in school has become as much a rite of passage as first kisses and the furtive adolescent rebellion of drinking alcohol before coming of age. Much of […]
Continuing Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon
Unfinished works tease us. They come with baggage. They cling to their authors whose lives, in turn, weigh heavy upon them. Why were they broken off? How might they be continued?
Bryant Park Reading Room 2019
Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series.
Established in 1935, the Bryant Park Reading room was created by the New York Public Library as a refuge for thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression.
Looking at Game of Thrones, in Old Norse
The endtime is coming. The night is very long indeed; sun and moon have vanished. From the east march the frost-giants, bent on the destruction of all that is living. From the south come fiery powers, swords gleaming brightly. A dragon flies overhead. And, terrifyingly, the dead are walking too.
Why Robinson Crusoe is really an urban tale
Robinson Crusoe (1719) was Daniel Defoe’s first novel and remains his most famous: a powerful narrative of isolation and endurance that’s sometimes compared to Faust, Don Quixote or Don Juan for its elemental, mythic quality.