Author Archive
The Korean War: A History
From author Bruce Cummings, a bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored.
Read More
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Uncertain of their standing in court and fearing for their lives, Rosalind and Orlando are forced into exile in the Forest of Arden, only to become entangled in a beguiling game of love, lust, and mistaken identity. One of Shakespeare’s great comedies, As You Like It subverts the traditional rules of romance, confusing gender roles, […]
Read More
Featured Classic: The Count of Monte Cristo
A popular bestseller since its publication in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great page-turning thrillers of all time.
Read More100+ of the Best Books on Shakespeare
A comprehensive list of the best sources for further reading about the Bard and his plays from Royal Shakespeare Company editor Jonathan Bate.
View a Shakespearean Theater
Since there is no authentic image of the interior of a Shakespearean theater, we reproduced a hypothetical one, based on various kinds of evidence and designed for this edition by Charcoalblue.
RSC Stage Histories
RSC STAGINGS The Royal Shakespeare Company has staged all of Shakespeare’s plays. The following comprehensive listing runs from the foundation of the company in 1960 to the conclusion of the Complete Works Festival in 2007. For each play, there is also a link the RSC online archive of production photographs and related resources. For theatre […]
Read MoreGlossing the RSC Shakespeare
The RSC Shakespeare is unique amongst editions of the complete works in its comprehensive on-page gloss. In preparing the notes for the RSC edition, full advantage has been taken of new electronic databases containing thousands of sixteenth-century texts. This has enabled really thorough searching for the meanings of words and has allowed us to see how they functioned in a massive variety of contexts: in plays, poetry, popular ballads, legal records, medical books, advice manuals, letters, dictionaries and so on. Click here for the essay.
Read More
Reading Guide: Georges by Alexandre Dumas
Long out of print in America, Alexandre Dumas’s most daring narrative is now available in this major new translation by Tina A. Kover. Filled with intrigue, romance, and deadly vengeance, Georges is the story of a wealthy mulatto boy who is driven from his island home by racist landowners. Returning to Mauritius as an accomplished young man, Georges pits his strength against a powerful plantation owner, leading a dramatic slave uprising and claiming the heart of a beautiful white woman. Georges stands apart as the only book by Dumas that explores the potent subject of race.
Read More
Reading Guide: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
“Matthew had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his; then and there he decided what to do. He could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that there had been a mistake. . . .”
When eleven-year-old Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables with nothing but a carpetbag and an overactive imagination, she knows that she has found her home. But first she must convince the Cuthberts to let her stay, even though she isn’t the boy they’d hoped for. The loquacious Anne quickly finds her way into their hearts, as she has with generations of readers, and her charming, ingenious adventures in Avonlea, filled with colorful characters and tender escapades, linger forever in our memories.
Read More