Annotated Editions
Harvard University Press is pleased to offer these deluxe, oversized editions of classic works. Each of these titles is edited by an established scholar whose critical commentary and contextual notes help the reader to fully engage with the text. These beautiful books are designed to last for generations.
“Harvard University Press’s fine series of annotated editions…[demonstrates] just how much more there is to know, even (perhaps particularly) about long-loved favorites. Among the volumes to appear thus far in the literary part of the series (which also features historical documents), Harvard has brought out a set of Jane Austen’s novels (to be concluded with an edition of Mansfield Park in the fall of 2016), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works, and Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. These annotated editions provide a richness of reading experience akin to a feast: not just the main course of the text, but a dazzling array of ‘side dishes’ as well.”—Jennifer L. Holberg, Books & Culture
An Annotated Edition
More than a delightful girls’ book, this richly annotated and illustrated edition of Little Women will instruct new and returning readers, young and old. Alcott scholar Daniel Shealy illuminates the novel’s engagement with social equality, reform movements, the Civil War, friendship, love, loss, and the central question: How does one grow up well?
An Annotated Edition
Perhaps the most accomplished of Austen’s novels, Emma is also, after Pride and Prejudice, her most popular. Film and television adaptations testify to the world’s enduring affection for headstrong, often misguided Emma Woodhouse and her romantic schemes. Emma: An Annotated Edition is an illuminating gift edition that will be treasured by readers.
An Annotated Edition
In her notes and introduction to this final volume in Harvard’s annotated Austen series, Deidre Shauna Lynch outlines the critical disagreements Mansfield Park has sparked and suggests that Austen’s design in writing the novel was to highlight, not downplay, the conflicted feelings its plot and heroine can inspire.
An Annotated Edition
In her introduction to Northanger Abbey, Susan Wolfson proposes that Austen’s most underappreciated, most playful novel is about fiction itself and how it can take possession of everyday understandings. Wolfson’s running commentary will engage new readers and delight scholars.
An Annotated Edition
This richly illustrated annotated edition brings unmatched vitality to Austen’s most passionate and introspective love story. Commentary alongside the text explains difficult allusions, while the Introduction explicates the novel’s central conflicts as well as its relationship to Austen’s other works and to those of her contemporaries.
An Annotated Edition
Pride and Prejudice was in Austen’s lifetime her most popular novel, and it was the author’s personal favorite. Adapted many times to the screen and stage, and the inspiration for numerous imitations, it remains today her most widely read book. In this beautifully illustrated and annotated edition, scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks instructs the reader in a larger appreciation of the novel’s enduring pleasures and provides analysis of Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and all the characters who inhabit their world.
An Annotated Edition
Patricia Meyer Spacks guides readers to a deeper appreciation of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as they experience love, romance, and heartbreak. Sense and Sensibility: An Annotated Edition includes numerous color reproductions that vividly recreate Austen’s world. This will be an especially welcome addition to the library of any Janeite.
The Annotated Wuthering Heights
Illustrated with many color images, The Annotated Wuthering Heights provides those encountering the novel for the first time, as well as those returning to it, with a wide array of contexts in which to read Emily Brontë’s romantic masterpiece, which has been called the most beautiful, most profoundly violent love story of all time.
A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is one of the most important and yet least read scientific works in the history of science. The Annotated Origin is a facsimile of the first edition of 1859, and is accompanied by James T. Costa’s marginal annotations, drawing on his extensive experience with Darwin’s ideas in the field, lab, and classroom. This edition makes available an accessible and practical resource for anyone reading Origin for the first time or for those who want to reread it with the insights and perspective that a working biologist can provide.
Emerson remains one of America’s least understood writers, having spawned neither school nor follower. Those wishing to discover or reacquaint themselves with Emerson’s writings but who have not known where or how to begin will not find a better starting place or more reliable guide than David Mikics in this richly illustrated volume.
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
The Complete Annotated Edition
This is the first complete annotated edition of Grant’s memoirs, fully representing the great military leader’s thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War—including the antebellum era and the Mexican War—and his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. An introduction contextualizes Grant’s life and significance.
No U.S. president has faced the problems Lincoln confronted, nor expressed himself with such eloquence on issues of great moment. Harold Holzer and Thomas Horrocks explore his writings on slavery, emancipation, racial equality, the legality of secession, civil liberties in wartime, and the meaning of the terrible suffering caused by the Civil War.
Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps America’s most famous writer. Yet he remains misunderstood, his works easily confused with the legend of a troubled genius. In this annotated edition of tales and poems, Kevin J. Hayes debunks the Poe myth, enables a larger appreciation of Poe’s career and varied achievements, and investigates his weird afterlives.
The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
Here are the two founding documents of the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence (1776), our great revolutionary manifesto, and the Constitution (1787–88), in which “We the People” forged a new nation and built the framework for our federal republic. These documents have come to define us as a people. Now Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jack Rakove serves as a guide to these texts, providing historical contexts and offering interpretive commentary.
Published in 1818, Frankenstein has spellbound readers for generations and has inspired numerous retellings and sequels in every medium, making the myth familiar even to those who have never read a word of Mary Shelley’s novel. This freshly annotated, illustrated edition illuminates the novel and its electrifying afterlife.
A Facsimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855–1859
Marking Alfred Russel Wallace’s death in 1913, James Costa presents in facsimile, with transcription and annotations, the “Species Notebook” of 1855–1859. These extensive, never-before-published notes from Wallace’s Malay expedition reveal the travels, trials, and genius of the co-discoverer of natural selection—Darwin’s equal among pioneers of evolution.
The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest
The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest provides facing-page commentary on Oscar Wilde’s greatest play. Editor Nicholas Frankel highlights the play’s relation to the author’s homosexuality and to the climate of sexual repression that led to Wilde’s imprisonment just months after the play’s London opening in 1895.
The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde
Serving prison time with hard labor for the crime of gross indecency, Oscar Wilde wrote some of his most powerful works. A savage indictment of society, and testimony to private sufferings, his prison writings—illuminated by Nicholas Frankel’s notes—reveal a different man from the dandy and aesthete who shocked or amused the English-speaking world.
An Annotated, Uncensored Edition
The Picture of Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited, heralding the end of a repressive era. Now, more than 120 years after Wilde handed it over to his publisher, Wilde’s uncensored typescript is published here for the first time, in an annotated, extensively illustrated edition.
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
I Tatti Renaissance Library
Loeb Classical Library
Murty Classical Library of India