Product Description: The monarchs of seventeenth-century Europe put a surprisingly high priority on the abolition of dueling, seeing its eradication as an important step from barbarism toward a rational state monopoly on justice. But it was one thing to ban dueling and another to stop it...read more

Product Description: [Beaumarchais'] fame rests on Le Barbier de Seville (1775) and Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), the only French plays which his stage-struck century bequeathed to the international repertoire. But his achievement has been adulterated, for ‘Beaumarchais’ has long been the brand name of a product variously reprocessed by Mozart, Rossini, and the score or so librettists and musicians who have perpetuated his plots, his characters, and his name...read more

Product Description: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work...read more

Product Description: In his Philosophical Letters, Voltaire provides a pungent and often satirical assessment of the religion, politics, science, and arts of the England he observed during his nearly three-year exile. In addition to the Letters, this edition provides a translation of Voltaire's Proposal for a Letter about the English, a general Introduction, chronology, notes, and bibliography...read more

Why is a favourite always installed? Why do lost stirrups always become irons? Why is a zesty horse good, but a fizzy one bad? These and many other quandaries are solved in this book. Words like doughty and Dulux, jig-jog and jolly may not come straight from the horse's mouth, but they capture the passion of those who love the races.

Product Description: In this fresh exploration of eighteenth-century French writing, John Leigh celebrates the ideas and hopes that animated its central figures and examines the extent to which authors―and their readers―shouldered heretofore-unknown responsibilities and confronted new doubts...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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