The World Of Paperbacks - Bibliography

THAMES AND HUDSON have reissued The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music ([pound]l6.95. 431 pages), edited by Barry Millington and first published in 1992. This massive reference work has copious details of the musical, historical and intellectual background to Wagner's works as well as analyses of the composer's character, a list of his writings, a calendar of his life and works and short biographies of his contemporaries, all contributed by seventeen Wagnerian experts from round the world.

Many will find it hard to believe that Lady Longford's monumental two-volume biography of the Duke of Wellington has never been issued in paperback although the hardback editions were first published in 1969 and 1972. A one-volume abridged edition, the basis of this publication, was published in hardback in 1992. This new release from ABACUS, Wellington ([pound]l2.99. 580 pages), will introduce one of Britain's greatest heroes to a new generation of readers.

VIRAGO, like Abacus, is part of the Random House empire and has just released a paperback edition of Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge's Vera Brittain: A Life ([pound]12.00. 581 pages). This very touching biography, first published in 1995, has done much to revive the novelist's reputation.

PENGUIN BOOKS have brought out histories of three very different periods. The first is Diarmaid MacCulloch's highly praised Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation ([pound]l2.99. 284 pages) which shows how important the 'boy-king's' short reign was to establishing the Protestant reformation. The second is Joyce Tyldesley's Rameses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh ([pound]7.99. 225 pages) and the third is a re-issue of Hugh Brogan's The Penguin History of the United States of America ([pound]l0.99. 737 pages) first published in 1985. This revised edition takes account of the end of the Cold War and its effect on America. His central theme is the same: the emergence of the United States as a power has been the dominating force in the twentieth century.

W. W. NORTON continues its series of works by the great American novelist, William Faulkner with Thinking of Home: William Faulkner's Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925 ([pound]11.95. 230 pages). The letters, edited by the Faulkner scholar, Prof James Watson, remain essential for a clear understanding of Faulkner the man as well as the novelist.

NORTON is, of course, renowned for its critical editions of famous works of literature. In 1997 the firm published its series, 'The Norton Shakespeare'. Now it has brought out the same series in four paperback volumes, all priced at [pound]12.95. The plays are divided into the usual four groups: Tragedies (1200 pages); Histories (976 pages); Comedies (1040 pages) and Romances and Poems (768 pages). Each volume is edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean B. Howard and Katharine Elisaman Maus. In addition to the texts, based on the definitive Oxford Edition, there is the usual range of critical comment and background information that are so vital to a good understanding of Shakespeare's works.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS continues its illustrated history series with T. C. W. Blanning's The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe ([pound]15.00. 362 pages) in which eleven scholars trace Europe's troubled history from the revolutions of the eighteenth century to the present. O.U.P.'s older and more famous series, the Oxford World's Classics, continues its publication of The Oxford Shakespeare with King Lear ([pound]6.99. 321 pages), edited by Professor Stanley Wells who is also the General Editor of OUP's edition of Shakespeare.

YALE'S 'Nota Bene' series continues with Jonathan Schneer's London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis ([pound]9.99 (US$16.95). 336 pages) which seeks to recreate the vibrancy and power of London in the last year of the nineteenth century. A second new title is Mark Mazower's Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 ([pound]10.99. 437 pages), a study of how the Nazi occupation of Greece affected the lives of average people.

VINTAGE have brought out a paperback edition of Belinda Jack's George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large ([pound]7.99. 412 pages) in which the author traces the famous novelist's 'extraordinarily full life'. There are also two new history titles: Tom Hiney's On the Missionary Trail: The Classic Georgian Adventure of Two Englishmen, Sent on a Journey Round the World, 1821-29 ([pound]7.99. 367 pages), which was serialised on BBC Radio Four, and Michael Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism ([pound]7.99. 201 pages). Here the author looks at the erupting national feelings in the former Yugoslavia, Germany, the Ukraine, Quebec, Kurdistan and Ulster.

PAN BOOKS have published Max Hasting's Going to the Wars ([pound]7.99 (Can$14.95). 399 pages) in which the well-known war correspondent recounts his adventures as a journalist observing some of this century's nastiest wars.