The author of more than 2,000 books and pamphlets, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) was one of the most prolific writers of the eighteenth century, and also one of the wittiest and most insightful. This unique collection of over 800 of Voltaire’s wisest passages and choicest bons mots runs the gamut on topics from adultery to Zoroaster, in both English and French. Drawing from a wide range of his publications, private letters, and remarks recorded by his contemporaries, The Quotable Voltaire includes material never before gathered in a single volume. English translations appear alongside the original French, and each quote is thoroughly indexed and referenced, with page numbers for both the first known publication edition of each entry and the most recent edition of Voltaire’s works. The book also features over 400 quotes about Voltaire, including commentary by eighteenth-century luminaries like Samuel Johnson, Catherine the Great, Casanova, and John Adams, as well as an eclectic assortment of modern-day personages ranging from Winston Churchill and Jorge Luis Borges to Mae West and Mike Tyson. Lavishly illustrated with nearly three dozen images of Voltaire-related art, this collection opens with a scholarly essay that recounts the great man’s life and reflects on his outsized influence on Western culture. Whether you are a Voltaire scholar or a neophyte, The Quotable Voltaire is the perfect introduction to a brilliant mind.

While eighteenth-century playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing made numerous contributions in his lifetime to the theater, the text that best documents his dynamic and shifting views on dramatic theory is also that which continues to resonate with later generations – the Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 1767–69). This collection of 104 short essays represents one of the eighteenth century’s most important critical engagements with the theater and its potential to promote humanistic discourse. Lessing’s essays are an immensely erudite, deeply engaged, witty, ironic, and occasionally scathing investigation of European theatrical culture, bolstered by deep analysis of Aristotelian dramatic theory and utopian visions of theater as a vehicle for human connection. This is the first complete English translation of Lessing's text, with extensive annotations that place the work in its historical context. For the first time, English-language readers can trace primary source references and link Lessing’s observations on drama, theory, and performance not only to the plays he discusses, but also to dramatic criticism and acting theory. This volume also includes three introductory essays that situate Lessing’s work both within his historical time period and in terms of his influence on Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment theater and criticism. The newly translated Hamburg Dramaturgy will speak to dramaturgs, directors, and humanities scholars who see theater not only for entertainment, but also for philosophical and political debate.

The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.

For 2,500 years literature has been condemned in the name of authority, truth, morality and society. But in making explicit what a society expects from literature, anti-literary discourse paradoxically asserts the validity of what it wishes to deny. The threat to literature’s continued existence, William Marx writes, is not hatred but indifference.

In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.