Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Building on the strength of Keith Walker’s acclaimed ThePoems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1984), leading scholarNicholas Fisher presents a thoroughly revised and updated editionof the work of one the greatest Restoration wits. Includes the text of Lucina’s Rape, Rochester’sadaptation of Fletcher’s revenge tragedy Valentinian,in a text that readily identifies Rochester’s revisions Presents the poems in versions that were current duringRochester’s lifetime, allowing the reader to experience thepoems as Rochester’s contemporaries did Incorporates insights and discoveries made over the lasttwenty-five years and texts of manuscripts that previously wereunavailable for study

"Behn is a mass of contradictions: a high Tory who disliked traditional power structures; a powerful, autonomous woman who depended on men's approval; a woman who desired men and women and who became involved in intense political activity, yet craved case. This readable, fast-paced book uncovers Behn's assertive, duplicitous, sensual character and illustrates the openly erotic nature of her writings, her explorations of desire, sexual excitement and disappointment, which later made her a byword for lewdness. It reveals historical sources and court cases behind some of her most famous 'fictions'.".

How do minds cause events in the world? How does wanting to write a letter cause a person's hands to move across the page, or believing something to be true cause a person to make a promise? In Actions and Objects, Jonathan Kramnick examines the literature and philosophy of action during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when philosophers and novelists, poets and scientists were all concerned with the place of the mind in the world. These writers asked whether belief, desire, and emotion were part of nature—and thus subject to laws of cause and effect—or in a special place outside the natural order. Kramnick puts particular emphasis on those who tried to make actions compatible with external determination and to blur the boundary between mind and matter. He follows a long tradition of examining the close relation between literary and philosophical writing during the period, but fundamentally revises the terrain. Rather than emphasizing psychological depth and interiority or asking how literary works were understood as true or fictional, he situates literature alongside philosophy as jointly interested in discovering how minds work.