Oscar Wilde entirely dedicates this play to the exploration of the way a woman can be saved from destruction in this society of appearances. A woman was the victim of an imbroglio in the past and abandoned her daughter. This woman comes back and the daughter ignores her relation to her. She is brought back into societry by the daughter's husband who knows the truth but does not want his wife to know it. But there is some kind of malediction that flies over the heads of these women. The daughter nearly does the same mistake as her mother but she is saved by her mother who accepts to be tainted in her daughter's place. Bus Oscar Wilde must think there is some kind of reward for a good deed and all is well that ends well, and this play has a happy ending. In spite of all the melodramatic sentimentalese atmosphere, Oscar Wilde definitely explores in this play the great disadvantage of a woman in society. Men can do nearly all they want. Women are extremely limited and have to walk a very straight and narrow line. Oscar Wilde seems to be ahead of his time as for the fate of women: he seems to aspire for real equality for them, though he shows in all possible ways that this is impossible in his society.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

My first experience reading Oscar Wilde... and certainly not my last.

Wilde's sardonic wit and ineffable satire had me enchanted from page one. Wilde writes with devastatingly appealing witticisms, and with a style and cleverness matched by few other authors. It is said that he is one of the more oft-quoted authors in the English language, and I now understand why.

In addition to axioms and aphorisms of pure genius, the plot both captivates and surprises the reader. Lady Windermere discovers that her husband has been cheating on her, and a folly of misunderstandings and poor advice then unfolds; all the while satirizing society.

This play is very interesting to read (according to me). I saw a lot of hypocracy and snobery of people in this play. But a lot of peole said that the plays of Oscar Wilde have no satire, means, there is no factor of politics, socials,etc. I think, what he wrote in this plays and other plays had something to critize the people in that time. I want more information about Lady Winderemere's Fan, I mean what is the background of Wilde wrote yhis novel. Is there any important effects so that he wrote this first play?

I grew up in Hollis, Queens during the '50s & and '60s and thought that I saw a lot of changes in the neighborhood. But this book is a real eye-opener showing how the area changed from farmlands in the 19th century (including developer's ads) to a fully built up residential community by the 1940's. The book is a must read for anyone who has lived in Queens

For this former resident (Corona and Laurelton), Old Queens presented an engrossing, illuminating, and refreshing visual window on the area of New York that has received too little historical attention. Arranged by community, the book provides concise, individual historical narratives to go with a set of photographs of people and places and old maps that can only be called amazing. Indeed, the treasures of this book, for my taste, are the many photos from the era before the construction of the subway lines that transformed rural Queens into megalopolis. Many of the area photos (structures from the 1939 World's Fair, for example) will no doubt be familiar to many. What surprises, however, are photos such as the two page spread of an untamed, deserted pre-World's Fair Flushing Meadow, a lush meadow creased by the winding Flushing River, itself crossed by the vanished Strong's Causeway that carried Corona Avenue traffic across the soggy marsh to Lawrence Street in Flushing. Equally compelling are photos of the muddy looking thoroughly rural roads of Queens Boulevard and Merrick Road (in Springfield) from the early 20th century complete with isolated farm buildings. Perhaps the most symbolic photo, however, is the panoramic photo showing a spanking new IRT Flushing Line elevated tracks slanting across a nearly-vacant 1915 Sunnyside landscape that looks more like Ohio than New York City. This book helps the reader see Queens as it existed before the housing explosion. It also makes one wonder what might have been. In effect, Old Queens shows what was lost to all-too-rapid, unplanned suburbanization left entirely in the greedy hands of the marketplace. Lack of urban planning and nonexistent historic preservation is the unspoken theme that resonates often in this book. Who wouldn't want to live in one of those handsome, tree-shaded, Victorian homes on the shady, Lefferts Boulevard in Richmond Hill, Jamaica, or Elmhurst? The question is academic, since none of these homes survived the Queens building boom of the early 20th century. Suppose Robert Moses had actually carried through plans to turn the Corona Dump/Flushing Meadow into an honest-to-goodness park with kinds of recreational facilities he lavished on his Long Island state parks? Suppose the city fathers (and local politicians) had taken a more custodial role and protected Jamaica Bay and it surrounding marshlands from pollution for descendants of the gentlemen angler shown pulling his crabpot out of a quiet channel in Meadowmere? While this reader would have liked to view a few photos from vanished communities, such as Ramblersville (Ozone Park), Black Stump (Fresh Meadows), or White Pot (Forest Hills), he believes that Seyfried and Asadorian have assembled a fascinating book that appears destined for the coffee table hall of fame, that is, if rabid readers don't tear it to shreds, first.

Queens usually takes third place to Manhattan and Brooklyn on NYC bookshelfs but this terrific photo collection will go a long way to remedy that. There's an enlightening introduction about the borough and wonderful photos/captions for 27 neighborhoods. My personal favorite is on pp.122-123, a jaw-dropping 1906 view of the strange junction of Jamaica Ave., Myrtle Ave. and Lefferts Blvd. in Richmond Hill. Today, this unique street pattern remains but, alas, the Triangle Hotel, later the Triangle Hofbrau, where the likes of Babe Ruth and Mae West imbibed, recently closed down. I've shown this book to a couple of former Queens people and they were amazed. Don't miss it if you're from Queens or have even a passing interest in urban history. Hopefully, the publisher is correcting a page-order problem in the beginning of the edition I purchased at a museum last summer, but don't let that hold you back. This is a real gem.

Dore, known perhaps best for his woodcuts of Dante's "Divine Comedy", was not only a fantastic illustrator, but a prolific one as well, producing scores of woodcuts for great literature, including "The Holy Bible" and "Orlando Furioso". Before there were movies, a person could look at these pictures for motion, excitement, and dramatic storytelling.
This is a necessary companion to "Paradise Lost", a great work in its own right. Dore's illustrations clarifies, vivifies, and expands on the reading experience. The pictures are brilliantly reproduced here at a small cost to the consumer. The book stands alone for great artwork and is worth the minimal price.

It is amazing how such complex woodcuts could be done! Some of these are used in books. An example is the book cover illustration of the book "Raising Hell: A Concise History of the Black Arts and Those Who Dared Practice Them" (ISBN: 0399522387).

If you like to see high standard of woodcuts, get this book.

This is with out a doubt the best of Gustave's biblically inspired works. His mastery is proven by creating a visually stunning and poetic world of a time long ago but not forgotten. It's hard to remember what I used to imagine when I thought of the Garden of Eden or the descension of the fallen angels must've been like prior to reading this work.

Coherent and comprehensive, this "Elementary Real and Complex Analysis" is an emphatic introductory text, which will provide undergraduates with all the guides that they may need.
The presentation of this book is such that anybody who is taking Pure and/or Applied Mathematics course would value it. From Analysis Basics to Complex Functions, the authors of this book fulfilled every desire.
Worthy of mention is the way they simplified the rather complex Cauchy's Theorem. The same could be said of the chapters covering: Power Series Representations, Topology and Analysis in the Complex Plain, Holomorphic Functions, and Contour Integration.
Each topic that appeared in this book received accurate simplification. They are all object-oriented, and were designed to be of great use to self-learners.
Highly recommended!

I study math for 4 years, so I think that I'm able to say if this book is good or bad. This book is excelent. If I am not a teacher on high school, but I'm interesting in mathematical analysis, this is the book what I need. There is a lot of mathematic's basics, which are usefull in the later courses as Funkcional Analysis or P.D.E.

The book is one of the finest mathematics texts that I have ever read. That does'nt mean much because I'm 16 years old, and have only been studying advanced math for a little over a year. The treatment was basic enough for someone like me to understand. I strongly recommend it to college students and young people who are interested in mathematics.

After introducing concepts from set theory, the foundations of analysis, and the notion of a "mathematical structure," he gives a detailed presentation of limits and series. He also introduces elementary functions in terms of their functional equations. Then he covers differentiation and integration, first of real, and then of complex functions. He uses Taylor series to introduce ideas about complex functions.

In short, it is a good book for those who hope to become mathematicians, physicists, or engineers, and have had a few college math courses already.

Silverman's book is much clearer than other books on calculus that I have seen recently. Everything is concise and there is no extra "fluff". Some may wonder about some seemengly strange orderings in the book such as introducing the differential before introducing limits but this serves to help create an intuitive understanding of limits before explaining their mathematical meaning. Otherwise, the problems range from extremely simple to challenging. All of the problems are reachable by just having read the previous section and are not out of the reach of a careful reader. Most of the problems have solutions and / or hints at the back of the book. The book's title includes the word "applications" and the book indeed does contain them. After each chapter on a new topic, the following chapter contains applications. In addition, the last two chapters on differential equations and multi variable calculus are better than in most introductory books. Essential Calculus is suited for class study or for self study and should be accessable to all with high school mathematics under their belt.

I am a graduate student in computer science, and I've forgotten quite a bit of math from college. I picked up this book and made a point to read it over the summer and do as many problems as I could. It is a very "tight" book, in the sense that there is not a lot of fluff (hence the "essential" in the title). The book seemed to maintain a nice balance between too hard and too easy so that I was always challenged. It is a very good book for me, and has a sufficient level of rigor so that I feel like I get some practice in that area as well. I would highly recommend it to someone wishing to learn calculus. In addition, it's always nice to find an author you like, because it usually means other books by that author will be good. As a bonus, it has solutions (or hints) to all the exercises so you can check your progress.

It is awesome that I can find most of the important calculus theorems and their proofs in only 250 pages. The author really shows all the proof clearly. This book is much better than the calculus book that I am using in my class. It is definitely worth more than 10 bucks!

The remarkable English Romantic Poets - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats - remain among the favorite poets in the English language. This litte Dover edition, titled Favorite Poems, is a good introduction to much of Wordsworth's greatest poetry.

Wordworth's poetry is quite accessible to the modern reader. There is no need for extensive familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology, nor for knowledge of archaic poetic terms. Footnotes and a glossary are not required.

I have read these 39 poems comprising the Dover collection three or four times over the last few years. With each reading I find Wordsworth's questioning of man's relationship to nature and "what man has made of man" to be as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.

My favorites in this collection include:

Composed Upon Westminister Bridge Sept. 3, 1802 - Elegiac Stanzas - I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - In London, September 1802 - Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey - Lines Written in Early Spring - London, 1802 - Mutability - My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold - Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room - Nutting - Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic - Resolution and Independence - Scorn Not the Sonnet - She Dwelt Along the Untrodden Ways - The World is Too Much with Us, Late and Soon.

The other poems in this collection are:

The Affliction of Margaret - Anecdote for Fathers - Character of the Happy Warrior - Expostulation and Reply - Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg - I Traveled Among Unknown Men - The Idiot Boy - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge - Lucy Gray - November 1806 - Ode to Duty - The Pet Lamb - She Was a Phantom of Delight - A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal - The Solitary Reaper - Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known - Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland - Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower - To Sleep - To Toussaint L'Ouverture - We Are Seven.

For the reader looking for a more extensive collection of Wordsworth's poetry, explanatory notes, and some poetic criticism, I recommend the hardbound Everyman's Library "Selected Poems", edited by Damian Davies. ISBN 1-85715-245-X

Plenty of literary works to refer to. Great index. Great book for thrift shopping.

I was never much of a reader of poetry, until I discovered poetry on audio cassette. Hearing it spoken gives life to the written word. It's like watching and listening to Shakespeare rather than reading it ... the rhythm of the words come alive! It's how great poetry is meant to be appreciated.

The lead Amazon review, I think, is very much off the mark. Rossetti's works include passionate, idealized references to men, so it is doubtful she was a lesbian. Therefore Goblin Market was likely an outlet for the strong sexuality of a strong woman bound by the conventions of Victorian society. It has been speculated that Goblin Market, as a poetic work of Pre-Raphaelite fantasy fiction, was written with the expectation that its sexual symbolism would be recognized by readers. I disagree, and believe many Victorians took it as a cautionary allegory warning girls against the wiles of the "coarser gender". Until some literary scholar of the period or of Rossetti steps forward with definitive social or biographical information, I believe Victorian mothers may have read this work to young daughters, both blind to the innuendos and imagery. That said, whether Goblin Market's nuances were meant to be patent or subliminal, it stands as a classic of its literary type, and is an exquisite, sensuous and passionate poetical work.

Whether you happen to know the how's and why's of Christana Rossetti's life and time, her poetry, and especially Goblin Market, is truely amazing. Of course knowing her circumstanses only makes the joy and fascination even bigger for a comtemporary reader. The courage and the cost for a woman to be able to write what she wrote can only be imagined. She is the original Girl Power if ever there was such a thing and Goblin Market a legacy of its time.

I think Goblin Market was a wonderful book for whatever type of life you happen to live. Each and every poem can be interpereted in so many different ways to pertain to your own life. The poems were not meant to be taken literally word for word, and the religious aspects of the book do not necessarily need to be interpereted just as they are written. It is a book of poems written by a strong woman that was not afraid to show her feelings. I recommend it to anyone that enjoys poetry and has an open and thoughtful mind.

.....with a phenomenal price tag. If you are just curious about different types of poetry (as I am) or wish to learn specifically about Imagism, don't pass this one up!

This anthology contains more than 180 poems by the best known Imagists: James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, Richard Aldington, among about a dozen others. The reader experiences the full range of Imagist poetry.

Imagism, which had it's emergence in the 1910s, is distinct in that each poet is permitted to find his/her own rhythm without constraint, subjects are treated directly, the language is precise, adjectives are used sparingly, and there is little rhyming. In effect, Imagism, which was considered radical at the time, ultimately widened the definition of poetry written in English.

I found in reading this collection, that there were rhythms that I distinctly did and did not respond to. Thus, I found poets that I discovered I liked and responded to and others that clearly did not do the same for me. I always found the topics of each poem worthy, however. Few seemed frivilous, but rather centered on topics of love, religious worship, nature, death, among others that emphasized meaning that far transcended mere words. Particularly, if you enjoy original, detailed descriptions of our natural world, I think you'll respond to many of the poems contained in this anthology.

The one item I felt was lacking was that there was no bio for each poet. I would have liked a brief (paragraph or two) intro to each poet, particularly because several of the names were new to me. Otherwise, I'd have given the collection five stars.

In a brief, accessible, and inexpensive book, Bob Blaisdell and Dover Thrift have created a fine selection of poems from the "Imagist" movement which changed the direction of American and English poetry in the early 20th Century. The precise nature of "Imagism" has been much discussed. Some of the more famous, succinct forumlations of its creed were "Not ideas of the thing but the thing itself." and, simply, "make it new". Imagism wanted to turn away from late 19th Century poetry with what the new writers perceived as its sometimes stilted diction, involuted syntax, forced rhymes, and forced sentiment and return to the object, to a way of seeing things freshly through precise speech. In Bob Blaisdell's brief introduction to this book, he discusses the principles of Imagism as Richard Aldington, the first poet to appear in the collection, formulated them: 1.Direct treatment of the subject; 2.As few adjectives as possible; 3. A hardness as of cut stone; 4. Individuality of rhythm; 5. A whole lot of dont's; 6. The exact word.

W.C. Williams's poem "To a Solitary Disciple" (page 137 of the collection) offers a good poetic summation of imagist practice. It begins:

"Rather notice, mon cher,
that the moon is
tilted above
the point of the steeple
than that its color
is shell-pink.

Rather observe
that it is early morning
than that the sky
is smooth
as a turquoise"

The collection includes 180 poems by 17 poets. The selections were culled from the pages of the "little magazines" of poetry that presented works of the new movement between 1913 and 1922. The poets receiving the most space are, understandably enough, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and W.C. Williams.
It will be a joy to a reader coming to these poets for the first time. The book also includes many lesser known but important writers such as Richard Aldington, H.D. Amy Lowell, and others. Thus the book, short and accessible as it is, does not constitute simply a collection of favorites. It is a fine introduction to imagism and to the spirit of our modern age including both well-known and lesser-known figures.

This book can be enjoyed and savored simply for what it is -- an inexpensive collection of many of the poems illustrating the modernist temprament. As such, the book will offer many hours of reading and rereading. Equally important, the book could also serve as an introduction for those who want to learn more, to explore further the development of American or English poetry in the Twentieth Century.

Of all the movements in 20th century literature, Imagism is my favorite. If you're as sick as I am of angry, modern, "confessional" poets (yes, I'm sure your childhood was awful, now see a therapist and get on Prozac), then take a look at this collection. While some of the poems here are widely anthologized (including Wallace Steven's, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and William Carlos Williams's, "To Waken an Old Lady"), most haven't been seen except by literati. It's truly a shame, because one of the "rules" of the Imagist movement was clarity of prose and vision. Take this gem from Richard Aldington, for example: "The chimneys, rank on rank,/ Cut the clear sky;/ The moon/ With a rag of gauze about her loins/ Poses among them, an awkward Venus---/ And here I am looking wantonly at her/ Over the kitchen sink." Wow! The Imagist movement was about nature, and unexpected beauty; things we haven't seen much of in late 20th/early 21st century art. In my opinion, this affordable little book is worth ten times the cover price. "Confessional" poetry? If I want to read about child molestation or how awful the world is, I'll read the newspaper, thank you.

This book was used in my "Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations" class when I was a senior at Louisiana State. I found it to be one of the better texts in differential equations that I have come across. The first chapter is mainly the prerequisite calculus, then the next chapter jumps into first order equations. Then unlike most other books, he jumps straight into second order problems. the biggest plus in the book is the ready use of complex analysis throughout, something which most books avoid altogether, thus allowing the student to get only a partial understanding of the theory needed to solve more advanced problems. Answers are included at the back of the book, problems are clear and well-explained, and there are enough advanced topics covered later in the book (including celestial mechanics) to keep the course interesting for students of all kinds.

I took an undergraduate ordinary differential equations class and felt I grasped the subject quite well. I wanted an inexpensive text that I could review the subject with and I decided that I would give Coddington's book a try. I was really pleased with the order in which the text was presented which differed from the course I had taken. The author's seem to put things in a very logical order versus some texts I have seen which really confuse you by the order in which the subjects are presented. Another point that I have to make is the depth that the book has. I learned much more in reviewing this text than I ever did in any diff eq class. It shows the distinction between linear and non-linear diff eq's and covered many other methods which I had not learned previously. This is a great text as a "refresher" or as a course text. I just wish I would have previously used this text to learn ordinary differential equations.

This book is a holy bible for introduction to differential equations. It is easy to understand and the problems are quite challenging. Dr Coddington knows how to explain the material by systematically order(Easy to tough). His book is not easy to figure out if you just sit without paper,pen and think. But once you are understand his book, no one can teach you differential equations for undergarduate level. Other suggested reading are Theory of ordinary differential equations, Linear ordinary differential equations by Earl Coddington(Both of them), Ordinary Differential Equations by Fritz John,and Ordinary Differential Equations by Edward L Ince. Once the most important statement is: YOU KNOW DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON IN CODDINGTON'S AND FRITZ JOHN BOOKS.

If you need to read this for a college or high school class, or as part of a women's studies project that you are doing for some other purpose, then I'd like to assure you that it won't be all that painful. You may even enjoy it and wish that you'd found this book sooner, all on your own. I was only assigned to read parts of it, but I finished the book by choice.

It's interesting and well writen. Some of the language and nearly all of the issues that are brought up are inflamatory. In class discussions I compared the book to "Fight Club," and was nearly laughed out of the room, but I am at least partly serious. It does have the edge of a social visionary who wanted to shake things up and blow old fashioned society out of the water. No soap bombs, though, but that's only a technicality.

If you have any choice in the matter I would suggest that you choose this book over stuffier works by less forward thinkers. I swear that reading it won't hurt that badly.

It is interesting to teach this book and track how students respond to this book, and how differently male and female students respond to the issues Wollstonecraft raises and discusses. We contextualize the book, and then extract it from its time and place and try to place the issues in our own time and place. A lot of great questions can be raised as we contemplate how far we have and have not come, and what can or should be done about that. . .and who shall do it. It is also an arresting exercise to ask students to apply different literary theories as they discuss this text. The idea is to encourage them to step out of their own shoes and into someone else's as they consider these issues. And it gives great opportunity to ask students to try to separate themselves from their own assumptions and stereotypes about gender and gender behavior, and reassess the issues in Wollstonecraft's time and place, and in light of today's assumptions and stereotypes, which can be harder to quantify than some presume.

As I read this book, I find myself comparing the authors examples of the treatment of women by their fathers/husbands with the way women are today treated by the media.

Mary discusses how women are to be kept ignorant of all knowledge and only to be valued for their physical charms (almost every ad on TV/in print). The examples of her contemporaries that she quotes are frighteningly familiar.

Why is this so? Who determines that the education of females is not relevant to society. Sure they are allowed to go to school now, but they are still treated with amazing patronization and condescenscion? The amount of my (intelligent) female friends that insist they are dumb/ignorant/stupid/an idiot is disturbing. Maybe now females are allowed to learn, they should also be allowed self esteem.

I think I got sidetracked. This book is a complex and well written argument for the emancipation and education of women. It is as true today as much as it was 200 years ago. It is, however a slow read as the language is couched in the vocabulary of the late eighteenth century and many of the terms are unfamiliar.