Oxford English texts

The main object of this edition is to establish the text of The temple by providing a more complete and more accurate collection of the evidence than has been hitherto available.

Donne's earliest prose works, 'Paradoxes and Problems', were probably begun during his days as a student at Lincoln's Inn. These witty and insouciant paradoxes defend such topics as women's inconstancy.

Sir John Suckling was an English poet and one prominent figure among those renowned for careless gaiety, wit, and all the accomplishments of a Cavalier poet. This is a collection of his non-dramatic works.

'Mr Wycherley is universally allowed the first place among the English comic poets who have writ since Ben Jonson. His Plain-Dealer is the best comedy that ever was composed in any language.' Yet in spite of the extreme praise many of his contemporaries accorded to his work, William Wycherley (1641-1715) is now only remembered for one play, The Country Wife. Even though The Country Wife is frequently performed by both amateur and professional companies (including a production at the National Theatre in 1977), Wycherley's three other plays, Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master and The Plain-Dealer, are rarely read and even more rarely performed. But Wycherley's satire is as sharp now as ever and his revelation of the follies and crimes of his society is still both wickedly funny and savagely perceptive.