Walt Disney Animation Studios' Big Hero 6 is the story of Hiro Hamada, a brilliant robotics prodigy who must foil a criminal plot that threatens to destroy the fast-paced, high-tech city of San Fransokyo. This new title in our popular The Art of series, published to coincide with the movie's U.S. release, features concept art from the film's creation—including sketches, storyboards, maquette sculpts, colorscripts, and much more—illuminated by quotes and interviews with the film's creators. Fans will love the behind-the-scenes insights into Disney's newest action comedy adventure.Copyright ?2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

From an adventurous balloon ride above the clouds to a monster-filled metropolis, Academy Award(R)-winning director Pete Docter ("e;Monsters, Inc.,"e; "e;Up"e;) has taken audiences to unique and imaginative places. In Disney*;Pixar's original movie "e; Inside Out,"e; he will take us to the most extraordinary location of allinside the mind.Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness. The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley's mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley's main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.In this groundbreaking and illuminating film, Pixar Animation Studios examines the extraordinary depths of the mind and the powers of emotion and imagination. The Art of Inside Out provides an exclusive look into the artistic exploration that went into the making of this vibrant film. Featuring concept artincluding sketches, collages, color scripts, and much moreand opening with a foreword by actress Amy Poehler and introduction by the film's writer and director Pete Docter, this is the ultimate behind-the-scenes experience of the making of this landmark film.Copyright 2015 Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar. All rights reserved.

In Movie Title Typos, artist Austin Light removes just one letter from a well-known movie title to inspire a surprising and hilarious visual scenario. There's Obocop (a robotic police officer works through his PTSD by playing smooth jazz), T. (a boy meets a jewelry-clad alien who pities fools), Harry Otter, The Princess and the Fro, Finding Emo, Pup Fiction, and many more. A massive viral hit when he first posted sketches of the work online (1.2 million hits in the first 6 hours), Light has created new full-color illustrations for all, with the majority of the book's content never before seen on the Web. Here is a parallel universe glimpse at could-have-been films possibly betterdefinitely funnierthan the originals.

True Blood, HBO's blockbuster paranormal drama, enthralls a diverse audience of 13 million viewers (and counting). Menus at the now famous Fangtasia and Merlotte's Bar and Grill play a key role in the series, providing sustenance for its human characters, evoking memories of a bygone life for its vampires, and serving as a powerful symbol for the desires and carnal needs the characters harbor. It's no wonder so many fans revel in at home parties inspired by the food on the series! With recipes from unforgettable scenes, each entertainingly introduced by True Blood's most compelling characters, these 85 authentic bayou country recipes and 150 plus photos from the series give fans a big taste of Bon Temps.

Graphic design guru Tim Leong presents Star Wars trivia in an all-new waythrough playful pie charts, bar graphs, and other data-driven infographics. From a Venn diagram of Yoda's idiosyncrasies to an organizational chart of the Empire to a line graph of Grand Moff Tarkin's management decisions, Star Wars Super Graphic shines a new light on the much-adored universe. Equal parts playful and informative, this visual love letter to the vast Star Wars universe will enchant fans of all ages. and TM Lucasfilm Ltd. Used Under Authorization

Jedi apprentices and little princesses will delight in this (heart)felt retelling of the Star Wars saga. And so will Star Wars fans of any age! The series launches with the original trilogy, and every word counts in these small but perfectly formed yarns. That's because each volume features 12 iconic scenes, handcrafted in felt and pithily summarized in just a single word. The attention to detail is eye-opening; the proportions are just-right for small hands; the fun is guaranteed. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke meets his teacher Yoda, Han Solo makes a friend, and there is a lightsaber duel with a Sith Lord in the dark. and TM Lucasfilm Ltd. Used Under Authorization

From Pixar Animation Studios, the Academy Awardwinning studio that brought us such blockbusters as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo, comes The Incredibles, a hilarious, action-packed story of a family of superheroes living an underground suburban existence. The sleekly designed settings and characters were conceptualized and developed by writer/director Brad Bird and Pixar's creative team of artists, illustrators, and designers, resulting in a celluloid sensation rich with detail. The Art of The Incredibles celebrates their talent, featuring concept and character sketches, storyboards, and lighting studies, and invites readers into the elaborate creative process of animation through interviews with all the key players at Pixar.

In Walt Disney Animation Studios upcoming film, Frozen, the fearless optimist Anna sets off on an epic journeyteaming up with rugged mountain man Kristoffto find her sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. Encountering Everest-like conditions, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom. The Art of Frozen features concept art from the making of the filmincluding character studies and sculpts, color scripts, storyboards, and morealongside interviews with the film's artists about the making of this comedy-adventure. Disney

John Marston was born to John and Maria Marston nee Guarsi, and baptised on October 7th, 1576 at Wardington, Oxfordshire.Marston entered Brasenose College, Oxford in 1592 and earned his BA in 1594. By 1595, he was in London, living in the Middle Temple. His interests were in poetry and play writing, although his father's will of 1599 hopes that he would not further pursue such vanities.His brief career in literature began with the fashionable genres of erotic epyllion and satire; erotic plays for boy actors to be performed before educated young men and members of the inns of court.In 1598, he published 'The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certaine Satyres', a book of poetry. He also published 'The Scourge of Villanie', in 1598. 'Histriomastix' regarded as his first play was produced 1599. It's performance kicked off an episode in literary history known as the War of the Theatres; a literary feud between Marston, Jonson and Dekker that lasted until 1602.However, the playwrights were later reconciled; Marston wrote a prefatory poem for Jonson's 'Sejanus' in 1605 and dedicated 'The Malcontent' to him. Beyond this episode Marston's career continued to gather both strength, assets and followers. In 1603, he became a shareholder in the Children of Blackfriars company. He wrote and produced two plays with the company. The first was 'The Malcontent' in 1603, his most famous play. His second was 'The Dutch Courtesan', a satire on lust and hypocrisy, in 1604-5.In 1605, he worked with George Chapman and Ben Jonson on 'Eastward Ho', a satire of popular taste and the vain imaginings of wealth to be found in the colony of Virginia.Marston took the theatre world by surprise when he gave up writing plays in 1609 at the age of thirty-three. He sold his shares in the company of Blackfriars. His departure from the literary scene may have been because of further offence he gave to the king. The king suspended performances at Blackfriars and had Marston imprisoned.On 24th September 1609 he was made a deacon and them a priest on 24th December 1609. In October 1616, Marston was assigned the living of Christchurch, Hampshire.He died (accounts vary) on either the 24th or 25th June 1634 in London and was buried in the Middle Temple Church.

For many of us DH Lawrence was a schoolboy hero. Who can forget sniggering in class at the mention of Women In Love or Lady Chatterley's Lover? Lawrence was a talented if nomadic writer whose novels were passionately received, suppressed at times and generally at odds with Establishment values. This of course did not deter him. At his death in 1930 at the young age of 44 he was more often thought of as a pornographer but in the ensuing years he has come to be more rightly regarded as one of the most imaginative writers these shores have produced. As well as his novels and of course his poetry - he wrote in excess of 800 of them he was also a very talented playwright. These works have not been given quite the attention they deserve. Here we publish 'The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd.

The partnership between William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan and their canon of Savoy Operas is rightly lauded by all lovers of comic opera the world over. Gilbert's sharp, funny words and Sullivan's deliciously lively and hummable tunes create a world that is distinctly British in view but has the world as its audience. Both men were exceptionally talented and gifted in their own right and wrote much, often with other partners, that still stands the test of time. However, together as a team they created Light or Comic Operas of a standard that have had no rivals equal to their standard, before or since. That's quite an achievement. To be recognised by the critics is one thing but their commercial success was incredible. The profits were astronomical, allowing for the building of their own purpose built theatre - The Savoy Theatre. Beginning with the first of their fourteen collaborations, Thespis in 1871 and travelling through many classics including The Sorcerer (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885), The Gondoliers (1889) to their finale in 1896 with The Grand Duke, Gilbert & Sullivan created a legacy that is constantly revived and admired in theatres and other media to this very day.

John Webster is known primarily for his two Jacobean tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil. Much of the detail and chronology of his life that led to these two pivotal works is, however, unknown. His father, a carriage maker also named John Webster, married a blacksmith's daughter, Elizabeth Coates, on November 4th, 1577, and it is likely that Webster was born within a year or two in or near London. The family lived in St. Sepulchre's parish. Both his father and his uncle, Edward Webster, were Freemen of the Merchant Taylors' Company and Webster attended Merchant Taylors' School in Suffolk Lane, London. Some accounts say he began to study law but nothing is certain although there are some legal aspects to his later works to suggest this may have been so. By 1602, Webster was employed working as part of various teams of playwrights on history plays, though unfortunately most were never printed and therefore do not survive. These include a tragedy Caesar's Fall (written with Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Anthony Munday), and a collaboration with Thomas Dekker; Christmas Comes but Once a Year (1602). This factory line assembly of plays may seem rather odd to us today but plays then ran for much shorter durations and consequently a steady supply had to be assured. Webster's relationship with Dekker seems to have been a good one. Together they wrote Sir Thomas Wyatt, printed in 1607, although it is thought first performed in 1602 and two city comedies, Westward Ho! in 1604 and Northward Ho! in 1605. It seems Webster also adapted, in 1604, John Marston's The Malcontent for staging by the King's Men. On March 18th, 1606 Webster married the 17-year-old Sara Peniall at St Mary's Church, Islington. Sara was 7 months pregnant and marrying during Lent required the issuing of a special permit, hence the certainty of the date. Their first child, John, was baptised at the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West on March 8th, 1606. Records show that on the death of a neighbour, who died in 1617, several bequests were made to the Webster family and it is therefore thought that other children were born to the couple. Despite his ability to write comedy, and to collaborate with others, Webster is remembered best for his sole authorship on two brooding English tragedies based on Italian sources. The White Devil, retells the intrigues involving Vittoria Accoramboni, an Italian woman assassinated at the age of 28. It was performed at the open-air Red Bull Theatre in 1612 but was unsuccessful, perhaps being too high brow for a working-class audience. In 1614 The Duchess of Malfi was first performed by the King's Men, most probably in the indoor Blackfriars Theatre and to a more high-brow audience. It proved to be more successful. The play Guise, based on French history, was also written but him but no text has survived. Webster wrote one more play on his own: The Devil's Law Case (c. 1617-1619), a tragicomedy. He continued to write thereafter but always in collaboration and usually city comedies; Anything for a Quiet Life (c. 1621), with Thomas Middleton, and A Cure for a Cuckold (c. 1624), with William Rowley. In 1624, he also co-wrote a topical play about a recent scandal, Keep the Widow Waking (with John Ford, Rowley and Dekker). The play itself is lost, although its plot is known from a court case. There is also some certainty that he contributed to the tragicomedy The Fair Maid of the Inn with John Fletcher, John Ford, and Phillip Massinger. His Appius and Virginia, was probably written with Thomas Heywood, and is of uncertain date. It is believed, mainly from Thomas Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (licensed 7 November 1634) that speaks of him in the past tense that John Webster had died at some point in that year of 1634.

Publius Terentius Afer is better known to us as the Roman playwright, Terence.Much of his life, especially the early part, is either unknown or has conflicting sources and accounts.His birth date is said to be either 185 BC or a decade earlier: 195 BC. His place of birth is variously listed as in, or, near Carthage, or, in Greek Italy to a woman taken to Carthage as a slave. It is suggested that he lived in the territory of the Libyan tribe that the Romans called Afri, near Carthage, before being brought to Rome as a slave. Probability suggests that it was there, in North Africa, several decades after the destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC, at the end of the Punic Wars, that Terence spent his early years.One reliable fact is that he was sold to P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, who had him educated and, impressed by his literary talents, freed him.These writing talents were to ensure his legacy as a playwright down through the millennia. His comedies, partially adapted from Greek plays of the late phases of Attic Comedy, were performed for the first time around 170-160 BC. All six of the plays he has known to have written have survived.Indeed, thanks to his simple conversational Latin, which was both entertaining and direct, Terence's works were heavily used by monasteries and convents during the Middle Ages and The Renaissance. Scribes often learned Latin through the copious copying of Terence's texts. Priests and nuns often learned to speak Latin through re-enactment of Terence's plays. Although his plays often dealt with pagan material, the quality and distinction of his language promoted the copying and preserving of his text by the church. This preservation enabled his work to influence a wide spectrum of later Western drama.When he was 25 (or 35 depending on which year of birth you ascribe too), Terence travelled to Greece but never returned. It has long been assumed that he died at some point during the journey.Of his own family nothing is known, except that he fathered a daughter and left a small but valuable estate just outside Rome.His most famous quotation reads: "e;Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto"e;, or "e;I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."e;

Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset on April 22nd 1707. His early years were spent on his parents' farm in Dorset before being educated at Eton.An early romance ended disastrously and with it his removal to London and the beginnings of a glittering literary career; he published his first play, at age 21, in 1728.He was prolific, sometimes writing six plays a year, but he did like to poke fun at the authorities. His plays were thought to be the final straw for the authorities in their attempts to bring in a new law. In 1737 The Theatrical Licensing Act was passed. At a stroke political satire was almost impossible. Fielding was rendered mute. Any playwright who was viewed with suspicion by the Government now found an audience difficult to find and therefore Theatre owners now toed the Government line.Fielding was practical with the circumstances and ironically stopped writing to once again take up his career in the practice of law and became a barrister after studying at Middle Temple. By this time he had married Charlotte Craddock, his first wife, and they would go on to have five children. Charlotte died in 1744 but was immortalised as the heroine in both Tom Jones and Amelia.Fielding was put out by the success of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. His reaction was to spur him into writing a novel. In 1741 his first novel was published; the successful Shamela, an anonymous parody of Richardson's novel.Undoubtedly the masterpiece of Fielding's career was the novel Tom Jones, published in 1749. It is a wonderfully and carefully constructed picaresque novel following the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.Fielding was a consistent anti-Jacobite and a keen supporter of the Church of England. This led to him now being richly rewarded with the position of London's Chief Magistrate. Fielding continued to write and his career both literary and professional continued to climb.In 1749 he joined with his younger half-brother John, to help found what was the nascent forerunner to a London police force, the Bow Street Runners. Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice in the 1750s unfortunately coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health. Such was his decline that in the summer of 1754 he travelled, with Mary and his daughter, to Portugal in search of a cure. Gout, asthma, dropsy and other afflictions forced him to use crutches. His health continued to fail alarmingly.Henry Fielding died in Lisbon two months later on October 8th, 1754.

Lorna Doone is a romance that tells the story of a seventeenth-century successful farmer, John Ridd, whose father is killed by the Doones, a clan of unruly brigands living in the wilderness. When John once accidently ventures into the clan's area, he meets the beautiful Lorna and falls in love with her. In order to rescue his beloved from the life that she hates, he has to go through a long and violent struggle with his rival Carver Doone who also claims Lorna's hand. He eventually succeeds in helping her escape from the clan to his family's home which is later attacked by Carver. Later, a family friend reveals to them that Lorna does not really belong to the Doone clan and that she was kidnapped after a raid during which her noble and extremely wealthy mother was murdered. As an heiress to her mother's fortunes, Lorna is now legally asked to leave for London and become her great-uncle's ward. Political upheaval shakes the whole kingdom and John is arrested for false accusations. After being brought to London and absolved from guilt, he meets Lorna who is still in love with him. Lorna is eventually allowed to go back to the country and marry John. In the midst of their wedding ceremony, Carver suddenly enters the church and hits Lorna. John follows him and they engage in a fight that ends in Carver's death.

As can be easily understood presenting an exact chronicle of the facts in the life of a 16th Century playwright is often difficult. Thomas Lodge is no exception. Thomas Lodge, born around 1558 in west Ham, was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, the Lord Mayor of London, and his third wife Anne. Lodge was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and thence to Trinity College, Oxford; taking his BA in 1577 and his MA in 1581. Lodge, disregarded his parents career wishes in order to take up literature. When the penitent Stephen Gosson published his Schoole of Abuse in 1579, Lodge responded with Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580). His pamphlet was banned, but appears to have been circulated privately. Already in 1580 Lodge had published a volume of poems entitled Scillaes Metamorphosis, Enterlaced with the Unfortunate Love of Glaucus, also more briefly known as Glaucus and Scilla. Lodge seems to have married his first wife Joan in or shortly before 1583, when, "e;impressed with the uncertainty of human life"e;, he made a will. That his family viewed his conduct at the time with disdain may be noted by the absence of his name from his father's will in 1583. The marriage of Lodge and Joan produced a daughter, Mary. However, without an income from his family Lodge would have to provide it by other means. The debate in pamphlets between Lodge and Gosson continued with Gosson's Playes Confuted in Five Actions; and Lodge retorting with his Alarum Against Usurers (1585)-a "e;tract for the times"e;. That same year, 1585, he produced his first tale written in prose and verse, The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria. Lodge appears to have been at sea on a number of long voyages. Usually these are described as 'freebooting voyages', an interchangeable term also used for piracy and plunder. Many nations endorsed these tactics and it seems fairly safe to suggest that these voyages were a source of revenue which would keep Joan and Mary with their heads above water. These long voyages also provided something else that Lodge would have been keen to gather and usefully use; time. During the expedition to Terceira and the Canaries (around 1586), to set aside the tedium of his voyage, Lodge composed his prose tale of Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, which, printed in 1590, would later be used by Shakespeare as the basis for As You Like It. Before starting on his next voyage, this time to South America, Lodge published a historical romance, The History of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil; and he left behind him for publication Catharos Diogenes in his Singularity, a discourse on the immorality of Athens (London). Both appeared in 1591. By now Lodge was on a voyage with Thomas Cavendish to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan and would only be able to return home in 1593. Whilst he was travelling another romance in the manner of Lyly, Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences, appeared in 1592. At either end of this voyage Lodge appears to have worked on some dramas, most notably with Robert Greene. It is thought that in 1590, together with Greene, he wrote A Looking Glass for London and England (published 1594). He had already written The Wounds of Civil War (produced perhaps as early as 1587, and published in 1594, and put on as a play reading at the Globe Theatre on 7 February 1606), a good second-rate piece in the half-chronicle fashion of its age. His second historical romance, the Life and Death of William Longbeard (1593), was more successful than the first. Lodge also brought back with him from the new world voyage A Margarite of America (published 1596), a romance between a Peruvian prince and a daughter of the king of Muscovy interspersed with many lyrics. The composition of Phillis, a volume and an early sonnet cycle sequence (an increasingly popular format in Elizabethan times), was published with the narrative poem, The Complaynte of Elsired, in 1593. A Fig for Momus was published in 1595 and gained him the accolade of being the earliest English satirist. This work contains eclogues addressed to Daniel and others as well as an epistle addressed to Michael Drayton. In the latter part of his life-possibly about 1596, when he published his Wits Miserie and the World's Madnesse, which is dated from Low Leyton in Essex, and the religious tract Prosopopeia (if, as seems probable, it was his), in which he repents of his "e;lewd lines"e; of other days-he became a Catholic and engaged in the practice of medicine, for which Wood says he qualified himself by a degree at Avignon, in France, in 1600. Two years later he received the degree of M.D. from Oxford University. Early in 1606 he seems to have left England, to escape the persecution then directed against the Catholics; and a letter from him dated 1610 thanks the English ambassador in Paris for enabling him to return in safety. At some point in his later life Lodge appears to have married again. T

Heartbreak House is a play written by George Bernard Shaw one of the truly great literary figures of our age. First published in 1919 and first played at the New York's Garrick Theatre in 1920. It is not often performed due to its complex structure. Based around a dinner party it's a mixture of farce, social manners and British Society's sad decline with their indifferent self-indulgent attitude. As the play progresses Shaw reveals each character as somewhat different to their starting position.

James Shirley was born in London in September 1596. His education was through a collection of England's finest establishments: Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in approximately 1618. He first published in 1618, a poem entitled Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers. As with many artists of this period full details of his life and career are not recorded. Sources say that after graduating he became "e;a minister of God's word in or near St Albans."e; A conversion to the Catholic faith enabled him to become master of St Albans School from 1623-25. He wrote his first play, Love Tricks, or the School of Complement, which was licensed on February 10th, 1625. From the given date it would seem he wrote this whilst at St Albans but, after its production, he moved to London and to live in Gray's Inn. For the next two decades, he would write prolifically and with great quality, across a spectrum of thirty plays; through tragedies and comedies to tragicomedies as well as several books of poetry. Unfortunately, his talents were left to wither when Parliament passed the Puritan edict in 1642, forbidding all stage plays and closing the theatres. Most of his early plays were performed by Queen Henrietta's Men, the acting company for which Shirley was engaged as house dramatist. Shirley's sympathies lay with the King in battles with Parliament and he received marks of special favor from the Queen. He made a bitter attack on William Prynne, who had attacked the stage in Histriomastix, and, when in 1634 a special masque was presented at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court as a practical reply to Prynne, Shirley wrote the text-The Triumph of Peace. Shirley spent the years 1636 to 1640 in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Kildare. Several of his plays were produced by his friend John Ogilby in Dublin in the first ever constructed Irish theatre; The Werburgh Street Theatre. During his years in Dublin he wrote The Doubtful Heir, The Royal Master, The Constant Maid, and St. Patrick for Ireland. In his absence from London, Queen Henrietta's Men sold off a dozen of his plays to the stationers, who naturally, enough published them. When Shirley returned to London in 1640, he finished with the Queen Henrietta's company and his final plays in London were acted by the King's Men. On the outbreak of the English Civil War Shirley served with the Earl of Newcastle. However when the King's fortunes began to decline he returned to London. There his friend Thomas Stanley gave him help and thereafter Shirley supported himself in the main by teaching and publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth. In addition to these he published during the period of dramatic eclipse four small volumes of poems and plays, in 1646, 1653, 1655, and 1659. It is said that he was "e;a drudge"e; for John Ogilby in his translations of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, and survived into the reign of Charles II, but, though some of his comedies were revived, his days as a playwright were over. His death, at age seventy, along with that of his wife, in 1666, is described as one of fright and exposure due to the Great Fire of London which had raged through parts of London from September 2nd to the 5th. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields, in London, on October 29th, 1666.

Euripides is rightly lauded as one of the great dramatists of all time. In his lifetime, he wrote over 90 plays and although only 18 have survived they reveal the scope and reach of his genius. Euripides is identified with many theatrical innovations that have influenced drama all the way down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. As would be expected from a life lived 2,500 years ago, details of it are few and far between. Accounts of his life, written down the ages, do exist but whether much is reliable or surmised is open to debate. Most accounts agree that he was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, to mother Cleito and father Mnesarchus, a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. Upon the receipt of an oracle saying that his son was fated to win "e;crowns of victory"e;, Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. However, what is clear is that athletics was not to be the way to win crowns of victory. Euripides had been lucky enough to have been born in the era as the other two masters of Greek Tragedy; Sophocles and schylus. It was in their footsteps that he was destined to follow. His first play was performed some thirteen years after the first of Socrates plays and a mere three years after schylus had written his classic The Oristria. Theatre was becoming a very important part of the Greek culture. The Dionysia, held annually, was the most important festival of theatre and second only to the fore-runner of the Olympic games, the Panathenia, held every four years, in appeal. Euripides first competed in the City Dionysia, in 455 BC, one year after the death of schylus, and, incredibly, it was not until 441 BC that he won first prize. His final competition in Athens was in 408 BC. The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were performed after his death in 405 BC and first prize was awarded posthumously. Altogether his plays won first prize only five times. Euripides was also a great lyric poet. In Medea, for example, he composed for his city, Athens, "e;the noblest of her songs of praise"e;. His lyric skills however are not just confined to individual poems: "e;A play of Euripides is a musical whole....one song echoes motifs from the preceding song, while introducing new ones."e; Much of his life and his whole career coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece but he didn't live to see the final defeat of his city. Euripides fell out of favour with his fellow Athenian citizens and retired to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, who treated him with consideration and affection. At his death, in around 406BC, he was mourned by the king, who, refusing the request of the Athenians that his remains be carried back to the Greek city, buried him with much splendor within his own dominions. His tomb was placed at the confluence of two streams, near Arethusa in Macedonia, and a cenotaph was built to his memory on the road from Athens towards the Piraeus.

Sense and Sensibility (1811) is Jane Austen's first published novel. It is a book about love and romance that follows the life of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. When their father dies and his property goes to his son and first wife, the Dashwood sisters move with their family to live in a modest cottage in Devonshire where start their romantic adventures and heartbreaks. The cottage belongs to their mother's cousin Sir John Middleton who welcomes them and presents them to his family and friends. One of John's friends, Colonel Brandon, soon falls in love with Marianne, yet the latter finds him unattractive and too old for her age. She later meets the philandering John Willoughby and becomes interested in him to be drowned in grief when he leaves to do business in London. As for Elinor, she develops a relationship with Edward Ferrars before they move to Devonshire. When the two sisters are disappointed by their lovers who go with other women, the novel depicts the different ways they react as well as their wavering between passion and reason. By the end of the novel, Edward comes to mend his relationship with Elinor and marries her while Marianne marries Colonel Brandon. We've also included a concise and informative biography of Jane's works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois. His early career was unremarkable. After failing to enter West Point he enlisted in the 7th Calvary but was discharged after heart problems were diagnosed. A series of short term jobs gave no indication as to a career path but finally, in 1911, married and with two young children, he turned his hand to writing. He aimed his works squarely at the very popular pulp serial magazines. His first effort 'Under The Moons Of Mars' ran in Munsey's Magazine in 1912 under the pseudonym Norman Bean. With its success he began writing full time. A continuing theme of his work was to develop series so that each character had ample opportunities to return in sequels. John Carter was in the Mars series and there was another on Venus and one on Pellucidar among others. But perhaps the best known is Tarzan. Indeed Burroughs wanted so much to capitalise upon the brand that he introduced a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. He purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "e;Tarzana."e; The surrounding communities outside the ranch voted in 1927 to adopt the name as their own. By 1932 Burroughs set up his own company to print his own books. Here we publish the seventh in the Tarzan series 'Tarzan the Untamed'. Another cultural classic.