For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s finest writers and their works. Making available popular favourites as well as lesser-known books, the series has grown to 700 titles – from the 4,000 year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth-century’s greatest novels. Yet many of our readers first acquainted themselves with an Oxford World’s Classic as a child. In the below videos, Peter Hunt, who was responsible for setting up the first course in children’s literature in the UK, reintroduces us to The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, and Treasure Island.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Peter Hunt was the first specialist in Children’s Literature to be appointed full Professor of English in a British university. Peter Hunt has written or edited eighteen books on the subject of children’s literature, including An Introduction to Children’s Literature (OUP, 1994) and has edited Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island and The Secret Garden for Oxford World’s Classics.
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We’re celebrating World Theatre Day with an excerpt from Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece The Phantom of the Opera. A mysterious Phantom haunts the depths of the Paris Opera House where he has fallen passionately in love with the beautiful singer Christine Daaé. Under his guidance her singing rises to new heights and she is triumphantly acclaimed. But Christine is also loved by Raoul de Chagny, and by returning his love she makes the fiend she knows as the Angel of Music mad with jealousy. When the Phantom is finally unmasked, will Christine see beyond his hideous disfigurement?
Then they were outside, on the roof. Christine moved easily, with practised steps, as light as a swallow. They looked through the empty spaces between the three low domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed deeply as she gazed out over Paris which nestled in a valley grimly steeped in toil. She looked trustingly at Raoul, told him to come closer, and arm in arm they strolled along lead-paved streets and down iron avenues. They paraded their twin reflections in the great tanks of standing water where youngsters from the beginners’ class, a score of little boys, splash about and learn to swim in the summer months.
The shadow behind them, still dogging their steps, had emerged too, flattening itself against roofs, growing longer each time it flapped its black wings where iron roads met, skirting the cisterns, silently circling the domes. The hapless couple never suspected it was there when they sat down, feeling safe at last under the high protection of Apollo who raised his mighty bronze lyre to a sky filled with crimson fire.
They were enveloped in a blazing spring evening. Clouds which had just donned the sunset’s gift of gold and scarlet glided slowly overhead and trailed their diaphanous robes over the two young people. Christine said:
‘Soon, we’ll go much further and faster than clouds, to the end of the world, and then you can leave me, Raoul. But when the time comes for you to take me away and I refuse to go, swear, Raoul, that you will make me!’
Clinging anxiously to him, she uttered the words with an insistence that was directed against herself and they struck Raoul forcefully. ‘Why? Afraid you might change your mind, Christine?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head in an odd way. ‘He’s a devil!’
She shivered, groaned and nestled in his arms.
‘What I’m afraid of now is going back to live with him — under the earth!’
‘Why do you feel you have to go back?’
‘If I don’t go back to him, terrible things might happen!… But I can’t do it!… I really can’t!… I know we’re supposed to feel sorry for people unfortunate enough to have to live under ground… But he’s too horrible! Yet it will soon be time; I’ve just one day left, and if I don’t go to him he’ll come looking for me with his Voice. He’ll drag me down to his sanctuary, deep underground, and he’ll go down on his knees to me, with that skull instead of a head, and say he loves me and he’ll cry! Dear God, his tears, Raoul! His tears running from two black sockets! I couldn’t bear to see him cry again!’
She wrung her hands in anguish while Raoul, finding her despair contagious, held her close:
‘No! You shan’t hear him say he loves you! You shan’t see him shed those tears! Let’s go away!… Let’s run away, Christine, tonight!’
And he started to drag her away then and there.
But she stopped him.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head sadly, ‘it would be too cruel… Let him hear me sing once more tomorrow night, just one last time… and then we’ll go. Come for me in my dressing room tomorrow night, on the stroke of twelve. He’ll be waiting for me in the dining room by his lake… We shall be free and you shall take me away from here… even if I refuse
Meg Cabot (of Princess Diaries fame) is the author of over twenty-five series and books for both adults and teens. Her most recent book is the paranormal romance Insatiable, a modern sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Armed with the Oxford World Classics edition, she launched a Dracula reading group earlier this summer, and now–in an exclusive Q&A–shares her thoughts on all things vampire. Read on for the chance to test your Dracula knowledge and win prizes!
If you were bitten tomorrow, and had to choose a vampire name, what would it be?
Well, obviously, Meg Cadaver.
If someone attacked “Meg Cadaver” with a stake, and you only had Dracula to block the blow, would it work?
Absolutely. My super vampire strength, combined with the amazing power of Bram Stoker’s prose, would easily defeat their piddling human arm and wooden stake that was probably made by Ikea.
If Dracula had a Twitter handle, what would it be?
The possibilities are so endless . . .
Longinthetooth
Vampyvlad
Undeaddandy
CoffinCasanova
Although personally, I’d probably go with a simple 8U.
What is the most fascinating thing about vampires?
They never seem to die.
What is the most boring thing about vampires?
They never seem to die.
Who is the most ultimate, hard-core, awesome vampire of all time?
I feel compelled, because of the forum, to answer Dracula. But if you weren’t here I would answer Blade. I realize he’s a Daywalker, of course, but he has that awesome haircut.
Who is the sexiest vampire of all time?
Sadly for me it’s Michael Nourri circa 1979 as Dracula in “The Curse of Dracula” on the TV show “Cliffhangers,” which I wasn’t ever actually allowed to stay up to watch. Which is probably why, in my feverish imagination, it’s still the best. And now I never want to see it, as it could never live up to what I remember thinking, from the commercials: that it had to be the most fantastic show of all time. Considering it was canceled after only one season, I think this must be untrue. But you never know.
I’m upset that most modern vampires don’t wear cloaks. How do you feel about this?
I agree. In Insatiable, I gave my vampire a black Burberry trench coat, the tail of which flapped around a lot in the wind during moments of high tension, to give the impression of a cloak. But it’s definitely not the same thing. In my defense, the only way to give a vampire a cloak in a book set in modern times and not have him stand out like a big freak is to either make him be an eccentric bestselling author, have live him in the subway tunnels of NYC with the mole people, or have him work at a Medieval Times restaurant. None of these are particularly appealing options, especially the first.
