Athens: Its Rise and Fall - With Views of the Literature, Philosophy, and Social Life of the Athenian People (Hardcover, Bicentenary)

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton was once Britain's most famous historical novelist, rivalling and outselling Dickens in his day. His best-known book was "The Last Days of Pompeii"; yet he was also responsible for a great work of history. "Athens: Its Rise and Fall", originally published in 1837, is one of the most important and readable of the Victorian histories of ancient Greece. It stands alongside Macauley and Carlyle as a great historical work of British Romanticism, and anticipates the thinking of George Grote and John Stuart Mill on Greek history by over a decade. Routledge is reissuing this influential work, as 2003 is the bicentenary of Bulwer-Lytton's birth. This new edition includes the text of a never-before published "third volume", recently discovered by Oxford academic, Oswyn Murray.