Athens: Its Rise and Fall : With Views of the Literature, Philosophy, and Social Life of the Athenian People (New ed)

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 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. 2003 is the bicentenary of Bulwer Lytton's birth. To celebrate, Routledge is reissuing this influential work.

This new edition will include the text of a never-before published "third volume", recently discovered by Oxford academic Oswyn Murray.