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.