A first version of this work appeared in 2005 as a Preprint of the Collaborative Research Center "Geometrical Structures in Mathematics" at the University of Münster. Its aim was to offer a concise and self-contained 'lecture-style' introduction to the theory of classical rigid geometry established by John Tate, together with the formal algebraic geometry approach launched by Michel Raynaud. These Lectures are now viewed commonly as an ideal means of learning advanced rigid geometry, regardless of the reader's level of background. Despite its parsimonious style, the presentation illustrates a number of key facts even more extensively than any other previous work.
This Lecture Notes Volume is a revised and slightly expanded version of the original preprint and has been published at the suggestion of several experts in the field.
