"American writing, before and after Dreiser's time, differedalmost as much as biology before and after Darwin," said H. L.Mencken. Sister Carrie, Dreiser's great first novel, transformedthe conventional "fallen woman" story into a bold and trulyinnovative piece of fiction when it appeared in 1900. Na?ve youngCaroline Meeber, a small-town girl seduced by the lure of themodern city, becomes the mistress of a traveling salesman and thenof a saloon manager, who elopes with her to New York. Both itssubject matter and Dreiser's unsparing, nonjudgmental approach madeSister Carrie a controversial book in its time, and the workretains the power to shock readers today.

From Library Journal The published editions of Women in Love , probably Lawrence'sgreatest novel, have always been remarkably corrupt due to alengthy, complex process of revision and tran*ion, athreatened libel suit, and numerous unauthorized bowdlerizations.The editors of this new Cambridge Edition have labored scrupulouslyto produce an authoritative text. What emerges, if not dramaticallydifferent, is fresher and more immediate. The introduction providesa valuable history of the novel's composition, revision,publication, and reception, and though the elaborate textualapparatus is strictly for advanced students of bibliography, thenotes are splendid. Lawrence's 1919 Foreword and two earlydiscarded chapters are also included. The recovery of a modernclassic. Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro Download De*ion Privately printed in 1920 and published commercially in 1921,Women in Love is the novel Lawrence himself considered hismasterpiece. Set in the English Midla

With their call for "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity ," forself-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of HenryDavid Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical worksin all American literature. The selections in this volume representThoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are "Walden," hisindisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments fornonconformity, "Civil Disobedience" and "Life Without Principle." Alifetime of brilliant observation of nature--and of himself--isrecorded in selections from "A Week On The Concord And MerrimackRivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods" and "The Journal."

"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all elseperished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly,I "am" Heathcliff He's always, always in my mind: not as apleasure... but as my own being." "Wuthering Heights" is the onlynovel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, atthe age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that isstronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysicalpassion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, arepowerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, ithas become a classic of English literature.