(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley

The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Though James Joyce began thesestories of Dublin life in 1904 when he was twenty-two and completedthem in 1907, their unconventional themes and language led torepeated rejections by publishers and delayed publication until1914. In the century since, his story "The Dead" has come to beseen as one of the most powerful evocations of human loss andlonging that the English language possesses; all the other storiesin "Dubliners" are as beautifully turned and as greatly admired.They remind us once again that James Joyce was not only modernism'schief innovator but also one of its most intimate and poeticwriters. In this edition the text has been revised in keeping withJoyce's wishes, and the original versions of "The Sisters,""Eveline," and "After the Race" have been made available in anappendix, along with Joyce's suppressed preface to the 1914 editionof "Dubliners."

Among the few indispensable, common-property books upon whichWestern culture can be founded ... it is hardly too much to saythat these tales rank next to the Bible in importance. - W.H.Auden A wonderful collection of all 210 tales and popular legendscollected by the Grimm brothers over a century ago.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) In his first and still mostwidely read novel, James Joyce makes a strange peace with thetraditional narrative of a young man's self-discovery by respectingits substance while exploding its form, thereby inaugurating aliterary revolution. Published in 1916 when Joyce was al?ready atwork on "Ulysses," "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" isexactly what its title says and much more. In an exuberantlyin?ventive masterpiece of subjectivity, Joyce portrays his alterego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling throughreligious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awak?ening. In parta vivid picture of Joyce's own youthful evolution into one of thetwentieth century's greatest writers, it is also a moment in theintellectual history of an age.

Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his mostabiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as itunfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid thefierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottishhistory. When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties betweenthe warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family findsitself tragically divided. Stevenson’s remarkably vividcharacterizations create an acutely moving, psychologically complexwork; as Andrea Barrett points out in her Introduction, “Thebrothers’ characters, not the historical facts, shape thedrama.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes illustrationsreproduced from the original edition.

Introduction by Ron PowersIncludes Newly Commissioned EndnotesArguably the first major American novel to satirize the politicalmilieu of Washington, D.C. and the wild speculation schemes thatexploded across the nation in the years that followed the CivilWar, The Gilded Age gave this remarkable era its name. Co-writtenby Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, this rollicking novel isrife with unscrupulous politicians, colorful plutocrats, andblindly optimistic speculators caught up in a frenzy of romance,murder, and surefire deals gone bust. First published in 1873 andfilled with unforgettable characters such as the vaingloriousColonel Sellers and the ruthless Senator Dilsworthy, The Gilded Ageis a hilarious and instructive lesson in American history.

Portnoy's Complaint "n." after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] Adisorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses areperpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of aperverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism,voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful;as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neitherfantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but ratherin overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution,particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "ThePuzzled Penis," "Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse,"Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of thesymptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-childrelationship. With a new Afterword by the author for the 25thAnniversary edition.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From the acclaimed translators of"War and Peace," "Crime and Punishment," and "The BrothersKaramazov, "a brilliant translation of Nikolai Gogol's shortfiction. Collected here are Gogol's finest tales--stories thatcombine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant withthe sardonic social criticism of the city dweller--allowing readersto experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who pavedthe way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. All of Gogol's most memorablecreations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, thedowntrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of asplendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that adog can tell him everything he needs to know. The wholly uniqueblend of the mundane and the supernatural that Gogol craftedestablished his reputation as one of the most daring and inventivewriters of his time.

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has alwaystried to make the best books ever written available to the greatestnumber of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorialfeatures that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from thecrowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introductionto the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or hislife and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a conciseplot summary. All books published since 1993 have also beencompletely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarityand ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; avibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great textswith beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature mustbe Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers theseextensive materials at a price that competes with the mostinexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks havedurable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial an

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be amodel cou-ple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young childrenand a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too youngand started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. AndApril never saw herself as a housewife.Yet they have always livedon the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner.But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, RichardYates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritualbirthright, betraying not only each other, but their bestselves.

Seventeen interlinked tales by the winner of the 1988 NobelPrize for Literature follow such themes as betrayal, intrigue,obsessive love, social injustice, reincarnations, and wrongsrighted or made worse. Reprint. K.

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.

This is the story of an artist as an aging man, strugglingthrough the wreckage of Japan's World War II experience. Ishiguro'sfirst novel.

In 1867, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow completed the firstAmericantranslation of Inferno and thus introduced Dante's literarygenius to theNew World. In the Inferno, the spirit of the classicalpoet Virgil leadsDante through the nine circles of Hell on theinitial stage of his journeytoward Heaven. Along the way Danteencounters and describes in vividdetail the various types ofsinners in the throes of their eternal torment.HENRY WADSWORTHLONGFELLOW, American poet, educator, andlinguist, wrote many longnarrative poems, including The Song ofHiawatha, Evangeline, and TheCourtship of Miles Standish.MATTHEW PEARL is the author of thenovel The Dante Club, pub-lished by Random House, and is a graduateof Harvard University andYale Law School. In 1998 he won theprestigious Dante Prize fromthe Dante Society of America for hisscholarly work. He lives in Cam-bridge, Massachusetts. LINO PERTILE is a professor of Romance languages and literatureatHarvard University. He specializes in Dante and the Latin MiddleAges.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by CatherinePeters A panoramic satire of English society during the NapoleonicWars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's masterpiece. Atits center is one of the most unforgettable characters innineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, acharmingly ruthless social climber who is determined to leavebehind her humble origins, no matter the cost. Her more gentlefriend Amelia, by contrast, only cares for Captain George Osborne,despite his selfishness and her family's disapproval. As both womenmove within the flamboyant milieu of Regency England, the politicalturmoil of the era is matched by the scheming Becky's sensationalrise--and its unforeseen aftermath. Based in part upon Thackeray'sown love for the wife of a friend, Vanity Fair portrays thehypocrisy and corruption of high society and the dangers ofunrestrained ambition with epic brilliance and scathing wit.

Call them tran*s of dreams or deadly accurate maps of thetremor zones of the psyche, the seven stories in this collectionengage and implicate us in the most fearful ways imaginable. Atwo-timing pornographer becomes an unwilling object in thefantasies of one of his victims. A jaded millionaire buys himselfthe perfect mistress and plunges into a hell of jealousy anddespair. And in the course of a weekend with his teenage daughter,a guilt-ridden father discovers the depths of his own blunderinginnocence. At once chilling and beguiling, and written in prose oflacerating beauty, In Between the Sheets is a tour de force by oneof England's most acclaimed practitioners of literary unease.

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, AHouse for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired byNaipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentiethcentury's finest novels. In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fightingagainst destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only toface a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to anotherafter the drowning death of his father, for which he isinadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he cancall home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family onwhom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on anarduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him andpurchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy ofmanners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s questfor autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is anageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living aplacid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with hisfriend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to finedining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and adedication to the collection of antiques. When these relativesbecome aware of the true value of his art collection, however,their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls awayas they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man'sinheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion toCousin Bette, the darkly humorous "Cousin Pons" is among of thelast and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urbansociety: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing considerationof human nature.

A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminatingqualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewersall manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his archobservations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion,high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it,name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immenselyentertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of statusand taste -- with enviable results.