Jane Austen chronicles the subtleties and nuances of- and theaspirations and machinations at work in - her own social milieu.Through the stories of her spirited heroines and their circles,their interactions and rituals, their movements from ballrooms todrawing rooms, from London and Bath to parklands and gardens, sherecreates the life of The English gentry that she observed in thelate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Each of her novels is a love story and a story about marriage -marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. Butthey are not romances; ironic, comic, wise and penetrating, theyare brilliant portrayals of the society Jane Austen knew.

(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."

This complete collection includes all the published stories ofEudora Welty. There are forty-one stories in all, including theearlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The GoldenApples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previouslyuncollected stories. With a Preface written by the Authorespecially for this edition.

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of thefinest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was firstpublished by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence andthen assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman'sLibrary edition includes, for the first time, the previouslyunpublished "Chapter 16"--the most significant unpublished piece ofwriting by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate--whichprovided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilizedfamily, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror,education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. TheNabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a lifeimmersed in politics and literature on splendid country estatesuntil their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when theauthor was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes avanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Naguib Mahfouz's magnificentepic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for thefirst time. The Nobel Prize--winning writer's masterwork is theengrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain'soccupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.The novels of "The Cairo Trilogy" trace three generations of thefamily of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, whorules his household with a strict hand while living a secret lifeof self-indulgence. "Palace Walk" introduces us to his gentle,oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija,and his three sons-the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolutehedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal.Al-Sayyid Ahmad's rebellious children struggle to move beyond hisdomination in "Palace of Desire," as the world around them opens tothe currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoilbrought by the 1920s. "Sugar Street" brings Mahfouz's vividtapestr

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems which are nowgenerally regarded as Shakespeare's, excluding the Sonnets. Itcontains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and theTurtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. Theintroduction to the two long narrative poems examines their placewithin the classical and Renaissance European traditions, an issuewhich also applies to The Phoenix and the Turtle. John Roe analysesthe conditions in which the collection was produced, and weighs theevidence for and against Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover'sComplaint and the much-debated question of its genre. Hedemonstrates how in his management of formal tropes Shakespeare,like the best Elizabethans, fashions a living language out ofhandbook oratory. This updated edition contains a new introductorysection on recent critical interpretations and an updated readinglist.

This new collection of Sandburgs finest and most representativepoetry draws on all of his previous volumes and includes fourunpublished poems about Lincoln. The Hendricks comprehensiveintroduction discusses how Sandburgs life and beliefs colored hiswork and why it continues to resonate so deeply with americanstoday. Edited and with an Introduction by George and WilleneHendrick.

Women In Love, the book Lawrence considered his best, waswritten during World War I, and while that conflict is nevermentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurkingcatastrophe, continually informs its drama of two couplesdynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other,and with life's intractable limitations. Lawrence was a powerful,prophetic writer, but in addition he brought such delicacy to histreatment of the human and natural worlds that E. M. Forster'sclaim that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of ourgeneration does him too little justice rather than too much.

Introduction by David Ellis The struggle for power at theheart of a family in conflict, the mysteries of sexual initiation,and the pain of irretrievable loss are the universal motifs withwhich D. H. Lawrence fashions one of the world's most originalautobiographical novels. Gertrude Morel is a refined woman whomarried beneath her and has come to loathe her brutal,working-class husband. She focuses her passion instead on her twosons, who return her love and despise their father. Trouble beginswhen Paul Morel, a budding artist, falls in love with a young womanwho seems capable of rivaling his mother for possession of hissoul. In the ensuing battle, he finds his path to adulthoodtragically impeded by the enduring power of his mother's grasp.Published on the eve of World War I, SONS AND LOVERS confirmedLawrence's genius and inaugurated the controversy over his explicitwriting about sexuality and human relationships that would followhim to the end of his career.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Thomas Hardy's almostsupernatural insight into the course of wayward lives, hisinstinctive feeling for the beauty of the rural landscape, and hispower to invest that landscape with moral significance all cametogether in an utterly fluent way in "The Mayor of Casterbridge." Aclassically shaped story about the rise and fall of the broodingand sometimes brutal Michael Henchard in the harsh world ofnineteenth-century rural England, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" is anemblematic product of Hardy's maturity-vigorous, forceful, andunclouded by illusions.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Of all Jane Austen's great anddelightful novels, "Persuasion" is widely regarded as the mostmoving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughterof the snobbish, spendthrift Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quietcharm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen, she fell in lovewith-and was engaged to-a naval officer, the fearless andheadstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, andAnne allowed herself to be persuaded, against her profoundestinstinct, to give him up.Now, at twenty-seven, and believing thatshe has lost her bloom, Anne is startled to learn that CaptainWentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and stillunwed. Her never-diminished love is muffled by her pride. He seemscold and unforgiving. Even worse, he appears to be infatuated bythe flighty and pretty Louisa Musgrove. What happens as Anne andWentworth are thrown together in the social world of Bath-and as aneager new suitor appears for Anne-is touchingly and wittily told in

Gathered together in one hardcover volume: three timeless novelsfrom the founding father of science fiction. The first great novelto imagine time travel, "The Time Machine" (1895) follows itsscientist narrator on an incredible journey that takes him finallyto Earth's last moments--and perhaps his own. The scientist whodiscovers how to transform himself in "The Invisible Man" (1897)will also discover, too late, that he has become unmoored fromsociety and from his own sanity. "The War of the Worlds"(1898)--the seminal masterpiece of alien invasion adapted by OrsonWelles for his notorious 1938 radio drama, and subsequently byseveral filmmakers--imagines a fierce race of Martians whodevastate Earth and feed on their human victims while theirvoracious vegetation, the red weed, spreads over the ruined planet.Here are three classic science fiction novels that, more than acentury after their original publication, show no sign of losingtheir grip on readers' imaginations.

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.

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.

Here are the best of Hawthorne's short stories. There aretwenty-four of them -- not only the most familiar, but also manythat are virtually unknown to the average reader. The selection wasmade by Professor Newton Arvin of Smith College, a recognizedauthority on Hawthorne and a distinguished literary critic as well.His fine introduction admirably interprets Hawthorne's mind andart.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) If William Shakespeare hadnever written a single play, if his reputation rested entirely uponthe substantial and sterling body of nondramatic verse he leftbehind, he would still hold the position he does in the hierarchyof world literature. The strikingly modern ?sonnets-intimate,baroque, and expansive at once; the invigorating narratives drawnfrom classical subjects; and the flawless lyricism represented by apoem like "The Phoenix and the Turtle"-permanently deepen ourunderstanding of the multiplicity and extravagant energy of ourgreatest poet.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Penelope Fitzgerald, who diedin 2000, emerged late in life as one of the most remarkable Englishwrit ers of the last century. She began her writing career in 1975at the age of fifty-nine, and over the next two decades shepublished three biographies, nine novels, and a collection of shortstories. Now three of her acclaimed novels are gathered here in onevolume. "The Bookshop "is a postwar tragicomedy of manners, set inan isolated seaside town where an enterprising woman opens abookstore only to find it beset by poltergeists, weather, andhostile townsfolk. "The Gate of Angels "is an Edwardian romancewithin a novel of ideas: a young doctor devoted to science and tohis all-male Cambridge college finds his life and views disruptedby a nurse named Daisy. "The Blue Flower," " "which won theNational Book Critics Circle Award, revitalizes historical dramathrough the story of Novalis, an eighteenth-century German romanticpoet and visionary genius, and his unlikely love affair wit

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The story of HesterPrynne-found out in adultery, pilloried by her Puritan community,and abandoned, in different ways, by both her partner in sin andher vengeance-seeking husband-possesses a reality heightened byHawthorne's pure human sympathy and his unmixed devotion to hissupposedly fallen but fundamentally innocent heroine. In its moralforce and the beauty of its conciliations, "The Scarlet Letter"rightly deserves its stature as the first great novel written by anAmerican, the novel that announced an American literature equal toany in the world.

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.

The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long seriesof twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart ofpolitical terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insightto intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by whichsubsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the firstnovelist to discover the strange in-between territory of thepolitical exile, and his genius was such that we still have notruer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of aterrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty andinnocent alike. Introduction by Paul Theroux

George Eliot's last and most unconventional novel isconsidered by many to be her greatest. First published ininstallments in 1874-76, "Daniel Deronda" is a richly imagined epicwith a mysterious hero at its heart. Deronda, a high-minded youngman searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a seriesof dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the Englishcountry-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beautytrapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives ofa poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers thelong-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving andsuspenseful narrative opens up a world of Jewish experiencepreviously unknown to the Victorian novel.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Introduction by NicholasRance