A nineteenth-century American travels back in time to sixth-century England in this darkly comic social satire. THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information A chronology of the author's life and work A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations Detailed explanatory notes Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to the
It is among such communities as these that happiness will find her last refuge on earth..". Against this backdrop Hardy tells a vivid story of life in rural Wessex which centres on the independent and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene. She decides to manage the farm she has inherited and finds herself in a powerful position for a woman of the 1840s. But power brings tragic complications when she has to decide between three rival suitors.
With these words, Washington Irving expresses the dilemma ofevery American artist in the nineteenth century. The Sketch-Book(1820-1) looks simultaneously towards audiences on both sides ofthe Atlantic, as Irving explores the uneasy relationship of anAmerican writer to English literary traditions. He sketches aseries of encounters with the cultural shrines of the parentnation, and in two brilliant experiments with tales transplantedfrom Europe creates the first classic American short stories, 'RipVan Winkle' and 'The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow'. The result wasnot only a hugely successful travel book; it exerted a strongformative influence on American writers from Nathaniel Hawthorneand Edgar Allan Poe to Henry James, and is well worth rediscoveryin its own right today. Based on Irving's final revision of hismost popular work, this new edition includes comprehensiveexplanatory notes of The Sketch-Book's sources for the modernreader. In her introduction, Susan Manning suggests that the authorforged a new idiom
The brutal world of the Klondike miners and their dogs is brilliantly evoked and Jack London's rendering of the sentient life of Buck and White Fang as they confront their destiny is en-thralling and convincing.The deeper resonance of these stories derives from the author's use of the myth of the hero who survives by strength and courage,a powerful myth that still appeals to our collective unconsceious.
So begins the ageless epic of Aeneas and his men, who areseemingly destined to wander the ancient world endlessly, theplaythings of wrathful gods. Fleeing the ruins of Troy, Aeneas mustfight his battles with little notion that Jupiter has ordained thatthe Trojan champion shall promulgate a race that will be theforebears of Rome.
Book De*ion The Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. This is Charlotte Bronte's first novel, and is based on her own experiences in Brussels. The story is one of love and doubt as the hero, William Crimsworth, seeks his fortune as a teacher in Brussels and finds his love for Anglo-Swiss girl, Frances Henri, severely tested. Amazon.com From Publishers Weekly From Booklist From AudioFile Charlotte Bront?'s first novel certainly benefits from the vocal gifts of reader James Wilby. Title character William Crimsworth's attempt to find his own way in a world obsessed with money and manners comes alive as Bronte's vivid images and Wilby's lyrical delivery combine. Met with a rainbow of characters, the listener can easily establish each as an individual and understand how they impact Crimsworth. This recording is a fine introductio
Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex Its lyricism, comedy (both broad and subtle) and magical transformations have long made A Midsummer Night s Dream one of the most popular of Shakespeare's works. The supernatural and the mundane, the illusory and the substantial, are all shimmeringly blended. Love is treated as tragic, poignant, absurd and farcical. 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!', jeers Robin Goodfellow; but the joke may be on him and on his master Oberon when Bottom the weaver, his head transformed into that of an ass, is embraced by the voluptuously amorous Titania.
Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Bront vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention. A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Bront 's literary talent. "Shirley is a revolutionary novel," wrote Bront biographer Lyndall Gordon. "Shirley follows Jane Eyre as a new exemplar--but so much a forerunner of the femini
One of the most significant works ever to emerge from SovietRussia, this novel is both a graphic picture of World War II workcamp life and a testimony to the human spirit.
Living overseas but writing，always，about his native city， Joyce made Dublin unforgettable。The stories in Dubliners show us truants， seducers， gossips， rally-drivers， generous hostesses，corrupt politicians，failing priests， amateur theologians，struggling musicians，moony adolescents， victims of domestic brutishness，sentimental aunts and poets， patriots earnest or cynical， and people striving to get by。In every sense an international figure，Joyce was faithful to his own country by seeing it unflinchingly and challenging every precedent and piety in Irish literature。
Tom Sawyer, a shrewd and adventurous boy, is as much at home in the respectable world of his Aunt Polly as in the self-reliant and parentless world of his friend Huck Finn. The two enjoy a series of adventures, accidentally witnessing a murder, establishing the innocence of the man wrongly accused, as well as being hunted by Injun Joe, the true murderer, eventually escaping and finding the treasure that Joe had buried. Huckleberry Finn recounts the further adventures of Huck, who runs away from a drunken and brutal father, and meets up with the escaped slave Jim. They float down the Mississippi on a raft, participating in the lives of the characters they meet, witnessing corruption, moral decay and intellectual impoverishment. Sharing so much in background and character, these two stories, the best of Twain, indisputably belong together in one volume. Though originally written as adventure stories for young people, the vivid writing provides a profound commentary on provincial American life in the mid-ninetee
In the wake of World War I, a community of expatriate American writers established itself in the salons and cafes of 1920s Paris. They congregated at Gertrude Stein's select soirees, drank too much, married none too wisely, and wrote volumes--about the war, about the Jazz Age, and often about each other. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were part of this gang of literary Young Turks, and it was while living in France that Fitzgerald began writing Tender Is the Night. Begun in 1925, the novel was not actually published until 1934. By then, Fitzgerald was back in the States and his marriage was on the rocks, destroyed by Zelda's mental illness and alcoholism. Despite the modernist mandate to keep authors and their creations strictly segregated, it's difficult not to look for parallels between Fitzgerald's private life and the lives of his characters, psychiatrist Dick Diver and his former patient turned wife, Nicole. Certainly the hospital in Switzerland where Zelda was committed in 1929 provided the in
With an Introduction by Richard Jenseth, St Lawrence University The Red Badge of Courage is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It reports on the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier. It evokes the chaos and the dull clatter of war: the acrid smoke, the incessant rumours of coming battles, the filth and cold, the numbing monotony, the unworldly wailing of the dying. Like an impressionist painter, Crane also captures the strange beauty of war: the brilliant red flags against a blue sky, steel bayonets flashing in the morning sun as soldiers step off into battle. In the midst of this chaotic outer world, he creates an intricate inner world as he takes us inside the head of Henry Fleming.
在线阅读本书 Dr. Moreau, a scientist expelled from his homeland for cruelexperiments, finds a deserted island where he can create hideouscreatures with manlike intelligence. But as the rigid order onMoreau's island dissolves, the consequences of his experimentsemerge-and his creations revert to beasts more shocking than naturecould devise.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic detective chiller. It features the world's greatest detective，Sherlock Holmes，in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast with blazing eyes and dripping jaws'which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around the isolated gaskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry，the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this fiendish spectre the manifestation of the family curse？Or is Sir Henry the victim of a vile and scheming murderer？Only Sherlock Holmes can solve this devilish affair. The Hound of the Baskervilles is introduced by David Stuart Davies，Editor of Sherlock Holmes-The Detective Magazine and several books concerning Sherlock Holmes.
This volume completes the canon of the illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories reprinted from The Strand Magazine. It contains the short story series Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes The Valley of Fear-a sinister novella which appeared in 1914-15 - His Last Bow:The War Service of Sherlock Holmes and the last twelve stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels.It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones,the hero of the book,is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire.Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women.Misfortune,followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune,teach him a sort of wisdom to go with his essential good-hearted-ness. This‘comic,epic poem in prose’will make the modern reader laugh as much as it did his forbears.Its biting satire finds an echo in today's society,for as Doris Lessing recently remarked 'This country becomes every day more like the eighteenth century,full of thieves and adventurers,rogues and a robust,unhypocritical savagery side-by-side with people lecturing others on morality.'
The classic nightmare tale in a thrilling new edition Spawned by a nightmare that Stevenson had, this classic tale ofthe dark, primordial night of the soul remains a masterpiece of theduality of good and evil within us all.
King Solomon's Mines tells of the search by Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and the narrator,Allan Quatermain, for Sir Henry's younger brother George. He has been lost in the interior of Africa for two years in the quest for King Solomon's Mines,the legendary source of the biblical king's enormous riches. The three companions encounter fearful hardships, fierce warriors, mortal danger and the sinister and deadly witch Gagool. In one of the finest adventure stories of its age, Quatermain, with touches of humour and great excitement, tells the tale of their struggle through unmapped Africa in pursuit of unimaginable wealth.
‘I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot’，Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel，The Waves。 Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works，it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time。 Six children-Bernard，Susan，Rhoda，Neville，Jinny and Louis-meet in a garden close to the sea，their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore。 The subsequent continuity of these six main characters，as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions，is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature。 In pure stream-of-consciousness style，Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives，each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy。 The Waves is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity，and the observations and emotions of life，from the simplicity and surgin
With an Introduction by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert's contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist's meticulous account of provincial matters. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments that underpin Madame Bovary look forward to the innovations of contemporary fiction. Flaubert s protagonist in particular has never ceased to fascinate. Romantic heroine or middle-class neurotic, flawed wife and mother or passionate protester against the conventions of bourgeois society, simultaneously the subject of Flaubert s admiration and the butt of his irony - Emma Bovary remains one of the most enigmatic of fictional creations. Flaubert's meticulous approach to the craft of fiction, his portrayal of contemporary reality, his representation of an unforgettable cast of char
Harriet Jacobs, under the name Linda Brent, illustrates herethe evil and depravity of slavery. From Jacob's seven years ofhiding in a garret three feet high, to her harrowing escape north,to reunion with her children and freedom, it remains an outstandingexample of a woman's extraordinary courage in the face of almostunbeatable odds, as well as one of the most significanttestimonials in American history.
Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics. Antony is divided between the responsibilities of imperial power and the intensities of his sexual relationship with Cleopatra. She, variously generous and ruthless, loving and jealous, petulant and majestic, emerges as Shakespeare's most complex depiction of a woman: 'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.' Unsurpassed in sumptuous eloquence and powerful characterisation,Antony and Cleopatra deservedly retains its popularity in the theatre.lts insibhts into the corruptions of power and the ambiguities of desire remain timely. This volume is part of the new Wordsworth Classics'Shakespeare Series,in Which each volume has been freshly edited Cedric Watts.
