Heidi is the heart-warming tale of a small girl's power for good, and it has remained a firm favourite since it was published over 100 years ago. It tells of the orphan Heidi and her idyllic existence with her gruff grandfather in the mountains. When she is sent to live in a city, comic chaos ensues, and eventually it is arranged that Heidi should return to the mountains. Together she and her friend Peter, the goat-herd, achieve wondrous changes in the community in which they live.
Old Martin Chuzzlewit has a great fortune, but to whom can he leave it? He and his likable grandson, young Martin, have fallen out. Beyond that, a tangle of sly, grasping relatives coil about him. Throughout, the reader is rooting for the gentle Tom Pinch and his lovely sister, Mary. But before all can be decided, Dickens puts both Tom and young Martin through murder, mayhem and a brief purgatory in the United States. Reader Davidson quickly tunes into Dickens's ferocious irony, but his paramount strength is his uncanny ability to find and maintain the perfect voice for each of the vintage characters: drippy, insinuous, vicious, sly, bold American backwoods, or London Cheapside. Each is a distinct creation! Dickens lovers will treasure every tape in this two-volume masterpiece. P.E.F.An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
This comic novel describes the boating expedition on the Thames of three friends and their dog, Montmerency. The difficulties and vicissitudes of these innocents abroad are magnified to epic proportions, and give the book an air of fresh innocence.
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"' So begins the tale of Alice, following a curious White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole and falling into Wonderland. A fantastical place, where nothing is quite as it seems: animals talk, nonsensical characters confuse, Mad Hatter's throw tea parties and the Queen plays croquet. Alice's attempts to find her way home become increasingly bizarre, infuriating and amazing in turn. A beloved classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has continued to delight readers, young and old for over a century.
'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' Treasure Island is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck. When young Jim Hawkins finds a packet in Captain Flint's sea chest, he could not know that the map inside it would lead him to unimaginable treasure. Shipping as cabin boy on the Hispaniola, he sails with Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, Dr Livesey, the sinister Long John Silver and a frightening crew to Treasure Island. There, mutiny, murder and mayhem lead to a thrilling climax.
The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remined in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled. If you don't recognise yourself at some point in The Diary you are probably less than human. If you can read it without laughing aloud you have no sense of humour.
This novel is Lawrence’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece in which he explores emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers. Lawrence’s novels are perhaps the most powerful exploration in the genre in English of family, class, sexuality and relationships in youth and early adulthood.
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.
Epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The heroine, Natasha Rostova, for example, reaches her greatest fulfillment through her marriage to Pierre Bezukhov and her motherhood. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism. --
The story of 'Little Nell' gripped the nation when it first appeared. Described as a 'tragedy of sorrows', it tells of Nell uprooted from a secure and innocent childhood and cast into a world where evil takes many shapes, the most fascinating of which is the stunted, lecherous Quilp. He is Nell's tormenter and destroyer, and it is his demonic energy that dominates the book.
Contains The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night.
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
