A pair of twins are separated by a shipwreck, each believing theother has drowned. A lovesick duke woos a countess deep in mourningfor her brother, while her rowdy household plots the downfall ofher puritanical steward. Disguise, confusion, and mistaken identityfollow in Shakespeare’s great comedy of love in all itsmanifestations. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions fro
In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, ayoung Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreamsof wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, theastonishing truth about "packingtown," the busy, flourishing,filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in ajungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the"muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turnof the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of"wage-slavery," the bewildering chaos of urban life. The Jungle, astory so shocking that it launched a government investigation,recreates this startling chapter if our history in unflinchingdetail. Always a vigorous champion on political reform, Sinclair isalso a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one ofthe most important -- and moving -- works in the literature ofsocial change. --This text refers to an alternate Mass MarketPaperback edition.
Pronounced obscene when it was first published in 1915, " TheRainbow" is the epic story of three generations of the Brangwens, aMidlands family. A visionary novel, considered to be one ofLawrence's finest, it explores the complex sexual and psychologicalrelationships between men and women in an increasinglyindustrialized world. "Lives are separate, but life iscontinuous--it continues in the fresh start by the separate life ineach generation," wrote F. R. Leavis. "No work, I think, haspresented this perception as an imaginatively realized truth morecompellingly than "The Rainbow.""
在线阅读本书 An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare withthese features: Illustrated with photographs from NewYork Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readableintroductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, alively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on theplay in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-dateannotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of keypassages.
This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare’sloveliest poetry, contrasts a court’s world of envy and rivalrywith a forest’s world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest ofArden, the banished young heroine, Rosalind, disguised as agentleman farmer, encounters an extraordinary assemblage ofcharacters, including a fool, a malcontent traveler, her ownbanished father, and the banished young man she loves. Romantichappiness triumphs, even as we laugh at the excesses of love, atthe ways of court and countryside, indeed, at everything, in thismasterpiece of comic writing. Each Edition Includes: · Comprehensive explanatory notes · Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship · Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enablingcontemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English · Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performancehistories · An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, alongwith an extensive f
This major collection contains all of Doris Lessing's shortfiction, other than the stories set in Africa, from the beginningof her career until now. Set in London, Paris, the south of France,the English countryside, these thirty-five stories reflect thethemes that have always characterized Lessing's work: the bedrockrealities of marriage and other relationships between men andwomen; the crisis of the individual whose very psyche is threatenedby a society unattuned to its own most dangerous qualities; thefate of women.
在线阅读本书 The magnificent, timeless drama is the world's most famous tale of"star-crossed lovers." The young, unshakable love of Juliet andRomeo defies the feud that divides their families—the Capulets andMontagues—as their desperate need to be together, their secretmeetings, and finally their concealed marriage drive them towardtragedy. A masterwork that has long captured the hearts ofaudiences, this romantic tragedy has become part of the literaryheritage of all peoples in all nations.
Uncertain of their standing in court and fearing for theirlives, Rosalind and Orlando are forced into exile in the Forest ofArden, only to become entangled in a beguiling game of love, lust,and mistaken identity. One of Shakespeare’s great comedies, As YouLike It subverts the traditional rules of romance, confusing genderroles, nature, and politics. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and acces
Capturing the grandeur of a gracious, splendid Europe ofwealth and Old World sensibilities, this glorious, complex novelhas become a touchstone for a great writer’s entire literaryachievement. From the opening pages, when the high-spiritedAmerican girl Isabel Archer arrives at the English manorGardencourt, James’s luminous, superbly crafted prose creates anatmosphere of intensity, expectation, and incomparablebeauty. Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfillher potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and abrash American, as well as the secret adoration of her invalidcousin, Ralph Touchett. But her vulnerability and innocence leadher not to love but to a fatal entrapment in intrigue, deception,and betrayal. This brilliant interior drama of the forming of awoman’s consciousness makes The Portrait of a Lady a masterpiece ofJames’s middle years.
Flamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzlingpersonality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparklingcomedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever writtenfor the English stage. Here in one volume are his immensely popularnovel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; his last literary work, “TheBallad of Reading Gaol,” a product of his own prison experience;and four complete plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, his first dramaticsuccess, An Ideal Husband, which pokes fun at conventionalmorality, The Importance of Being Earnest, his finest comedy, andSalomé, a portrait of uncontrollable love originally written inFrench and faithfully translated by Richard Ellmann. Every selection appears in its entirety–a marvelous collection ofoutstanding works by the incomparable Oscar Wilde, who’s been aptlycalled “a lord of language” by Max Beerbohm.
Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story ofthe young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexualmisadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents.Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity,young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzyingreversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures. Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vastlandscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the"golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic andvisionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in ahistorical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorowin his new foreword. "Kafka made his first novel from his ownmind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research datathat caught his eye were bent like light rays in a field ofgravity."
At once a romantic history of a mighty river, anautobiographical account of Twain’s early steamboat days, and astorehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, here is the rawmaterial from which Mark Twain wrote his finest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .
As the citizens of Venice compete for advantageousmarriages, wealth, and status, a moneylender is intent on deadlyrevenge. Mistrust and resentment thrive in Shakespeare’s darkcomedy. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions from the Royal ShakespeareCompany set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for thetwenty-first century.
Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from ThomasHardy’s early work, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is uniqueamong his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavishedupon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy pouredall of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms ofnatural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragicfate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary andAnna Karenina, has achieved classic stature.
A magnificent drama of love and war, this riveting tragedypresents one of Shakespeare's greatest female characters—theseductive, cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra. The Roman leader MarkAntony, a virtual prisoner of his passion for her, is a man tornbetween pleasure and virtue, between sensual indolence and duty . .. between an empire and love. Bold, rich, and splendid in itssetting and emotions, Antony And Cleopatra ranksamong Shakespeare's supreme achievements.
在线阅读本书 An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare withthese features: Illustrated with photographs from NewYork Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readableintroductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, alively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on theplay in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-dateannotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of keypassages.
The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentiethcentury: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bankofficer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defendhimself against a charge about which he can get no information.Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy ofthe excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness oftotalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chillingtruth for generations of readers. This new edition is based uponthe work of an international team of experts who have restored thetext, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create aversion that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproducesthe distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that isas full of energy and power as it was when it was firstwritten.
Robust tales of perilous adventure and animal cunning Includes"Diable: A Dog, An Odyssey of the North, To the Man on the Trail,To Build a Fire, " and "Love of Life" Out of the white wilderness,out of the Far North, Jack London, one of America's most popularauthors, drew the inspiration for the novel and five short storiesincluded here. Swiftly paced and vividly written, they capture themain theme of London's work: man's instinctive reversion toprimitive behavior when pitted against the brute force ofnature.
A collection of the short stories of the Nobel Prize-winningauthor of Palace Walk represents thirty years of work andfeatures tales of the citizens of Cairo, who struggle to surviveamid the city's poverty. Reprint. PW. K.
"The Star Rover" is the story of San Quentin death-row inmateDarrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and longstretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams ofpast lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and anEnglishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment ofJack London's friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author's mostcomplex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in hisIntroduction, "The Star Rover" is "written with energy and force,brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality andbeauty." This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the textof the first American edition, published in 1915.
Random's Modern Library is reproducing this Hardy standard as atie-in to a Masterpiece Theater presentation and offering a qualityhardcover for a reasonable price. Copyright 1998Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out ofprint or unavailable edition of this title.
When this classic collection of stories first appeared in 1962, on the author s thirtieth birthday Arthur Mizener wrote in The New York Times Book Review: Updike is a romantic [and] like all American romantics, that is, he has an irresistible impulse to go in memory home again in order to find himself. . . . The precise recollection of his own family-love, parental and marital, is vital to him; it is the matter in which the saving truth is incarnate. . . . Pigeon Feathers is not just a book of very brilliant short stories; it is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows us that Mr. Updike s fine verbal talent is no longer pirouetting, however gracefully, out of a simple delight in motion, but is beginning to serve his deepest insight.
With his family’s claim to the throne uncertain, Henry seeksto secure his position by turning the country’s attention abroad.But when his outnumbered army is trapped at Agincourt, disasterseems inevitable. Shakespeare probes notions of leadership andpower in this iconic depiction of England’s charismatic warriorking. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible edition
