In this classic novel by John Updike, we return to a characteras compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable HenryBech. Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in aworld of Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, heviews life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make youlaugh with delight and wince in recognition.

From her humble beginnings as the daughter of a countrysideblacksmith, Emy Lyon went on to claim the undying love of navalhero Admiral Nelson, England’s most famous native son. She servedas model and muse to eighteenth-century Europe’s most renownedartists, and consorted with kings and queens at the royal court ofNaples. Yet she would end her life in disgraced exile, pennilessand alone. In this richly drawn portrait, Flora Fraser maps thespectacular rise and fall of legendary eighteenth-century beautyEmma, Lady Hamilton—as she came to be called—a woman of abundantaffection and overwhelming charm, whose eye for opportunity wasrivaled only by her propensity for overindulgence and scandal.Wonderfully intimate and lavishly detailed, Beloved Emma brings to life the incomparable Lady Hamilton and the politics,passions, and enchantments of her day.

Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and itsunflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a stormof controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly inresponse, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writingaltogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though wehave come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuingcentury, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power toshock us and disturb our dreams.

This textbook series provides concise and lucidintroductions to major works of literature, from classicalantiquity to the twentieth century. Each book provides closereading of the text, as well as giving a full account of itshistorical, cultural and intellectual background, a discussion ofits influence, and further reading. --This text refers to anout of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book De*ion At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, anda brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is atransporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue ofsixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominentcontemporary Turkish writers. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artistsin the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of hisrealm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style.But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, thiscommission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elitetherefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, andpanic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. Theonly clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finishedilluminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophicalpuzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to theintersection of art, religion, love, sex and power. Translated from th

In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacherGeorge Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone withhis teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his songrow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life.Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and hisown relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur one of John Updike'smost brilliant and unusual novels.

In Theatre, W. Somerset Maugham–the author of the classicnovels Of Human Bondage and Up at the Villa–introduces us to JuliaLambert, a woman of breathtaking poise and talent whose looks havestood by her forty-six years. She is one of the greatest actressesEngland–so good, in fact, that perhaps she never stopsacting. It seems that noting can ruffle her satin feathers, until a quietstranger who challenges Julia's very sense of self. As a result,she will endure rejection for the first time, her capacity as amother will be affronted, and her ability to put on whatever faceshe desired for her public will prove limited. In Theatre, Maughamsubtly exposes the tensions and triumphs that occur when acting andreality blend together, and–for Julia–ultimately reverse.

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleepswith a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end thisbrutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter,Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, richesand wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes andhunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of thevoyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of fortythieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequenceof stories will last 1,001 nights.

(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."

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: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley

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) Britain's three-hundred-yearrelationship with the Indian subcontinent produced much fiction ofinterest but only one indisputable masterpiece: E. M. Forster's "APassage to India," published in 1924, at the height of the Indianindependence movement. Centering on an ambiguous incident between ayoung Englishwoman of uncertain stability and an Indian doctoreager to know his conquerors better, Forster's book explores, withunexampled profundity, both the historical chasm between races andthe eternal one between individuals struggling to ease theirisolation and make sense of their humanity.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Lord Jim is a classic storyof one man's tragic failure and eventual redemption, told under thecircumstances of high adventure at the margins of the known worldwhich made Conrad's work so immediately popular. But it is also thebook in which its author, through a brilliant adaptation of hisstylistic apparatus to his obsessive moral, psychological andpolitical concerns, laid the groundwork for the modern novel as weknow it. With An Introduction By Norman Sherry An expert on theworks of Joseph Conrad, Professor Norman Sherry is the author ofConrad's Eastern World, Conrad's Western World and Conrad and HisWorld. He is also the editor of Conrad: The Critical Heritage, andthe official biographer of Graham Greene.

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace isat once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, anda celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is seenclearly in the multitude of characters in this massivechronicle--all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out ofthis complex narrative emerges a profound examination of theindividual's place in the historical process, one that makes itclear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers andplaced War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad": " "To readhim . . . is to find one's way home . . . to everything within usthat is fundamental and sane."

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: Not Jacketed) Introduction by Alfred KazanFirst published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M.Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie twofamilies--the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the culturedand idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent HelenSchlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, aseries of events is sparked--some very funny, some verytragic--that results in a dispute over who will inherit HowardsEnd, the Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clashbetween individual wills as the clash between the sexes and theclasses, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, "Onlyconnect," remains a powerful pre*ion for modern life. "Fromthe Trade Paperback edition."

(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.

One of the towering figures of world literature, Goethe hasnever held quite as prominent a place in the English-speaking worldas he deserves. This collection of his four major works, togetherwith a selection of his finest letters and poems, shows that he isnot only one of the very greatest European writers: he is alsoaccessible, entertaining, and contemporary. The Sorrows of Young Wertheris a story of self-destructive love that made its author acelebrity overnight at the age of twenty-five. Its exploration ofthe conflicts between ideas and feelings, between circumstance anddesire, continues in his controversial novel probing theinstitution of marriage, Elective Affinities. The cosmic drama ofFaust goes far beyond the realism of the novels in a poeticexploration of good and evil, while Italian Journey, written in theauthor’s old age, recalls his youth in Italy and the impact ofMediterranean culture on a young northerner.