With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Carole Jones, freelance writer and researcher. George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they search for personal and vocational fulfilment and sympathetic relationship. Set largely in the degenerate English aristocratic society of the 1860s, Daniel Deronda charts their search for meaningful lives against a background of imperialism, the oppression of women, and racial and religious prejudice. Gwendolen's attempts to escape a sadistic relationship and atone for past actions catalyse her friendship with Deronda, while his search for origins leads him, via Judaism, to a quest for moral growth. Eliot's radical dual narrative constantly challenges all solutions and ensures that the novel is as controversial now, as when it first appeared. 作者简介： Edmund White is the author of many novels, including A Boy s Own St

Ernest Shackleton led two Antarctic expeditions, and diedshortly after the beginning of the third. His first expedition wasnot a total success (they did not reach the South Pole), and thesecond was, in some senses, a total failure (they never reached theAntarctic mainland at all). Yet it is the second for which he isremembered. His expedition ship Endurance was trapped, then crushedin the ice, before his party could be landed, leaving his men in ahopeless situation. For months Shackleton held his party togetherbefore taking to boats and bringing everyone to safety to ElephantIsland. His open-boat journey to South Georgia, and the eventualrescue of the party left behind, are now legendary. Visitors toShackleton s grave in South Georgia, stepping over the loungingelephant seals that keep the dead company, pay homage to the manwho had the vision, bravery and strength to open up Antarctica forall who followed. Shackleton showed the flame of leadership as fewin the history of exploration have done, and nowhere do

The 22-year old James Boswell first met Johnson, who was then aged 54, in 1763. Nine years later he wrote in his journal of his 'constant plan to write the life of Mr Johnson'. Boswell was tireless in his search for authenticated proof, and his training as a lawyer helped him sift the evidence of friends and to operate forensically on Johnson himself. Boswell drew him out as no one else could, and although three-quarters of the book concerns the last twenty years of Johnson's life, his skill in constructing the early years is remarkable. The text of this complete and unabridged edition is that of the 1791 first edition, and it remains, by common consent, the greatest biography in the English language. Johnson's centrality in 18th century letters is established not only by Boswell's record of his life and conversations, but also by the success of the work in placing him in a literary and cultural context. James Boswell (1740-95) was educated at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities as a lawyer. He moved to