"George Eliot's beloved masterpiece in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a foreword by Rebecca Mead, author of the bestselling memoir My Life in Middlemarch A triumph of realist fiction, George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against...
Obsession, vengeance, and jealousy pour from a tangle of lovers in Emily Bronte's only published novel, a story of unrequited love. Complete and unabridged, Wuthering Heights is an essential collectible. Explore Bronte's world of crime and punishment, nature and culture, and love and loss. Since its original publication in 1847, the tempestuous relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine has long echoed on the moors. After being spurned by his lover...
"The Portrait of a Lady is regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between money and happiness. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then...
From the Publisher: When David Copperfield's widowed mother remarries, David suffers from his stepfather's abuse. At age 8, David is sent away to a harsh school where the principal routinely beats the students. David's circumstances become even worse when he is removed from school and, at age 10, forced to labor from morning to night in a London warehouse. David then decides to take desperate action. He will run away to his great-aunt, who lives...
Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity, " as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...
"This selection of twenty-one stories represents the best of James's works, and is the first edition to incorporate improved texts based on a collation of printed versions of the stories with the available manuscripts."-Cover.
When chance brings Edward Tudor and Tom Canty together, they decide for fun to switch clothes and places. Exchanging their roles as heir to the throne of England and as a pauper's son, they learn how the other half really lives.
"Descartes's A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences marks a watershed in European thought. In it, the author provides an informal intellectual autobiography in the vernacular for a non-specialist readership, sweeps away all previous philosophical traditions, and sets out in brief his radical new philosophy, which begins with a proof of the existence of the self (the famous 'cogito ergo sum'),...
When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate....
Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665 remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Year walks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. In meticulous and unsentimental detail it renders the daily life of a city under siege; the often gruesome medical precautions and practices of the time; the mass panics of a frightened citizenry; and...
"Jules Verne's pioneering classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. A cipher, written in runes, tells of an entrance to another world - a world hidden beneath our own. So with his nephew reluctantly in tow, the Professor follows this cryptic clue down into a dormant volcano, and the further they descend, the more extraordinary the discoveries and creatures...
Classic fiction. "The Collector's Colour Library" takes the favourite illustrated titles of "The Collector's Library" and presents them in full colour. Original colour illustrations are faithfully reproduced, and where illustrations and decorations were originally black and white they have been sensitively coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's most accomplished colourists. When Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole one hot summer's afternoon in pursuit...
"Shakespeare everyone can understand--now in this new EXPANDED edition of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM! Why fear Shakespeare? By placing the words of the original play next to line-by-line translations in plain English, this popular guide makes Shakespeare accessible to everyone. And now it features expanded literature guide sections that help students study smarter. The expanded sections include: --Five Key Questions: Five frequently asked questions...
"Moral philosophy, or the science of human nature, may be treated after two different manners; each of which has its peculiar merit, and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind. The one considers man chiefly as born for action; and as influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment; pursuing one object, and avoiding another, according to the value which these objects seem to possess, and
First published in 1689, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is British philosopher John Locke's important and influential exposition on the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. Arranged into four books, the first book begins by rejecting the notion of innate ideas proposed by Descartes and proposes instead that humans are born as blank slates. Book two argues that all knowledge is derived from experience and reflection. Locke also...
"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...
