When Elfride Swancourt meets Stephen Smith, she is attracted not only to his handsome face and gentle bearing but also to the sense of mystery which surrounds him.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce and is a key work of twentieth century literature that remains as fresh, challenging and relevant as the day it was first published. It is a autobiographical novel and describes the early life and development of its central character, Stephen Dedalus (representing Joyce). Stephan, an intelligent but frail child, struggles toward maturity in Ireland at the turn of...
"This new and completely original translation of Around the World in Eighty Daysrenders Jules Verne's classic novel in a style that is both more understandable and more faithful to the spirit of the original French text than the commonly reprinted older English editions. Many of these older translations were acceptable when they were first published 150 years ago, but were translated with a Victorian British audience in mind. Their style is now very...
"Gustave Flaubert conceived 'Sentimental education,' his final complete novel, as the history of his own generation, one that failed to fulfill the promise of the Revolution of 1848. Published a few months before the start of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, it offers both a sweeping panorama of French society over three decades and an intimate bildungsroman of a young man from a small town who arrives in Paris when protests against the monarchy are...
A complex and profound book, The Tale of Two Cities explores the consequences of tyranny, fate and self-sacrifice. With much of the narrative played out in Paris, during the French Revolution Dickens examines the interplay between personal action, and the flow of history. Dr Manette, having travelled to Paris finds himself imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 brutal years, unable to see his kind and loving daughter Lucy. On his eventual return to London...
Prosperous and socially prominent, George Babbitt appears to have everything a man could wish. But when a personal crisis forces the middle-aged real estate agent to reexamine his life, Babbitt mounts a rebellion that jeopardizes everything he values. Widely considered Sinclair Lewis' greatest novel, this satire of the American social landscape created a sensation upon its 1922 publication. Babbitt's name became an instant and enduring synonym for...
Bel-Amiby Guy de Maupassant is a sharp critique of ambition, power, and moral corruption in late 19th-century French society. The novel follows Georges Duroy, a cunning and opportunistic young man who rises from poverty to wealth and influence through manipulation, seduction, and political maneuvering. As he navigates the world of journalism and high society, Duroy exploits powerful women and compromises his principles in pursuit of success, embodying...
Maria Edgeworth takes on issues of gender and race in her early editions of "Belinda", and although later editions tone down some controversial material to appease audiences, the alterations were most likely made by Edgeworth's father. Edgeworth's story centers around Belinda, a young woman who is navigating the complicated path of courtship and the limitations of domesticity. When Belinda is sent to live with the fashionable Lady Delacour, in hopes...
Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century. His old friend Messala arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions. They become bitter enemies. Because of an unfortunate accident, Ben-Hur is sent to slave in the mines while his family is sent to leprosy caves. As Messala is dying from being crushed in a chariot race, he reveals where Ben-Hur's family is. On the road to find them, Ben-Hur...
"Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most scathing and powerful critiques of philosophy, religion, science, politics, and ethics ever written. In it, Nietzsche presents a set of problems, criticisms, and philosophical challenges that continue both to inspire and to trouble contemporary thought. In addition, he offers his most subtle, detailed, and sophisticated account of the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterize philosophy and philosophers...
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
James E. Falen's verse translation consists of Boris Godunov, A Scene from Faust, the four Little Tragedies and Rusalka. It is accompanied by a penetrating Introduction by Caryl Emerson on Russia's most cosmopolitan playwright. - ;'The people are silent'. So ends Pushkin's great historical drama Boris Godunov, in which Boris's reign as Tsar witnesses civil strife and intrigue, brutality and misery. Its legacy is an uncertain future for the new Tsar...
Camilla Tyrold and her sisters embark on an unpredictable path toward true love in this eighteenth-century English novel by the author of Evelina.
First published in 1796, Camilla recounts the romantic misadventures of the Tyrold sisters-spirited Camilla, sweet Lavinia, and witty but shy Eugenia-as well as their beautiful and flirtatious cousin Indiana Lynmere. As the girls come of age together, misunderstandings, hasty judgments, and impetuous decisions...
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's 'philosophical tales', in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. This edition includes four other prose tales - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ing--ecirc--;nu, and The White Bull - and a verse tale based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, : What Pleases the Ladies. - ;'If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?'. Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious...
CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? is the first of the six Palliser novels. In this volume Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. He dissects the Victorian upper class. Issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe. But it is on women and their predicament that Trollope particularly focuses. "What should a woman do with her life?" asks Alice Vavasor. And each woman, being different and unique, has her...
A Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe' E.M. Forster E.M. Forster's description of C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) perfectly encapsulates the unique perspective Cavafy brought to bear on history and geography, sexuality and language in his poems. Cavafy writes about people on the periphery, whose religious, ethnic and cultural identities are blurred, and he was one of the pioneers in expressing a...
