This collection of Wilde's short fiction, written between 1888 and 1891, includes: "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," a series of social parody stories; "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.," a conversational story that puts forth the theory that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets out of love for a boy actor named Willie Hughes; "Poems in Prose," a satirical collection of poems on complacency and religious orthodoxy of the bourgeoisie; "The Happy Prince...
In his Confessions, written in 1903, Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau
Cousin Bette is a woman of breath-taking malice. She plans and executes a diabolic plot of revenge against her own family for slights more imagined than real, destroying herself in the process.
The heart of this collection is Gaskell's novella Cousin Phillis, which depicts a vanishing way of life and a girl's disappointment in love: deceptively simple, its undercurrent of feeling leaves an indelible impression. The other five stories in this selection range from a tale of urban poverty and a fallen woman to an historical tale in which echoes of the French Revolution, the bleakness of winter in Westmorland, and a tragic secret are brought...
Cranford, in 1842, is a market town in northwest England. It is a place governed by etiquette, custom and above all, an intricate network of ladies. It seems that life has always been conducted according to their social rules. For spinsters Deborah Jenkyns, the arbiter of correctness, and Matty, her demurring sister, the town is a hub of intrigue. Handsome new doctor Frank Harrison has arrived from London; a retired Captain and his daughters move...
Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...
German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote "Critique of Judgment" in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, "Critique" proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime. From the effect of art and nature to the role of imagination, from objectivity of taste to the limits of representation,...
Cymbeline tells the story of a British king, Cymbeline, and his three children, presented as though they are in a fairy tale. The secret marriage of Cymbeline's daughter, Imogen, triggers much of the action, which includes villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, and the appearance of Jupiter in a vision. Kidnapped in infancy, Cymbeline's two sons are raised in a Welsh cave. As young men, they rescue a starving...
Overview: The tale of Daisy's irruption into staid European society enjoyed, as did Daisy herself, a succes de scandale; and it has remained one of James most popular short stories. Like the others collected here--'Pandora, ' 'The Patagonia, ' and 'Four Meetings'-- it describes a confrontation between different values in a changing world. Is the new independent American girl enchanting in her spontaneity, alarming in her unpredictability, or merely...
Chichikov, an enigmatic stranger and schemer, buys deceased serfs' names from their landlords' poll tax lists hoping to mortgage them for profit and to reinvent himself as a gentleman.
The third of Dostoevsky's five major novels, Devils (1871-2), also known as The Possessed, is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism, depicting the disarray that follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small provincial town.
"In these dialogues and essays the Stoic philosopher Seneca outlines his thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote exercises in practical philosophy that draw upon contemporary Roman life and illuminate the intellectual concerns of the day. They also have much to say to the modern reader, as Seneca ranges widely across subjects such as the shortness of life, tranquillity of mind, anger, mercy, happiness,...
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Discourses on Livy (1531) demonstrates Machiavelli's fundamental preference for the republicanism of ancient Rome. In an age when political absolutism was increasingly the norm, Machiavelli's republican theories would become a dangerous ideology, and his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Works in 1559. This new translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic and political information...
Doctor Thorne is a tale of love, envy, violence, greed, and vanity...but mainly love. Doctor Thorne lives with his beautiful niece, Mary, who has every virtue save money for a dowry. Only Mary's uncle, Doctor Thorne, knows the truth of her mysterious origins and can resolve the many problems facing his ward.
He thought it expedient and necessary that he should commence knight-errant, and wander through the world, with his horse and arms, in quest of adventures'Don Quixote, first published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, is one of the world's greatest comic.
In a gripping and sensational work of classic Gothic fiction we discover the infamous Count Dracula. When English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to an obscure town called Transylvania, the goal of his visit was most certainly not to do business with a vampire. As he makes his way through the village square, Harker is overcome with an eerie sensation that the Count is not who he says he is. Strewn with various charms and trinkets thrown at him from...
"For the centennial of its original publication, an irresistible Graphic Deluxe Edition of one of the most beloved books of the 20th century Perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language, James Joyce's Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as "Araby," "Grace," and "The Dead," delve into the heart of the...
Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Nietzsche passes under review all his previous books and reaches a final reckoning with his many enemies. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career. - ;'I am not a man, I am dynamite.'. Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing...
