In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom, the second volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1913-27), is a novel of exploration and self-discovery, continuing the story of the narrator's youth and adolescence. From the enclosed spaces of the fin-de-siècle social world that revolves around Madame Swann, we move to the fictional town of Balbec on the Normandy coast, a place where the social classes intermingle with mutual fascination. Against the ever-changing...
"Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text. Today critical...
"Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the indispensable figures in the history of Gothic and horror fiction. While a number of his sensation and mystery novels were popular with mid-Victorian readers, it was in shorter forms that he truly excelled and most showed himself an innovator in the field of uncanny fiction. Tales such as Carmilla and Green Tea prompted M. R. James to remark, 'he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer'....
"The Mòzi is among the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition, presenting China's earliest ethical, political, and logical theories. The collected works introduce concepts, assumptions, and issues that had a profound, lasting influence throughout the classical and early imperial eras. Mòzi and his followers developed the world's first ethical theory, and presented China's first account of the origin of political authority from a state...
Arthur Machen (1863–1947), Welsh novelist and essayist, is considered one of the most important and influential writers of his time. While displaying a preoccupation with pagan themes and matters of the occult - an interest he shared with his close friend, the distinguished scholar A. E. Waite - his writing transcends the genre of supernatural horror. Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as Paul Bowles and Jorge Luis Borges...
The modern horror story grew and developed across the nineteenth century, embracing categories as diverse as ghost stories, supernatural and psychological horror, medical and scientific horrors, colonial horror, and tales of mystery and premonition. This anthology brings together 29 of the greatest horror stories of the period from 1816 to 1912, from the British, Irish, American, and European traditions. It ranges widely across the sub-genres to encompass...
"This newly translated selection of 36 of the best decadent tales from the French fin-de-siecle brings together some the most exotic, stylized, and cerebral literature in the French language. Hilarious and horrifying, these extraordinary, corrosive little tales cast a cold eye on the modern world"--back cover.
Known for such novels as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy delves deeper into the genre of historical romance in this stirring portrait of the various entanglements and amorous intrigues that arise among a group of church musicians in rural England. Hearts are broken along the way, and though the novel ends with a wedding, did the right pair find each other in time? Under the Greenwood Tree
"Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. He tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun. Forceful and opinionated, the narrator is by turns...
A major treatise on moral philosophy by Aristotle, this is the first time the Eudemian Ethics has been published in its entirety in any modern language. Equally important, the volume has been translated by Sir Anthony Kenny, one of Britain's most distinguished academics and philosophers, and a leading authority on Aristotle. In The Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle explores the factors that make life worth living. He considers the role of happiness, and...
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...
Plantagenet Palliser must face new challenges and a changing world if he is to hold his family together in the final installment of the Palliser Novels. After losing his devoted wife, Glencora, Duke Plantagenet Palliser takes on a task he has never had the time or skills to bother with before: dealing with his children. Palliser has never been a doting father, what with the responsibilities of title and duty constantly beckoning him away, but now...
"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.
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...
Set in France in 1661, 'Louise de la Vallière' is the third and final part of the D'Artagnan Romances trilogy.
With Louis XIV seeking to cement his position as the absolute monarch over the whole of France, D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers are forced to come out of retirement one last time.
However, while their intentions may be noble, there might be hidden agendas at play that could steer the foursome in the wrong direction...
Packed with murder,...
