Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these — «Bartleby» and «Benito Cereno» — first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales."Bartleby" (also known as «Bartleby the Scrivener») is an intriguing ...
In her daring first novel, the youngest Brontë sister drew upon her own experiences to tell the unvarnished truth about life as a governess. Like Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë was a young middle-class Victorian lady whose family fortunes had faltered. Like so many other unmarried women of the nineteenth century, Brontë accepted the only «respectable» employment available — and entered a world of hardship, humiliati ...
Undoubtedly the world's best-known fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, with his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, is the scourge of London's underworld, sallying forth from his rooms at 221B Baker Street to solve crimes and bring evildoers to justice. Now four of the best Holmes stories have been collected in this volume, offering a superb sampler of the great sleuth's fascinating adventures. Included are «The Adventure of the Danc ...
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had," declared Ernest Hemingway. Millions of readers around the world would agree, having climbed aboard the raft with young Huck and Jim, the runaway slave, to drift along the Mississippi on a voyage of adventure and self-discovery. This economical two-part edition includes the complete text of Twain's classic ...
One of the most universally studied of the English classics, Beowulf is considered the finest heroic poem in Old English. Written ten centuries ago, it celebrates the character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of the Geats, a people of southern Sweden.Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters, then returns to rule his people for 50 years, ultimately losing life in a battle to defend the Geats from a dr ...
Everything you need to make the grade! Test? Paper? Class discussion? Don't worry, we have you covered. This book has everything you need. Not only does it feature the complete text of The Awakening, it offers a comprehensive study guide that will easily help you understand Chopin's classic novel. You'll make the grade with the complete and unabridged text, scene-by-scene summaries, explanations and discussions of the plot, questi ...
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) wrote carefully structured fiction that probed the psychological and social elements guiding the behavior of her characters. Her portrayals of upper-class New Yorkers were unrivaled. The Age of Innocence, for which Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, is one of her most memorable novels.At the heart of the story are three people whose entangled lives are deeply affected by the tyrannical and rigid requireme ...
In her own time, the works of Kate Chopin (1851–1904) shocked readers and critics with their challenge to contemporary mores. Her stories and novels reveal unsparing truths about the interior lives of women, some of whom experienced profound disillusionment with the rigid yoke of marriage, combined with an unfulfilled longing for self-realization. Celebrated today as a precursor of twentieth-century feminism, Chopin's fiction is c ...
