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books tagged “19th c.”
books tagged “19th c.”
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1876 (Modern Library)by Gore VidalISBN 0679602941 (0-679-60294-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Adam Bedeby George EliotISBN 0679409912 (0-679-40991-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Adam Bede'Book summary:A remarkably vivid depiction of village life provides the backdrop to George Eliots first novel, a story of love and betrayal invested with social realism of unprecedented sensitivity.
Adam Bede is an upstanding young carpenter whose greatest weakness is his infatuation with the self-absorbed village beauty, Hetty Sorrel. Hetty has secretly set her sights on Captain Arthur Donnithorne, heir to the local squires estate; his abandonment of her and her engagement to Adam set in motion a tragedy that will touch many peoples lives. When Hetty lands in prison, accused of murder and facing a sentence of execution by hanging, it is her fervent young cousin Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher, whose intervention offers both Hetty and Adam comfort and the hope of peace.
The evocations of a lost rural world for which Adam Bede was so resoundingly praised on its publication in 1859 are charged in Eliots hands with a personal compassion that intensifies the novels outer dramas of seduction and betrayal and inner dramas of moral growth and redemption.With an introduction by Leonee Ormond
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The Age of Capitalby E. J. HobsbawmISBN 0679772545 (0-679-77254-5)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Age of Capital'Book summary:In this book, Eric Hobsbawm chronicles the events and trends that led to the triumph of private enterprise and its exponents in the years between 1848 and 1875. Along with Hobsbawm's other volumes, this book constitutes and intellectual key to the origins of the world in which we now live. [via]
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Alice's Adventures In Wonderlandby Lewis Carroll, Gwynedd M. HudsonISBN 0681006447 (0-681-00644-7)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr
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American Notesby Charles Dickens, Christopher HitchensISBN 0679601856 (0-679-60185-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'American Notes'Book summary:American Notes is the fascinating travel journal of one of 19th century America's most celebrated tourists--Charles Dickens. A lively chronicle of his five-month trip around the United States in 1842, the book records the author's adventures journeying by steamboat and stagecoach as well as his impressions of everything from schools and prisons to table manners and slavery. [via]
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American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made Itby Richard HofstadterISBN 0679723153 (0-679-72315-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It'Book summary:A revised edition of the clasic study of American politics from the Founding Fathers to FDR. [via]
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The Awakeningby Kate Chopin, Nina BaymISBN 0679783334 (0-679-78333-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Awakening, and Other Stories.'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Elaine Showalter [via] 
Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melvilleby David S. ReynoldsISBN 0674065654 (0-674-06565-4)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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The Boer Warby Thomas PakenhamISBN 0679430474 (0-679-43047-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Bostoniansby Henry JamesISBN 0679417508 (0-679-41750-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Call of the Wildby Jack London, E. L. Doctorow, Donald Pizer, Library of America StaffISBN 0679725350 (0-679-72535-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolutionby Simon SchamaISBN 0679726101 (0-679-72610-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution'Book summary:Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations. [via]
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Clotel, Or, the President's Daughterby William W. Brown, Graham Russell Hodges, Hilton AlsISBN 0679783237 (0-679-78323-7)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Clotel, Or, the President's Daughter'Book summary:The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. An innovative and challenging work of literary invention, Clotel is receiving much renewed attention today.
William Wells Brown, though born into slavery, escaped to become one of the most prominent reformers of the nineteenth century and one of the earliest historians of the black experience. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the first, 1853, edition of Clotel and includes, as did that edition, his autobiographical narrative, "The Life and Escape of William Wells Brown," plus newly written notes. [via]More editions of Clotel, Or, the President's Daughter:
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Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poeby Edgar Allan PoeISBN 0679600078 (0-679-60007-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe'Book summary:Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters, a genius who was tragically misunderstood in his lifetime. He was a seminal figure in the development of science fiction and the detective story, and exerted a great influence on Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and Charles Baudelaire, who championed him long before Poe was appreciated in his own country. Baudelaire's enthusiasm brought Poe a wide audience in Europe, and his writing came to have enormous importance for modern French literature. This edition includes his most well-known works--"The Raven," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Annabel Lee," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"--as well as less-familiar stories, poems, and essays. [via]
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolby Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Nikolai Vasilevich GogolISBN 0679430237 (0-679-43023-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Confessions of a Justified Sinnerby James HoggISBN 067941732X (0-679-41732-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of a Justified Sinner'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Roger Lewis [via]More editions of Confessions of a Justified Sinner:
The Cossacksby Leo TolstoyISBN 0679431314 (0-679-43131-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Cossacksby Peter Constantine, Cynthia Ozick, Leo TolstoyISBN 0679642919 (0-679-64291-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Count of Monte Cristoby Alexandre DumasISBN 0679601996 (0-679-60199-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Count of Monte Cristo'Book summary:A wonderful children's book filled with great illustrations. [via]
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Dead Certaintiesby Simon SchamaISBN 0679736131 (0-679-73613-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Certainties'Book summary:Like his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper enigmas that confront a student of the past. In order to do so, Schama reconstructs -- and at times reinvents -- two ambiguous deaths: the first, that of General James Wolfe at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, that of George Parkman, an eccentric Boston brahmin whose murder by an impecunious Harvard professor in 1849 was a grisly reproach to the moral sanctity of his society. Out of these stories -- with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions -- Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination. [via]
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Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculationsby Simon SchamaISBN 0679402136 (0-679-40213-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations'Book summary:Like his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper enigmas that confront a student of the past. In order to do so, Schama reconstructs -- and at times reinvents -- two ambiguous deaths: the first, that of General James Wolfe at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, that of George Parkman, an eccentric Boston brahmin whose murder by an impecunious Harvard professor in 1849 was a grisly reproach to the moral sanctity of his society. Out of these stories -- with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions -- Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations:
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Dead Soulsby Nikolai Gogol, Richard Pevear, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0679430229 (0-679-43022-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Souls'Book summary:A socially adept newcomer fluidly inserts himself into an unnamed Russian town, conquering first the drinkers, then the dignitaries. All find him amiable, estimable, agreeable. But what exactly is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov up to?--something that will soon throw the town "into utter perplexity."
After more than a week of entertainment and "passing the time, as they say, very pleasantly," he gets down to business--heading off to call on some landowners. More pleasantries ensue before Chichikov reveals his bizarre plan. He'd like to buy the souls of peasants who have died since the last census. The first landowner looks carefully to see if he's mad, but spots no outward signs. In fact, the scheme is innovative but by no means bonkers. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner. His first victim is happy to give up his souls for free--less tax burden for him. The second, however, knows Chichikov must be up to something, and the third has his servants rough him up. Nonetheless, he prospers.
Dead Souls is a feverish anatomy of Russian society (the book was first published in 1842) and human wiles. Its author tosses off thousands of sublime epigrams--including, "However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man," and is equally adept at yearning satire: "Where is he," Gogol interrupts the action, "who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?" Flannery O'Connor, another writer of dark genius, declared Gogol "necessary along with the light." Though he was hardly the first to envision property as theft, his blend of comic, fantastic moralism is sui generis.--Kerry Fried [via]
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Dead Soulsby Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, Richard Pevear, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0679776443 (0-679-77644-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Souls'Book summary:A socially adept newcomer fluidly inserts himself into an unnamed Russian town, conquering first the drinkers, then the dignitaries. All find him amiable, estimable, agreeable. But what exactly is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov up to?--something that will soon throw the town "into utter perplexity."
After more than a week of entertainment and "passing the time, as they say, very pleasantly," he gets down to business--heading off to call on some landowners. More pleasantries ensue before Chichikov reveals his bizarre plan. He'd like to buy the souls of peasants who have died since the last census. The first landowner looks carefully to see if he's mad, but spots no outward signs. In fact, the scheme is innovative but by no means bonkers. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner. His first victim is happy to give up his souls for free--less tax burden for him. The second, however, knows Chichikov must be up to something, and the third has his servants rough him up. Nonetheless, he prospers.
Dead Souls is a feverish anatomy of Russian society (the book was first published in 1842) and human wiles. Its author tosses off thousands of sublime epigrams--including, "However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man," and is equally adept at yearning satire: "Where is he," Gogol interrupts the action, "who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?" Flannery O'Connor, another writer of dark genius, declared Gogol "necessary along with the light." Though he was hardly the first to envision property as theft, his blend of comic, fantastic moralism is sui generis.--Kerry Fried [via]
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Democracy in Americaby Daniel J. Boorstin, Phillips Bradley, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Alexis De TocquevilleISBN 0679728252 (0-679-72825-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'Book summary:Democracy in America is the classic analysis of America's unique political character, quoted heavily by politicians and perennially popping up on history professors' reading lists. The book's enduring appeal lies in the eloquent, prophetic voice of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocrat who visited the United States in 1831. A thoughtful young man in a still-young country, he succeeded in penning this penetrating study of America's people, culture, history, geography, politics, legal system, and economy. Tocqueville asserts, "I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress."
In addition to a brilliant, perceptive outline of "the philosophical method of the Americans," Volume II of Democracy in America includes the oddly modern-sounding "Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity," the surprising and provocative "How Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes," and the more archaic "The Study of Greek and Latin is Peculiarly Useful in Democratic Communities." This edition--which many consider the best--contains the Henry Reeve text, revised by Francis Bowen, and further edited with introduction, editorial notes, and bibliographies by Phillips Bradley. [via]
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Democracy in Americaby Alexis De TocquevilleISBN 0679431349 (0-679-43134-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Democracy in America'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that polit?ical commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the soci?ety of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy and the social, political, and economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 and 1840. Brilliantly written and vividly illustrated with vignettes and portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one soci?ety at a particular point in time. What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of Tocquevilles observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races, and the threats posed to democracies by consumerism and corruption.
So uncanny is Tocquevilles insight and so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as though he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it. [via]More editions of Democracy in America:
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Dickinson: Poemsby Emily DickinsonISBN 0679429077 (0-679-42907-7)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dickinson: Poems'Book summary:The everyman's library pocket poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: dickinson contains poems from the poet's art, the works of love, and death and resurrection, as well as an index of first lines [via]
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeby Robert Louis StevensonISBN 0679405380 (0-679-40538-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'Book summary:The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster [via]
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The Eustace Diamondsby Anthony TrollopeISBN 0679417451 (0-679-41745-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Gardenby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles RobinsonISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'Book summary:Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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- Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681303840 (0-681-30384-0)
Hardcover, Xs Books - Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681400560 (0-681-40056-0)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681303840 (0-681-30384-0)
Germinalby Emile Zola, Havelock EllisISBN 067975430X (0-679-75430-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Germinal'Book summary:Introduction by F. W. J. Hemmings; Translation by Leonard Tancock [via]
The Golden Bowlby Henry James, Denis DonoghueISBN 0679417338 (0-679-41733-8)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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Howards Endby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679722556 (0-679-72255-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Howards End'Book summary:Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The Hunchback of Notre Dameby Victor Hugo, Catherine Liu, Elizabeth McCrackenISBN 0679642579 (0-679-64257-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'Book summary:The story and characters in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame have resonated with succeeding generations since its publication in 1831. It has tempted filmmakers, and most recently animators, who have exploited its dramatic content to good effect but have inevitably lost some of the grays that make the original text so compelling.
From Victor Hugo's flamboyant imagination came Quasimodo, the grotesque bell ringer; La Esmeralda, the sensuous gypsy dancer; and the haunted archdeacon Claude Frollo. Hugo set his epic tale in the Paris of 1482 under Louis XI and meticulously re-created the
day-to-day life of its highest and lowest inhabitants. Written at a time of perennial political upheaval in France, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is the product of an emerging democratic sensibility and prefigures the teeming masterpiece Les Misérables, which Hugo would write thirty years later.
He made the cathedral the centerpiece of the novel and called it Notre-Dame de Paris. (It received its popular English title at the time of its second translation in 1833.) Hugo wrote that his inspiration came from a carving of the word "fatality" in Greek that he had found in the cathedral. The inscription had been eradicated by the time the book was published, and Hugo feared that Notre-Dame's Gothic splendor might soon be lost to the contemporary fad for tearing down old buildings. Notre-Dame has survived as one of the great monuments of Paris, and Hugo's novel is a fitting celebration of it, a popular classic that is proving to be just as enduring.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.
Jacket paintings: (front) detail from Notre Dame by Paul Lecomte, courtesy of David David Gallery/SuperStock; (spine) Victor Hugo, 1833, by Louis Boulanger of Giraudon/Art Resource, N.Y. [via] -
The Idiotby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black Garnett, Anna BrailovskyISBN 0679642420 (0-679-64242-0)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Idiot'Book summary:Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two womenthe notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaiaboth involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkins honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought by Garnetts drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much as possible the syntactical structure of the original. [via]
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In Search of Lost Timeby Marcel ProustISBN 0679600280 (0-679-60028-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of Lost Time'Book summary:The Guermantes Way, in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantess château near Combray. It also represents the narrators passage into the rarefied social kaleidoscope of the Guermantess Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantess drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]More editions of In Search of Lost Time:
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girlby Harriet A. Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin, John S. Jacobs, Lydia Maria Francis ChildISBN 0674002784 (0-674-00278-4)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself: Written by Herselfby L.Maria Child, Harriet A. Jacobs, Jean Fagan Yellin, Lydia Maria Francis ChildISBN 0674447468 (0-674-44746-8)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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The Jungle Bookby Rudyard Kipling, Kurt WieseISBN 0679436375 (0-679-43637-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jungle Book'Book summary:Among the best loved of all childrens classics, Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book is set among a community of animals in the jungles of India, where Kipling was born and grew up. Three of the stories feature the adventures of an abandoned man cub, a boy named Mowgli, who is raised by wolves in the jungle. Other well-known stories in the collection include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the tale of a heroic mongoose who outwits vicious cobras in order to save his human benefactors, and "Toomai of the Elephants," the story of a ten-year-old elephant-handler.This edition includes black-and-white illustrations by Kurt Wiese and William Henry Drake. [via]
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Kimby Rudyard KiplingISBN 0679443606 (0-679-44360-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kim'Book summary:One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.
From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Last Chronicle of Barsetby Anthony TrollopeISBN 0679443665 (0-679-44366-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Chronicle of Barset'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]
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The Last of the Mohicansby James Fenimore Cooper, Robin S. WrightISBN 0679203729 (0-679-20372-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last of the Mohicans'Book summary:The tale of a Mohican brave's struggle to protect two English girls from an evil Huron. Illustrated with maps and drawings depicting the period. [via]
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The Last of the Mohicansby Les Martin, James Fenimore Cooper, Shanno StirnweisISBN 0679847065 (0-679-84706-5)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last of the Mohicans'Book summary:Illus. in black-and-white. This action-packed edition of James Fenimore Cooper's famous adventure brings the wilds of the American frontier and the drama of the French and Indian War to vivid life. [via]
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A Little Princessby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Cathy East DubowskiISBN 0679850902 (0-679-85090-2)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Little Princess'Book summary:Sara Crewe is a student at Miss Minchins fancy boarding school. She has the very best of everything. But when her rich father dies, shes left without a penny. Now Sara lives in the schools cold attic and works for crusts of bread. With some help from a secret friend and a touch of magic, Saras world is about to change in ways she never dreamed. An adaptation of the classic novel thats just right for young readers! [via]
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The Longest Journeyby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679748156 (0-679-74815-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Longest Journey'Book summary:In this searching tragicomedy of manners, personalities, and world views, E. M. Forster explores the "idea of England" he would later develop in Howard's End. Bookish, sensitive, and given to wild enthusiasms, Rickie Elliot is virtually made for a life at Cambridge, where he can subsist on a regimen of biscuits and philosophical debate. But the love-smitten Rickie leaves his natural habitat to marry the devastatingly practical Agnes Pembroke, who brings with her as a sort of dowry a teaching position at the abominable Sawston School. [via]
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Looking Backward, 2000-1887by Edward BellamyISBN 0674539001 (0-674-53900-1)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Mary Bartonby Elizabeth GaskellISBN 0679434941 (0-679-43494-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Master And Margaritaby Michael Glenny, Mikhail BulgakovISBN 0679410465 (0-679-41046-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'MASTER AND MARGARITA'Book summary:Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.
Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"
Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park [via]
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Master And Margaritaby Mikhail Bulgakov, Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, Diana Lewis BurginISBN 0679760806 (0-679-76080-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermistonby Robert Louis StevensonISBN 0679417443 (0-679-41744-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermiston'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
In these two historical tales of the Scottish lowlands in the eighteenth century, Robert Louis Stevenson brought to the novel of adventure a psychological sophistication it had never before possessed - a subtlety that, far from impeding the action, everywhere intensifies its speed and credibility. A double demonstration of Stevenson's ability to satisfy the highest critical standards and at the same time remain compulsively entertaining.
With an Introduction by John Sutherland [via]More editions of The Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermiston:
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McTeagueby Frank NorrisISBN 067973273X (0-679-73273-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'McTeague'Book summary:Something of a cult classic, McTeague was one of the founding works of unflinching realism and naturalism in American writing. McTeague was first published in 1899; this new Modern Library edition brackets the book's 100-year journey through literary consciousness, from its first splash as a rather lurid literary sensation in its retelling of a true-life crime in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, to its renewed popularity among modern readers. [via]
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Nation Building and the Politics of Nationalismby Andrei MarkovitsISBN 0674603125 (0-674-60312-5)
Softcover, Harvard Ukrainian
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nation Building and the Politics of Nationalism'Book summary:The province of Galicia was the easternmost land of the old Habsburg Empire. Throughout the nineteenth century it was noted for political conflicts and the cultural vibrancy of its three major national groups: Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews.
This volume brings together for the first time eleven essays on various aspects of the last seventy-five years of Austrian Galicia's existence. Included are general surveys on Galicia within the imperial Habsburg system and on the fate of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews within the province. Various aspects of Ukrainian development receive special attention, and a major bibliographic essay completes the volume. Among the leading specialists represented are Peter Brock, Paul R. Magocsi, Ezra Mendelsohn, Ivan L. Rudnytsky, and Piotr Wandycz.
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Nicholas Nickleby: Library Editionby Charles DickensISBN 0679423079 (0-679-42307-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nicholas Nickleby: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Introduction by John Carey [via]
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Old Goriotby Honore De Balzac, Ellen MarriageISBN 0679405356 (0-679-40535-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Introduction by Daniel Adamson [via]More editions of Old Goriot:
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On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homoby R. J. Hollingdale, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Friedrich NietzscheISBN 0679724621 (0-679-72462-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo'Book summary:The great philosopher's major work on ethics, along with ECCE HOMO, Nietzche's remarkable review of his life and works. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. [via]
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On the Origin of Species a Facsimile of the Firstby C. DarwinISBN 0674637526 (0-674-63752-6)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Origin of Species a Facsimile of the First'Book summary:It is now fully recognized that the publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species in 1859 brought about a revolution in mans attitude toward life and his own place in the universe. This work is rightly regarded as one of the most important books ever published, and a knowledge of it should be part of the intellectual equipment of every educated person. The book remains surprisingly modern in its assertions and is also remarkably accessible to the layman, much more so than recent treatises necessarily encumbered with technical language and professional jargon.
This first edition had a freshness and uncompromising directness that were considerably weakened in later editions, and yet nearly all available reprints of the work are based on the greatly modified sixth edition of 1872. In the only other modern reprinting of the first edition, the pagination was changed, so that it is impossible to give page references to significant passages in the original. Clearly this facsimile reprint of the momentous first edition fills a need for scholars and general readers alike.
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The Origin of Species: Library Editionby Charles Robert DarwinISBN 0679600701 (0-679-60070-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origin of Species: Library Edition'Book summary:Voyage with Darwin as he gathers the raw material that ushered in the greatest intellectual revolution in 2,000 years upon the publication of this very book! [via]
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Our Mutual Friendby Charles DickensISBN 0679420282 (0-679-42028-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Mutual Friend'Book summary:Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host of unforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing the author's heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, and the story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The mood is set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, and his daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned men whose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to the authorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that is later identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning from abroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered and thrown into the river.
Harmon's death is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on the condition that he marry a girl he'd never met, Bella Wilfer. His death, however, brings a new heir onto the scene, Nicodemus Boffin, the kind-hearted but low-born assistant to Harmon's father. Boffin and his wife adopt young Bella, who is determined to marry money, and also hire a mysterious young secretary, John Rokesmith, who takes an uncommon interest in their ward. Not content with just one plot, Dickens throws in a secondary love story featuring the riverman's daughter, Lizzie Hexam; a dissolute young upper-class lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn; and his rival, the headmaster Bradley Headstone. Dark as the novel is, Dickens is careful to leaven it with secondary characters who are as funny as they are menacing--blackmailing Silas Wegg and his accomplice Mr. Venus, the avaricious Lammles, and self-centered Charlie Hexam. Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens's most satisfying novels, and a fitting denouement to his prolific career. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Peter Panby J. M. Barrie, Cathy East Dubowski, Jean Day ZallingerISBN 0679810447 (0-679-81044-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Peter Pan'Book summary:Peter, Wendy, Captain Hook, the lost boys, and Tinker Bell have filled the hearts of children ever since Barrie's play first opened in London in 1904 and became an immediate sensation. Now this funny, haunting modern myth is presented with Bedford's wonderful illustrations, which first appeared in the author's own day, have long been out of print, and have never been equaled. [via]
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Plays, Prose Writings & Poemsby Oscar WildeISBN 0679405836 (0-679-40583-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Plays, Prose Writings & Poems'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Terry Eagleton
Oscar Wilde has been acknowledged as the wittiest writer in the English language. This collection proves that he was also one of the most versatile. Effortlessly achieved, each revealing a different aspect of his brilliance, all of the plays, prose writings, and poems gathered here support Wildes belief that entertainment provides the best kind of edification. The works gathered here include Wildes once-controversial and now classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the rioutously (sic) comic plays The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermeres Fan, and the famous poem he wrote after being released from prison, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. This expanded new edition now includes the complete version of Wildes moving letter from prison, De Profundis, and his teasing parable about Shakespeare, The Portrait of Mr. W. H. Other notable included writings are the semi-comic mystery story Lord Arthurs Saviles Crime and the essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. [via]More editions of Plays, Prose Writings & Poems:
Poems: Including Varient Readings Critically Compared with All Known Manuscriptsby Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. JohnsonISBN 0674676009 (0-674-67600-9)
Hardcover, Harvard University Press
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The Poems of Emily Dickinsonby Emily DickinsonISBN 0674676017 (0-674-67601-7)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poems of Emily Dickinson'Book summary:Emily Dickinson, poet of the interior life, imagined words/swords, hurling barbed syllables/piercing. Nothing about her adult appearance or habitation revealed such a militant soul. Only poems, written quietly in a room of her own, often hand-stitched in small volumes, then hidden in a drawer, revealed her true self. She did not live in time but in universals--an acute, sensitive nature reaching out boldly from self-referral to a wider, imagined world.
Dickinson died without fame; only a few poems were published in her lifetime. Her legacy was later rescued from her desk--an astonishing body of work, much of which has since appeared in piecemeal editions, sometimes with words altered by editors or publishers according to the fashion of the day.
Now Ralph Franklin, the foremost scholar of Dickinson's manuscripts, has prepared an authoritative one-volume edition of all extant poems by Emily Dickinson--1,789 poems in all, the largest number ever assembled. This reading edition derives from his three-volume work, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (1998), which contains approximately 2,500 sources for the poems. In this one-volume edition, Franklin offers a single reading of each poem--usually the latest version of the entire poem--rendered with Dickinson's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition is a milestone in American literary scholarship and an indispensable addition to the personal library of poetry lovers everywhere.
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The Poems Of Emily Dickinson: Reading Editionby Emily Dickinson, R.W. FranklinISBN 0674018249 (0-674-01824-9)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Editionby Emily Dickinson, R.W. FranklinISBN 067467622X (0-674-67622-X)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition'Book summary:Emily Dickinson, poet of the interior life, imagined words/swords, hurling barbed syllables/piercing. Nothing about her adult appearance or habitation revealed such a militant soul. Only poems, written quietly in a room of her own, often hand-stitched in small volumes, then hidden in a desk drawer, revealed her true self. She did not live in time, as did that other great poet of the day, Walt Whitman, but in universals. As she knowingly put it: "There is one thing to be grateful for--that one is one's self and not somebody else."
Dickinson lived and died without fame: she saw only a few poems published. Her great legacy was later rescued from her desk drawer--an astonishing body of work revealing her acute, sensitive nature reaching out boldly from self-referral to a wider, imagined world. Her family sought publication of Dickinson's poetry over the years, selecting verses, often altering her words or her punctuation, until, in 1955, the first important attempt was made to collect and publish Dickinson's work, edited by Thomas H. Johnson for the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Now, after many years of preparation by Ralph Franklin, the foremost scholar of Dickinson's manuscripts, a new comprehensive edition is available. This three-volume work contains 1,789 poems, the largest number ever assembled. The poems, arranged chronologically, based on new dating, are drawn from a range of archives, most frequently from holographs, but also from various secondary sources representing lost manuscripts. The text of each manuscript is rendered individually, including, within the capacity of standard type, Dickinson's spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Franklin gives Dickinson's alternative readings for the poems, her revisions, and the line and page, or column, divisions in the source. Each entry identifies Franklin's editorial emendations and records the publication history, including variants. Fourteen appendices of tables and lists give additional information, including poems attributed to Emily Dickinson. The poems are indexed by numbers from the Johnson edition, as well as by first lines.
Franklin has provided an introduction that serves as a guide to this edition and surveys the history of the editing of Dickinson's poems. His account of how Dickinson conducted her workshop is a reconstruction of a remarkable poetic life.
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The Professorby Charlotte BrontëISBN 0679602739 (0-679-60273-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Professor'Book summary:The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. Rejected by the publisher who took on the work of her sisters in 1846--Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights--it remained unpublished until 1857, two years after Charlotte Brontë's death. Like Villette (1853), The Professor is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society. Brontë's hero escapes from a humiliating clerkship in a Yorkshire mill to find work as a teacher in Belgium, where he falls in love with an impoverished student-teacher, who is perhaps the author's most realistic feminist heroine. The Professor endures today as both a harbinger of Brontë's later novels and a compelling read in its own right.
"The middle and latter portion of The Professor is as good as I can write," proclaimed Brontë. "It contains more pith, more substance, more reality, in my judgment, than much of Jane Eyre."
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via]More editions of The Professor:
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The Red Badge of Courageby Stephen CraneISBN 0679732233 (0-679-73223-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Red Badge of Courage'Book summary:One of the greatest works of American literature, The Red Badge of Courage gazes fearlessly into the bright hell of war through the eyes of one young soldier, the reluctant Henry Fleming. Written by Stephen Crane at the age of twenty-one, the novel imagines the Civil War's terror and loss with an unblinking vision so modern and revolutionary that, upon publication, critics hailed it as a work of literary genius. Ernest Hemingway declared, "There was no real literature of our Civil War . . . until Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage."
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes the short story "The Veteran," Crane's tale of an aged Civil War soldier looking back at his past. [via]More editions of The Red Badge of Courage:
- The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0679783202 (0-679-78320-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc - The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0679602968 (0-679-60296-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0679600442 (0-679-60044-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0679732233 (0-679-73223-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Red Badge of Courage: ISBN 0679783202 (0-679-78320-2)
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Rob Royby Walter ScottISBN 0679443622 (0-679-44362-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rob Roy'Book summary:This novel, first published in 1817, achieved a huge success and helped establish the historical novel as a literary form. In rich prose and vivid description, Rob Roy follows the adventures of a businessman's son, Frank Osbaldistone, who is sent to Scotland and finds himself drawn to the powerful, enigmatic figure of Rob Roy MacGregor, the romantic outlaw who fights for justice and dignity for the Scots. This is an incomparable portrait of the haunted Highlands and Scotland's glorious past. [via]
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A Room With a Viewby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679724761 (0-679-72476-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Salomeby Oscar WildeISBN 0679770984 (0-679-77098-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Secret Agentby Joseph ConradISBN 0679417230 (0-679-41723-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secret Agent'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and innocent alike.
Introduction by Paul Theroux [via]More editions of Secret Agent:
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The Secret Gardenby James Howe, Nancy CarpenterISBN 0679947515 (0-679-94751-5)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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Selected Talesby Edgar Allan PoeISBN 0679725245 (0-679-72524-5)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Tales'Book summary:Read throughout the world, admired by Dostoevsky and translated by Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe has become a legendary figure, representing the artist as obsessed outcast and romantic failure. His nightmarish visions, shaped by cool artistic calculation, reveal some of the dark possibilities of human experience. But his enormous popularity and his continuing influence on literature depend less on legend or vision than on his stylistic accomplishments as a writer. The tales in this volume include Poe's best-known and most representative works as well as his masterly "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym."
For the first time, the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome paperback books. A distinguished writer has contributed an introduction for each volume, which also includes a chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the text, and notes. [via]More editions of Selected Tales:
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Things Fall Apartby Chinua AchebeISBN 0679446230 (0-679-44623-0)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'Book summary:One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.
And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber [via]
Three Classic African American Novelsby Henry Louis Gates, Frances E.W. Harper, William Wells Brown, Charles Waddell ChesnuttISBN 0679727426 (0-679-72742-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860by Morton HorwitzISBN 0674903714 (0-674-90371-4)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860'Book summary:In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform. [via]
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Up from Slavery: An Autobiographyby Booker T. WashingtonISBN 0679640142 (0-679-64014-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up from Slavery: An Autobiography'Book summary:Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like "cast down your buckets," which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, believed that "political agitation alone would not save [the Negro]," and that "property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character" would prove necessary to black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society. [via]
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War and Peaceby Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude, Aylmer MaudeISBN 0679405739 (0-679-40573-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Way of All Fleshby Samuel ButlerISBN 0679417184 (0-679-41718-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way of All Flesh'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Samuel Butler was among the most wide-ranging of the accomplished crew of late Victorian writers to which be belonged -- a forceful controversialist in the debates that surrounded Darwin's theory of evolution, a painter who sometimes exhibited at the Royal Academy, an idiosyncratic critic and a gifted travel writer, and even, in his early years, a highly successful sheep farmer in New Zealand. He was also, as The Way of All Flesh, his deterministic tale of the havoc wrought by genetic inheritance, suggests, one of the great British masters of the novel of ideas. [via]More editions of The Way of All Flesh:
The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Writingsby Charlotte Perkins GilmanISBN 0679783407 (0-679-78340-7)
Softcover, Princeton Review
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