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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bridget Jones's Diary'
In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.
At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"
This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Times'
This text, that of the 1854 first edition, has been re-edited in light of recent scholarly findings. Annotations have been revised and expanded."Backgrounds, Sources, and Contemporary Reactions" reprints all of the documents on industrialism, education, and utilitarianism that appeared in the Second Edition, save one, and introduces new pieces by R. D. Butterworth and Thomas Carlyle. "Criticism" collects seventeen important essays on Hard Times-seven of them new to the Third Edition-by Hippolyte Taine, John Ruskin, George Gissing, Bernard Shaw, F. R. Leavis, Monroe Engel, Robert Barnard, David Craig, David Lodge, Roger Fowler, Patricia E. Johnson, Gorman Beauchamp, Martha C. Nussbaum, David L. Cowles, Jean Ferguson Carr, Eric P. Levy, and Leona Toker. A Chronology and revised Selected Bibliography are also included. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart of Darkness'
In Conrad's haunting tale, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. Travelling to the heart of the African continent, he discovers how Kurtz has gained his position of power and influence over the local people. Marlow's struggle to fathom his experience involves him in a radical questioning of not only his own nature and values but the nature and values of his society. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diary'
Introduction by Caryl PhillipsCommentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip GourevitchOriginally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890-the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Howards End'
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]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mansfield Park'
Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.
Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moonstone'
"The Moonstone is a page-turner," writes Carolyn Heilbrun. "It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story through the recountings of its several narrators, all of them enticing and singular." Wilkie Collins's spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and murder inspired a hugely popular genre-the detective mystery. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature'
The Middle Ages, The Sixteenth Century, The Seventeenth Century and the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, all in the First Volume. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Volume 2: the Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors'
This anthology aims to enable the reader to gauge the achievement of principal authors of English literature by providing examples of their most characteristic work. Works featured range from Beowulf written in the 15th century to contemporary literature from the likes of Larkin and Rushdie. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages Through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'
Read by millions of students over seven editions, The Norton Anthology of English Literature remains the most trusted undergraduate survey of English literature available and one of the most successful college texts ever published.
Firmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologiesthorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possibleThe Norton Anthology of English Literature has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones. Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool. [via]More editions of Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages Through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. 1: 16th/17th Century'
With adoptions at over 1,300 colleges and universities in its first semester; the Seventh Edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature continues to be the indispensable anthology. Like its predecessors, the Seventh Edition offers the best in English literature from the classic to the contemporary in a readable, teachable format. More selections by women and twentieth-century writers, a richer offering of contextual writings and apparatus fully revised to reflect today's scholarship make the Seventh Edition the choice for breadth, depth, and quality.
For the first time ever, the acclaimed Norton Anthology of English Literature is available in six separate volumes, each of which cover a specific period of English lit and focus on the wide range of writers and literature, with full annotation and commentary. Adapted unabridged from the full Norton Anthology, this volume is ideal for focused study or specific coursework in the period. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. 1: The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. 2: Victorian Age'
With adoptions at over 1,300 colleges and universities in its first semester; the Seventh Edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature continues to be the indispensable anthology. Like its predecessors, the Seventh Edition offers the best in English literature from the classic to the contemporary in a readable, teachable format. More selections by women and twentieth-century writers, a richer offering of contextual writings and apparatus fully revised to reflect today's scholarship make the Seventh Edition the choice for breadth, depth, and quality.
For the first time ever, the acclaimed Norton Anthology of English Literature is available in six separate volumes, each of which cover a specific period of English lit and focus on the wide range of writers and literature, with full annotation and commentary. Adapted unabridged from the full Norton Anthology, this volume is ideal for focused study or specific coursework in the period. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature, the Major Authors: The Middle Ages Through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'
The acclaimed Norton Anthology of English Literature, Major Authors Edition is now available in two paperbound volumes. Volume A begins with Seamus Heaney's brilliant new translation of Beowulf and continuing through the sixteen, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This new Major Authors edition is a library between two coversan indispensable addition to the family bookshelf. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oliver Twist'
This Norton Critical Edition of a Dickens favorite reprints the 1846 text, the last edition of the novel substantially revised by Dickens and the one that most clearly reflects his authorial intentions.
The editor has corrected printers errors and annotated unfamiliar terms and allusions.› Find signed collectible books: 'Othello'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pamela'
Based on actual events, Pamela is the story of a young girl who goes to work in a private residence and finds herself pursued by her employer's son, described as a "gentleman of free principles."
Unfolding through letters, the novel depicts with much feeling Pamela's struggles to decide how to respond to her would-be seducer and to determine her place in society.More editions of Pamela:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man'
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of the twentieth centurys great coming-of-age novels.
This Norton Critical Edition is based on Hans Gablers acclaimed text and is accompanied by his introduction and textual notes. John Paul Riquelme provides detailed explanatory annotations. Backgrounds and Contexts is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear picture of the novels historical, cultural, and literary inspirations. Topics include Political Nationalism: Irish History, 1798-1916, The Irish Literary and Cultural Revival, Religion, and Aesthetic Backgrounds. Criticism begins with John Paul Riquelmes helpful essay on the novels structural form and follows with twelve diverse interpretations by, among others, Kenneth Burke, Umberto Eco, Hugh Kenner, Maud Ellmann, Joseph Valente, and Marian Eide. A Selected Bibliography is also included. [via]More editions of A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Saturday: A Novel'
From the pen of a master - the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement - comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare's Sonnets'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare's Sonnets - the Problems Solved: A Modern Edition with Prose Versions, Introduction and Notes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tempest'
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