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books tagged “Classic Lit”
books tagged “Classic Lit”
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The Aeneidby Virgil, Robert FitzgeraldISBN 0679413359 (0-679-41335-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid'Book summary:Arma virumque cano: "I sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless sentences full of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a helpful translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful, accessible American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire. Its pages sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to be a citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across the centuries, and remains essential reading. [via]
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Alice Walkerby Alice WalkerISBN 0671922548 (0-671-92254-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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All's Well that Ends Wellby William ShakespeareISBN 0671669230 (0-671-66923-0)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All's Well That Ends Well'Book summary:Completely re-edited, the New Folger Library editions of Shakespeare's plays put readers in touch with current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. Each freshly edited text is based directly on what the editors consider the best early printed version of the play. Each volume contains full explanatory notes on pages facing the text of the play, as well as a helpful introduction to Shakespeare's language. The accounts of William Shakespeare's life, his theater, and the publication of his plays present the latest scholarship, and the annotated reading lists suggest sources of further information. The illustrations of objects, clothing, and mythological figures mentioned in the plays are drawn from the Library's vast holdings of rare books. At the conclusion of each play there is a full essay by an outstanding scholar who assesses the play in light of today's interests and concerns. [via]
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Anne of Green Gablesby L.M. Montgomery, M.A. Claus, Sybil TawseISBN 0679444750 (0-679-44475-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of Green Gables'Book summary:When Marilla Cuthbert's brother, Matthew, returns home to Green Gables with a chatty redheaded orphan girl, Marilla exclaims, "But we asked for a boy. We have no use for a girl." It's not long, though, before the Cuthberts can't imagine how they could ever do without young Anne of Green Gables--but not for the original reasons they sought an orphan. Somewhere between the time Anne "confesses" to losing Marilla's amethyst pin (which she never took) in hopes of being allowed to go to a picnic, and when Anne accidentally dyes her hated carrot-red hair green, Marilla says to Matthew, "One thing's for certain, no house that Anne's in will ever be dull." And no book that she's in will be, either. This adapted version of the classic, Anne of Green Gables, introduces younger readers to the irrepressible heroine of L.M. Montgomery's many stories. Adapter M.C. Helldorfer includes only a few of Anne's mirthful and poignant adventures, yet manages to capture the freshness of one of children's literature's spunkiest, most beloved characters. There's just enough to make beginning readers want more--luckily, there's a lot more in the originals! Illustrator Ellen Beier creates vibrant pictures to portray the beauty of the land around Green Gables and the spirited nature of Anne herself. (Ages 5 to 8) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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As You Like Itby William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul WestineISBN 0671722565 (0-671-72256-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'As You Like It'Book summary:In addition to the complete text of "As You Like it", this book includes: activities; a synopsis at the beginning of each act; notes opposite the text; photographs showing various productions of the play; and an introduction which places Shakespeare in context. [via]
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The Awakeningby Kate ChopinISBN 0679417214 (0-679-41721-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Awakening'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Elaine Showalter [via]More editions of The Awakening:
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Billy Buddby Herman MelvilleISBN 0671731440 (0-671-73144-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Billy Budd'Book summary:If Melville had never written "Moby Dick," his place in literature would have been assured by his short fiction. "Billy Budd, Sailor" is his last work and his masterpiece -- a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. In "Bartleby the Scivener," a Wall Street law clerk takes passive resistance to a comic -- and tragic -- extreme. Completing the beautiful collection are: "Benito Cerino, " "The Encantatas, " "The Plaza, " and finally, Melville s chilling science fiction parable, "The Bell Tower." [via]
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Bluest Eyeby Toni MorrisonISBN 0671742922 (0-671-74292-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bluest Eye'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.
Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:
You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.
There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus [via]
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The Call of the Wildby Jack LondonISBN 067170494X (0-671-70494-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Call of the Wild'Book summary:When gold was discovered in the Yukon in 1896, Jack London caught the fever and rushed off to the northlands to try his luck. When he returned home, he had not mined an ounce of gold but brought back a greater treasure -- vivid recollections of rugged life in the frozen wastelands. London converted his experiences into exciting adventure tales, including The Call of the Wild, which has been called his masterpiece. It tells the story of the magnificent dog Buck, who is a loyal pet until cruel men make him a pawn in their search for the gold of the Klondike. Brutally treated, Buck finds the blood of his wolf ancestors rising within him and breaks free to roam the Alaskan wilderness as leader of a ferocious pack. [via]
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Catch-22by Joseph HellerISBN 0679437223 (0-679-43722-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catch-22'Book summary:There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.
Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. [via] -
A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679436391 (0-679-43639-1)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Christmas Carol'Book summary:In the history of English literature, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which has been continuously in print since it was first published in the winter of 1843, stands out as the quintessential Christmas story. What makes this charming edition of Dickens's immortal tale so special is the collection of 80 vivid illustrations by Everett Shinn (1876-1953). Shinn, a well-known artist in his time, was a popular illustrator of newspapers and magazines whose work displayed a remarkable affinity for the stories of Charles Dickens, evoking the bustling street life of the mid-1800s. Printed on heavy, cream-colored paper stock, the edges of the pages have been left rough, simulating the way in which the story might have appeared in Dickens's own time. Though countless editions of this classic have been published over the years, this one stands out as particularly beautiful, nostalgic, and evocative of the spirit of Christmas. [via]
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The Color Purpleby Alice WalkerISBN 0671668781 (0-671-66878-1)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Color Purple'Book summary:Winner of the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, "The Color Purple" established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. Her unforgettable portrait of Celie and her friends, family, and lovers is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, "The Color Purple" is a classic of American literature. [via]
The Complete Works of Shakespeareby William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington, Hardin CraigISBN 0673076911 (0-673-07691-1)
Hardcover, Scott, Foresman
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare'Book summary:Kindle Description:
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Every play All 37, All 154 Sonnets, with hyper-linking ready Easy To Use 'Table of Contents'
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright
This publication includes all of Shakespeare's works and comes with an Easy To Use 'Table of Contents' to navigate from the beginning to any play of your choice.
Included are all the 37 Major plays by Shakespeare.
Included are all the 154 Sonnets all by Shakespeare. [via]More editions of The Complete Works of Shakespeare:
The Complete Works of Shakespeareby David BevingtonISBN 0673388735 (0-673-38873-5)
Hardcover, Addison-Wesley
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Daddy Long-Legsby Jean WebsterISBN 0679423125 (0-679-42312-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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Damnation of Theron Wareby Harold FrederickISBN 0674190017 (0-674-19001-7)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Demonsby Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard PevearISBN 0679423141 (0-679-42314-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Fablesby Aesop, Roger L'EstrangeISBN 0679417907 (0-679-41790-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fables'Book summary:Aesop is said to have lived in the sixth century B.C., a slave on the Greek island of Samos. The eternally entertaining tales attributed to himin which the fates of sly foxes, wicked wolves, industrious ants, and others, suggest what our own behaviors should (or should not) behave been universal "best-sellers" since before L'Estrange's definitive 1692 English translation. Gooden's superb engravings were first published in 1936 in a limited edition. [via]
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Fairy Talesby Wilhelm Grimm, Brothers Grimm, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679417966 (0-679-41796-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fairy Tales'Book summary:Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Snow White are among the jewels we owe to the German brothers Grimm, who began in the first decade of the 19th century to seek out and listen to village storytellers. The best-loved of the tales they discovered are now brought together with the marvelous pictures that in 1900 first established the reputation of one of the greatest children's illustrators of all time, Arthur Rackham. [via]
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Far from the Madding Crowdby Thomas HardyISBN 0679405763 (0-679-40576-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Far from the Madding Crowd'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Michael Slater [via]More editions of Far from the Madding Crowd:
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Fathers and Childrenby Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Avril PymanISBN 0679405364 (0-679-40536-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fathers and Children'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Introduction by John Bayley; Translation by Avril Pyman [via]
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Good Earthby Pearl S. BuckISBN 0671729896 (0-671-72989-6)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Earth'Book summary:Story of the Chinese peasant Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan and their rise from poverty to riches. [via]
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Gulliver's Travelsby Jonathan SwiftISBN 0679405453 (0-679-40545-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
An immediate success on its publication in 1726, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was read, as John Gay put it, "from the cabinet council to the nursery." Dean Swift's great satire is presented here in its unexpurgated entirety. [via] -
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunterby Carson McCullersISBN 0679424741 (0-679-42474-1)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'Book summary:When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter:
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The House of Mirthby Edith WhartonISBN 0679406670 (0-679-40667-0)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Mirth'Book summary:"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Jude the Obscureby Thomas HardyISBN 0679409939 (0-679-40993-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jude the Obscure'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and its unflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a storm of controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly in response, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writing altogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though we have come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuing century, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power to shock us and disturb our dreams. [via]More editions of Jude the Obscure:
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Julius Caesarby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722719 (0-671-72271-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Julius Caesar'Book summary:One of Shakespeare's most political plays, Julius Caesar continued Shakespeare's interest in Roman history, first developed in Titus Andronicus. Drawing on Plutarch, the great historian of Rome, Shakespeare dramatises one of the most crucial moments in Roman history--the assassination of Julius Caesar. Loved by the Roman crowd but increasingly feared by the Senators, Caesar increasingly shows signs of his desire to abolish the Republic and crown himself emperor. A conspiracy is hatched, led by Cassius and Brutus, who murder Caesar on the steps of the Capitol. Mourning over his dead friend's body, Mark Antony gives one of the famous rhetorical speeches in literature, asking "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" to lament Caesar's death, privately vowing to "let slip the dogs of war" against those who have shed Caesar's blood. Antony joins forces with Caesar's son Octavius to defeat Cassius and Brutus in battle, and establish an uneasy alliance whose collapse is dramatised in Shakespeare's later play Antony and Cleopatra. Written at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Julius Caesar has been seen by many as a radically pro-Republican play which sailed close to the political wind of the time. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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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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Kidnappedby Robert Louis Stevenson, Rowland HilderISBN 0679436383 (0-679-43638-3)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'Book summary:Seventeen-year-old David Balfour's villainous uncle has him kidnapped in order to steal his inheritance. David escapes only to fall into the dangerous company of rebels who are resisting British redcoats in the Scottish highlands. [via]
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The Last of the Mohicansby James Fenimore Cooper, Sally PetersISBN 0671759310 (0-671-75931-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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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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Lolitaby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0679410430 (0-679-41043-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lolita'Book summary:Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:
She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake [via] -
Lord Jimby Joseph ConradISBN 0679405445 (0-679-40544-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lord Jim'Book summary:This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero. A classic novel. [via]
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The Magic Mountainby Thomas Mann, John E. WoodsISBN 0679441832 (0-679-44183-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Magic Mountain'Book summary:A vast intellectual drama of the forces that play upon modern man, The Magic Mountain is set in a sanitorium in the Swiss Alps--a community organized with exclusive reference to ill health, and a symbol of the diseased society of Europe before 1914. [via]
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Mary Bartonby Elizabeth GaskellISBN 0679434941 (0-679-43494-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]
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The Merchant of Veniceby William ShakespeareISBN 0671722778 (0-671-72277-8)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Merchant of Venice'Book summary:"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" Shylock's impassioned plea in the middle of The Merchant of Venice is one of its most dramatic moments. After the Holocaust, the play has become a battleground for those who argue that the play represents Shakespeare's ultimate statement against ignorance and anti-Semitism in favour of a liberal vision of tolerance and multiculturalism. Other critics have pointed out that the play is, after all, a comedy that ultimately pokes fun at a 16th-century Jew. In fact, the bare outline of the plot suggests that the play is far more complex than either of these characterisations. Bassanio, a feckless young Venetian, asks his wealthy friend, the merchant Antonio, for money to finance a trip to woo the beautiful Portia in Belmont. Reluctant to refuse his friend (to whom he professes intense love), Antonio borrows the money from the Jewish moneylender. If he reneges on the deal, Shylock jokingly demands a pound of his flesh. When all Antonio's ships are lost at sea, Shylock calls in his debt, and the love and laughter of the first scenes of the play threaten to give way to death and tragedy. The final climactic courtroom scene, complete with a cross-dressed Portia, a knife-wielding Shylock, and the debate on "the quality of mercy" is one of the great dramatic moments in Shakespeare. The controversial subject matter of the play ensures that it continues to repel, divide but also fascinate its many audiences. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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The Merry Wives of Windsorby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722786 (0-671-72278-6)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'Book summary:Written around 1597, critics believe that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written to capitalise on the popular success of the corpulent, knavish Sir John Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV. Falstaff takes centre stage again in this play, hard up for money and planning to pay off his debts by seducing the wives of two rich citizens, Ford and Page. As in the earlier Henry IV plays, Falstaffs elaborate plans go awry, with disastrous and humiliating consequences. Ford is furious with Falstaff's attempt to woo his wife, whilst both Mistress Ford and Mistress Page have the measure of Falstaff, and repeatedly dupe him, first hiding him in a laundry basket and dumping him in the river, then tormenting him in the forest of Windsor with children disguised as fairies.
Often dismissed as a hasty and mechanical play lacking in depth, The Merry Wives of Windsor is in fact a wonderfully inventive farce. Falstaff is a ludicrous mock hero, dressed as a mythical hunter in the forest, declaiming "powerful love that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some others a man a beast!" Mistress Ford and Page are also great comic creations, witty and resilient women who drive the comedy, no longer "in the holiday time" of beauty, but wise and streetwise women who are always one step ahead of the absurd Falstaff. A greatly underrated play. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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The Metamorphosesby Ovid, Frank Justus MillerISBN 0674990463 (0-674-99046-3)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphoses'Book summary:Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE17 CE), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars Amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars Amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
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Middlemarchby George EliotISBN 0679405674 (0-679-40567-4)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Middlemarch'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by E. S. Shaffer [via]More editions of Middlemarch:
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Moll Flandersby Daniel DefoeISBN 0679405488 (0-679-40548-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moll Flanders'Book summary:The recent adaptation of Moll Flanders for Masterpiece Theater is a book-lover's dream: the dialogue and scene arrangement are close enough to allow the viewer to follow along in the book. The liberties taken with the tale are few (some years of childhood between the gypsies and the wealthy family are elided; Moll is Moll throughout the tale, rather than Mrs. Betty; Robert becomes Rowland, etc.) and the sets avoid the careless anachronism of the movie version released earlier this year.
The breasts, raised skirts, tumbling hair and heavy breathing on the small screen might catch you by surprise if you don't read the book carefully (as might Moll's abandonment of her children on more than one occasion). Unlike his near-contemporary John Cleland (_Fanny Hill_), Defoe was trying to keep out of jail, and so didn't dwell on the details of "correspondence" between Moll and her varied lovers. But on the page and on the screen, Moll comes across quite clearly as a woman who might bend, but refuses to break, and who is intent on having as good a life as she can get.
E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel considers Moll and her creator's art in some detail. While he finds much to criticize in Defoe's ability to plot (where did those last two children go, anyway?), he is as besotted with Moll as I am. Immoral? Sure -- but immortal, and never, ever dull. We hope at least a few of the viewers of the recent adaptation take a couple hours to discover the original, inimitable Moll Flanders. [via]
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Much Ado about Nothingby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722808 (0-671-72280-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Much Ado about Nothing'Book summary:Like Love's Labour's Lost, Much Ado about Nothing shows Shakespeare moving into a more complex and darker terrain through his exploration of an apparently harmless comical romance. The play revolves around the adventures of the two gallants Claudio and Benedick at the court of Sicily. Claudio falls in love with the governor's daughter Hero, and is eager for his more misanthropic friend Benedick to also find love. Benedick is introduced to the fiery, independent Beatrice, and sparks soon fly as they banter with each other in a more wittier version of Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Beatrice has some wonderful ripostes to marriage asking why should a woman marry "a clod of wayward marl", whilst Benedick grumbles that "She speaks poniards and every word stabs". Meanwhile, the jealous Don John convinces Claudio that Hero has in fact been unfaithful to him. When Claudio rejects Hero on their wedding day, she faints and is taken for dead. In the hectic final scenes the play moves towards reconciliation between Claudio and Hero, and the tentative admission of the love between Benedick and Beatrice. Famously filmed by Kenneth Branagh in the Tuscan countryside with a cast that included Keanu Reeves, Much Ado about Nothing remains one of Shakespeare's most successful comedies. --Jerry Brotton. [via]
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My Antoniaby Willa Cather, Sharon O'BrienISBN 0671890867 (0-671-89086-7)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Antonia'Book summary:It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.
Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.
As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Northanger Abbeyby Jane AustenISBN 067941715X (0-679-41715-X)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'Book summary:Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.
Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Oedipus the King: Uses And Abusesby Sophocles, Bernard KnoxISBN 0671888048 (0-671-88804-8)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oedipus the King: Uses And Abuses'Book summary:A new edition of a dramatic classic about a king's struggle with pride, incest, and murder features period illustrations and photographs, a historical background, and a modern critical perspective that relates the piece to contemporary issues. Reissue. [via]
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The Old Curiosity Shopby Charles DickensISBN 0679443738 (0-679-44373-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Old Curiosity Shop'Book summary:The sound of Little Nell clattering hurriedly over cobblestones immediately sets the stage by bringing to mind the narrow and dangerous streets of Victorian London. No fewer than 20 performers are called upon to conjure up the Dickensian world of wanderers, ne'er-do-wells, con artists, and kind Samaritans--and each performance is excellent. Tom Courtenay plays the sadistic Quilp, "the ugliest dwarf that could be seen anywhere for a penny" with magnificent sarcastic glee, and Teresa Gallagher's silvery, childlike voice is ideally suited for the role of the angelic Little Nell.
Nell is on her way home to the dusty shop where she and her grandfather live a rather mysterious life. The old man disappears every night--visiting gambling dens with the naive hope of winning a fortune. Instead he sinks deeper and deeper into debt. Enter Daniel Quilp, moneylender, who becomes furious upon learning that the grandfather is a pauper and will never be able to repay his tremendous debt. Quilp seizes the curiosity shop and begins making lecherous overtures to Nell, so she and her grandfather steal away one morning to seek their fortunes elsewhere. But the demonic dwarf is never far behind.
Sound effects are employed judiciously and serve mainly as a springboard for the listener's imagination. The sound of a crying baby is enough to convey the image of crowded lodgings and genteel Victorian poverty, while raucous laughter and high-pitched squawks evoke the barely controlled chaos of an outdoor Punch and Judy show. The dramatization pares Dickens's weighty novel down to two and one-half hours, but does so skillfully, retaining Dickens's wit, marvelous dialogue, and delightful characterizations. (Running time: 155 minutes, 2 cassettes) --Elizabeth Laskey [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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› Find signed collectible books: 'Old Goriot'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Daniel Adamson [via]More editions of Old Goriot:
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Othelloby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara MowatISBN 0671722816 (0-671-72281-6)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Othello'Book summary:An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages. [via]
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Our Mutual Friendby Charles DickensISBN 0679420282 (0-679-42028-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Peter Panby J. M. Barrie, F. D. BedfordISBN 0679417923 (0-679-41792-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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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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The Portrait of a Ladyby Henry JamesISBN 0679405623 (0-679-40562-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portrait of a Lady'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The Portrait of a Lady is the most stunning achievement of Henry James's early period--in the 1860s and '70s when he was transforming himself from a talented young American into a resident of Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatest novelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of this transformation informs every page of this masterpiece. Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled--the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle--are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting--in England and Italy--provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama. [via]More editions of The Portrait of a Lady:
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A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Manby James JoyceISBN 0679405755 (0-679-40575-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
In his first and still most widely read novel, James Joyce makes a strange peace with the traditional narrative of a young mans self-discovery by respecting its substance while exploding its form, thereby inaugurating a literary revolution.
Published in 1916 when Joyce was al?ready at work on Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is exactly what its title says and much more. In an exuberantly in?ventive masterpiece of subjectivity, Joyce portrays his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling through religious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awak?ening. In part a vivid picture of Joyces own youthful evolution into one of the twentieth centurys greatest writers, it is also a moment in the intellectual history of an age. [via]More editions of A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man:
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The Prophetby Kahlil GibranISBN 0679440674 (0-679-44067-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prophet'Book summary:In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya [via]
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Pygmalionby George Bernard ShawISBN 0671643525 (0-671-64352-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Actsby George Bernard Shaw, Harry ShefterISBN 0671704966 (0-671-70496-6)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts'Book summary:When George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion more than a half century ago, no one could have predicted his play would eventually be converted into one of the great musicals of our time -- My Fair Lady -- and an Academy Award³-winning motion picture. Generations of readers and theatergoers have found relevance in Shaw's story of speech therapist Henry Higgins, who successfully transforms Liza Doolittle, a "draggle-tailed guttersnipe," into a darling of high society who momentarily upsets his hard-edged reserve. The extraordinary wit of this master dramatist of the twentieth century cuts away at the artificiality of class distinctions to reveal that human clay can be molded into wondrous shapes.
Washington Square Press' Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. This edition of Pygmalion includes the analysis of Eric Bentley from his book Bernard Shaw. Essential biographical and historical background is provided, together with notes, critical excerpts, and suggestions for further reading. A unique visual essay of period illustrations and photographs helps bring the play to life. [via]
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The Return of Nativeby Thomas HardyISBN 0679417303 (0-679-41730-3)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Return of the Native'Book summary:This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardys most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moor where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve. But Eustacias dreams of escape are not to be realizedneither Wildeve nor the returning native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation.
Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardys characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny. In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate in this masterpiece of tragic passion, a tale that perfectly epitomizes the authors own unique and melancholy genius.
From the Paperback edition. [via]-
Richard IIIby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722840 (0-671-72284-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Richard III'Book summary:"Now is the winter of our discontent," intones Richard, Duke of Gloucester at the beginning of Shakespeare's Richard III, one of his most abidingly popular plays, and one of the most chilling portrayals of political tyranny ever seen on stage. Richard emerges from the chaos which surrounds the reign of Henry VI, already dramatised by Shakespeare earlier in his career, determined to become king by removing his elder brother Edward IV by convincing him that their brother Clarence is plotting against the crown. The deaths of both Clarence and Edward take Richard inexorably towards the crown, and the series of murders and conspiracies that Richard masterminds confirms his claim that "I am determined to prove a villain". Richard's political and sexual charisma are truly chilling, and his seduction of Lady Anne, over her husband's corpse is one of the most disturbing scenes in Shakespeare. At another level, the play is also a strongly anti-Yorkist play, which has a vested interest in portraying Richard as such as vicious tyrant before seeing him toppled, ushering in a period of rule which prefigured the Tudor dynasty of which Elizabeth I was herself a part. The play has had a deep and lasting influence on audiences and writers; Brecht rewrote the play as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, while both Laurance Olivier and Ian Mckellen have produced memorable film versions of Richard III, the latter updating the play into a 1930s fascist state ruled over by a Richard akin to Oswald Mosley. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe, W.J. LintonISBN 0679428194 (0-679-42819-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robinson Crusoe'Book summary:Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has long been celebrated as the first great English novel. Based on the account of a shipwrecked sailor, it tells the story of one man rediscovering himself and the world in a solitude he thinks complete until his encounter with Man Friday.
Distinguished by its strong, pure style, and by a delight in factual precision, Robinson Crusoe is still the most compelling book we have from the Age of Exploration. The impact of Daniel Defoes prose on the development of English writing has often been compared to that of the King James Bible; and the power of this fable of human loneliness has been felt by readers of every age over the last three hundred years. [via] -
Sophocles: Antigone, the Women of Trachis, Philoctetes Oedipus at Colonusby Sophocles, Hugh Lloyd-JonesISBN 0674995589 (0-674-99558-9)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sophocles: Antigone, the Women of Trachis, Philoctetes Oedipus at Colonus'Book summary:Sophocles (497/6406 BCE), with Aeschylus and Euripides, was one of the three great tragic poets of Athens, and is considered one of the world's greatest poets. The subjects of his plays were drawn from mythology and legend. Each play contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence exceeds the human normbut who also has more than ordinary pride and self-assurance. These qualities combine to lead to a tragic end.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones gives us, in two volumes, a new translation of the seven surviving plays. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus (which tells the famous Oedipus story), Ajax (a heroic tragedy of wounded self-esteem), and Electra (the story of siblings who seek revenge on their mother and her lover for killing their father). Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the climax of the fallen hero's life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and an individual woman's conscience), The Women of Trachis (a fatal attempt by Heracles' wife to regain her husband's love), and Philoctetes (Odysseus's intrigue to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).
Of his other plays, only fragments remain; but from these much can be learned about Sophocles' language and dramatic art. The major fragmentsranging in length from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play The Searchersare collected in Volume III of this edition. In prefatory notes Lloyd-Jones provides frameworks for the fragments of known plays.
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Sophocles: Fragmentsby Sophocles, Hugh Lloyd-JonesISBN 0674995325 (0-674-99532-5)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sophocles: Fragments'Book summary:Sophocles (497/6406 BCE), the second of the three great tragedians of Athens and by common consent one of the world's greatest poets, wrote more than 120 plays. Only seven of these survive complete, but we have a wealth of fragments, from which much can be learned about Sophocles' language and dramatic art. This volume presents a collection of all the major fragments, ranging in length from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play The Searchers. Prefatory notes provide frameworks for the fragments of known plays.
Many of the Sophoclean fragments were preserved by quotation in other authors; others, some of considerable size, are known to us from papyri discovered during the past century. Among the lost plays of which we have large fragments, The Searchers shows the god Hermes, soon after his birth, playing an amusing trick on his brother Apollo; Inachus portrays Zeus coming to Argos to seduce Io, the daughter of its king; and Niobe tells how Apollo and his sister Artemis punish Niobe for a slight upon their mother by killing her twelve children. Throughout the volume, as in the extant plays, we see Sophocles drawing his subjects from heroic legend.
This is the final volume of Lloyd-Jones's new Loeb Classical Library edition of Sophocles. In volumes I and II he gives a faithful and very skilful translation of the seven surviving plays. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, and Electra. Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, and Philoctetes. [via]More editions of Sophocles: Fragments:
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The Strangerby Albert Camus, Matthew WardISBN 0679420266 (0-679-42026-6)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stranger'Book summary:The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.
The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.
Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson [via]
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The Study of Public Policyby Richard I. HofferbertISBN 0672514559 (0-672-51455-9)
Hardcover, Bobbs-Merrill
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The Tale Of Genjiby Murasaki Shikibu, Edward G. SeidenstickerISBN 0679417389 (0-679-41738-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tale Of Genji'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
In the early eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote what many consider to be the worlds first novel, more than three centuries before Chaucer. The Heian era (7941185) is recognized as one of the very greatest periods in Japanese literature, and The Tale of Genji is not only the unquestioned prose masterpiece of that period but also the most lively and absorbing account we have of the intricate, exquisite, highly ordered court culture that made such a masterpiece possible.
Genji is the favorite son of the emperor but also a man of dangerously passionate impulses. In his highly refined world, where every dalliance is an act of political consequence, his shifting alliances and secret love affairs create great turmoil and very nearly destroy him.
Edward Seidenstickers translation of Lady Murasakis splendid romance has been honored throughout the English-speaking world for its fluency, scholarly depth, and deep literary tact and sensitivity. [via]More editions of The Tale Of Genji:
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The Tale of Genjiby Shikibu Murasaki, Arthur WaleyISBN 0679424679 (0-679-42467-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tale of Genji'Book summary:One of the world's oldest novels and the greatest single work of Japanese literature, this 11th-century romance centers on the lives and loves of an emperor's son. It offers a vast tapestry of the intrigues and rivalries of court life, as well as an exquisitely detailed portrayal of a decaying aristocracy.[via]More editions of The Tale of Genji:
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The Taming of the Shrewby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722891 (0-671-72289-1)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Taming of the Shrew'Book summary:One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, The Taming of the Shrew is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua". He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, "shrewish" sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot "tame" and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that "this is the way to kill a wife with kindness". The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that "thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper". The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of "comedy" has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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The Tempestby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722905 (0-671-72290-5)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tempest'Book summary:One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that "now my charms are all o'erthrown", appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But The Tempest is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his "rough magic" to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.
However, the play is full of extraordinary anomalies and fantastic interludes, including Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian commonwealth, Prospero's magical servant Ariel, and the "poisonous slave" Caliban. The creation of Caliban has particularly fascinated critics, who have noticed in his creation a colonial dimension to the play. In this respect Caliban can be seen as an American Indian or African slave, who articulates a particularly powerful strain of anti-colonial sentiment, telling Prospero that "this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,/ Which thou tak'st from me". This has led to an intense reassessment of the play from a post-colonial perspective, as critics and historians have debated the extent to which the play endorses or criticises early English colonial expansion. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas HardyISBN 0679405860 (0-679-40586-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardys early work, Tess of the DUrbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature. [via]
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The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigoneby Sophocles, David GreneISBN 0679431322 (0-679-43132-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The legends surrounding Oedipus of Thebes and his ill-fated offspring provide the subject matter for Sophocles three greatest plays, which together represent Greek drama at the pinnacle of its achievement.
Oedipus the King, the most famous of the three, has been characterized by critics from Aristotle to Coleridge as the perfect exemplar of the art of tragedy, in its unforgettable portrayal of a mans failed attempt to escape his fate. In Oedipus at Colonus, the blind king finds his final release from the sufferings the gods have brought upon him, and Antigone completes the downfall of the House of Cadmus through the actions of Oedipuss magnificent and uncompromising daughter defending her ideals to the death. All three of The Theban Plays, while separate, self-contained dramas, draw from the same rich well of myth and showcase Sophocles enduring power.
Translated by David Grene. [via]More editions of The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone:
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To the Lighthouseby Virginia WoolfISBN 0679405372 (0-679-40537-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Lighthouse'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Though its fame as an icon of twentieth-century literature rests primarily on the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose, To the Lighthouse is above all the story of a quest, and as such it possesses a brave and magical universality.
Observed across the years at their vacation house facing the gales of the North Atlantic, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. Though it is the death of Mrs. Ramsay on which the novel turns, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Virginia Woolfs great book enacts a powerful allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life. [via]More editions of To the Lighthouse:
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 067172262X (0-671-72262-X)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'Book summary:PB [via]
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The Tragedy of Othello, Moor of Veniceby William ShakespeareISBN 0673157148 (0-673-15714-8)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley
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The Tragedy of Romeo and Julietby William ShakespeareISBN 0671722859 (0-671-72285-9)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet'Book summary:This is undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, spawning a host of imitators on stage and screen, including Leonard Bernstein's smash musical West Side Story, Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet filmed in 1968, and Baz Luhrmann's postmodern film version Romeo + Juliet. The tragic feud between "Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona", the Montagues and Capulets, which ultimately kills the two young "star-crossed lovers" and their "death-marked love" creates issues which have fascinated subsequent generations. The play deals with issues of intergenerational and familial conflict, as well as the power of language and the compelling relationship between sex and death, all of which makes it an incredibly modern play. It is also an early example of Shakespeare fusing poetry with dramatic action, as he moves from Romeo's lyrical account of Juliet--"she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" to the bustle and action of a 16th-century household (the play contains more scenes of ordinary working people than any of Shakespeare's other works). It also represents an experimental attempt to fuse comedy with tragedy. Up to the third act, the play proceeds along the lines of a classic romantic comedy. The turning point comes with the death of one of Shakespeare's finest early dramatic creations--Romeo's sexually ambivalent friend Mercutio, whose "plague o' both your houses" begins the play's descent into tragedy, "For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo". --Jerry Brotton [via]
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Treasure Islandby Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn PeakeISBN 0679418008 (0-679-41800-8)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasure Island'Book summary:Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. --Naomi Gesinger [via]
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The Trialby Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin MuirISBN 0679409947 (0-679-40994-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trial'Book summary:A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. [via]
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Tristram Shandyby Laurence SterneISBN 0679405607 (0-679-40560-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tristram Shandy'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Peter Conrad [via]More editions of Tristram Shandy:
Twelfth Night : Or, What You Willby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722948 (0-671-72294-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Two Gentlemen of Veronaby William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. MowatISBN 0671722956 (0-671-72295-6)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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Utopiaby Thomas MoreISBN 0679410767 (0-679-41076-7)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Utopia'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Jenny Mezciems [via] -
Villette: Library Editionby Charlotte BronteISBN 0679409882 (0-679-40988-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Villette: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of Villette, achieves by degrees an authentic independence from both outer necessity and inward grief. Charlotte Brontë's last novel, published in 1853, has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as strikingly modern psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallet. [via]More editions of Villette: Library Edition:
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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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› Find signed collectible books: 'War and Peace'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Three-Volume Boxed Set [via]
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