books tagged “Classic Lit”

books tagged “Classic Lit”

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  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    by Jules Verne
    ISBN 0553212524 (0-553-21252-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    The futuristic submarine, the Nautilus, takes the reader through dangerously adventurous voyages and introduces many interesting, distinctive characters. Includes colorful illustrations, notes to readers and an author profile. [via]

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  • The Aeneid of Virgil
    by Virgil
    ISBN 0553210416 (0-553-21041-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world--as literature as well.  Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism--the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate--that has influenced writers for over 2,000 years.  Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express. The Aeneid is a book for all the time and all people. [via]

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  • Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel, Morton N. Cohen
    ISBN 0553211730 (0-553-21173-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

    For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter [via]

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  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
    by Lewis Carroll
    ISBN 0553213458 (0-553-21345-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]

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  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland : The Ultimate Illustrated Edition
    by Lewis Carroll, Cooper Edens, C. S. Lewis
    ISBN 055305385X (0-553-05385-X)
    Hardcover, Random House Children's Books

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    Book summary:

    Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

    For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter [via]

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  • Anne of Avonlea
    by L.M. Montgomery, Caroline Parry
    ISBN 0553213148 (0-553-21314-8)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    The Girl from Green Gables

    It seemed  only yesterday that the skinny, freckle-faced redhead  had first come to the island. Now here was Anne,  teaching at the Avonlea school, sixteen, pretty,  and all grown up. Well, not quite grown up. In fact,  Anne was not very different from her restless  young pupils -- mischievous and spirited as ever and  headed for hilarious predicaments with a cranky new  neighbor, a hungry Jersey cow, a parrot with an  embarrassing vocabulary, and a truly  dreadful mistake!

    The Anne Books  

    Delightful, unpredictable Anne Shirley has  been charming readers of all ages, in every part of  the world, for over three-quarters of a century.  Bestsellers from the moment they were published,  the Anne Of Green Gables novels  have allowed generations of children to grow up  right along with Anne. [via]

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  • Anne of Green Gables
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 0553153277 (0-553-15327-7)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    As soon as Anne Shirley arrived at the snug,  white farmhouse called Green Gables, she knew she  wanted to stay forever... but would the Cuthberts  send her back to the orphanage? Anne knows she's not  what they expected -- a skinny girl with decidedly  red hair and a temper to match. If only she could  convince them to let her stay, she'd try very hard  not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes or blurt  out the very first thing she had to say. Anne was  not like anybody else, everyone at Green Gables  agreed; she was special -- a girl with an enormous  imagination. This orphan girl dreamed of the day  when she could call herself Anne of Green Gables. [via]

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  • Anne of the Island
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 0553213172 (0-553-21317-2)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    This volume contains "Anne of The Island" and "Anne of Windy Willows". Anne is older now, and her friends are beginning to get married and move away; meanwhile her romance with Gilbert Blythe begins to blossom, and there are developments in her career as a schoolteacher. [via]

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  • Anne of Windy Poplars
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 0553213164 (0-553-21316-4)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Green Gables #4) [Paperback] L.M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery [via]

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  • Anne's House of Dreams
    by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Caroline Parry
    ISBN 0553213180 (0-553-21318-0)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    › Find signed collectible books: 'Anne's House of Dreams'
    Book summary:

    The newlyweds, Anne and Gilbert, move into their house of dreams where they share joys and sorrows with special neighbors Captain Jim, Leslie Moore and Cornelia. The births of the first children a moving part of the story. Five 90-minute cassettes. [via]

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  • Anthem: Library Edition
    by Ayn Rand
    ISBN 0525948937 (0-525-94893-7)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    a dark portrait of forthcoming social trends describes a world without individuals, independence, or values, and is complemented by an extensive introduction featuring the author's own commentary. [via]

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  • Around the World in Eighty Days
    by Jules Verne
    ISBN 0553213563 (0-553-21356-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Jules Verne Great excitement and awe greeted its publication in 1873, and today Around the World in Eighty Days remains Jules Vernes most successful novel. A daring wager by the eccentric and mysterious Englishman Phileas Fogg that he can circle the globe in just eighty days initiates this marvelous travelogue and exciting suspense story. Together with his manservant, Passepartout, Fogg makes a breathless world tour, overcoming wild misadventures and finding time to rescue a beautiful Indian maharani from a burning funeral pyreall the while restlessly pursued by a bumbling detective called Mr. Fix. Realistically utilizing nearly every means of transportation known in the 1870s, Around the World in Eighty Days generated enchantment with scientific progressand its delightful mixture of fantasy, comedy, and dazzling suspense has kept it a perennially superb entertainment. [via]

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  • As You Like It
    by William Shakespeare, Rex Gibson
    ISBN 0521666368 (0-521-66636-8)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    Book summary:

    This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare's loveliest poetry, contrasts a court's world of envy and rivalry with a forest's world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest of Arden, the banished young heroine, Rosalind, disguised as a gentleman farmer, encounters an extraordinary assemblage of characters, including a fool, a malcontent traveler, her own banished father, and the banished young man she loves. Romantic happiness triumphs, even as we laugh at the excesses of love, at the ways of court and countryside, indeed, at everything, in this masterpiece of comic writing.

    Each Edition Includes:
    Comprehensive explanatory notes
    Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
    Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
    Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
    An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography [via]

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  • The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin
    ISBN 055321330X (0-553-21330-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's  abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her  awakening to desires and passions that threated to  consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary  Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old  Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction,  rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman  Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in  search of self-discovery turns away from convention and  society, and toward the primal, from convention  and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly  attracted to nature and the senses The  Awakening , Kate Chopin's last novel, has been  praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully  written." And Willa Cather described its style as  "exquisite," "sensitive," and  "iridescent." This edition of The  Awakening also includes a selection of  short stories by Kate Chopin. "This seems to me a  higher order of feminism than repeating the story  of woman as victim... Kate Chopin gives her female  protagonist the central role, normally reserved  for Man, in a meditation on identity and culture,  consciousness and art." -- From the  introduction by Marilynne Robinson. [via]

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  • Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories
    by Herman Melville
    ISBN 0553212745 (0-553-21274-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. "Billy Budd, Sailor," his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his "quarrel with God." It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. Melville also explores this theme in "Bartelby the Scrivener," his famous story about a Wall Street law clerk who takes passive resistance to a comicand ultimately disastrousextreme; and in "Benito Cereno," his dazzling account of oppression and rebellion on a nineteenth-century slave ship. Completing this collection of great tales are the eerie "The Encantados," the beautiful, romantic "The Piazza," and Melville's chilling science fiction parable, "The Bell-Tower." [via]

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  • London, Jack: The Call of the Wild and White Fang
    The Call of the Wild and White Fang
    by Jack London
    ISBN 0553212338 (0-553-21233-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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  • Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: Cancer Ward
    Cancer Ward
    by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
    ISBN 0553206559 (0-553-20655-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
    Cannery Row
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0531001695 (0-531-00169-5)
    Hardcover, Scholastic Library Pub

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  • Captains Courageous
    by Rudyard Kipling
    ISBN 0553211900 (0-553-21190-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    The only one of Kipling's novels to be cast in an American setting, Captains Courageous endures as one of literature's most cherished and memorable sea adventures. Harvey Cheyne, spoiled millionaire's son, tumbles overboard from a luxury liner--only to be rescued by the crew of a Gloucester schooner. Thus begins the boy's second voyage into the rugged rites and ways of sailors. Like all Kipling's masterworks, Captains Courageous is an interweaving of art and moral purpose. Angus Wilson has said that it shows "delicacy of craft and violence of feeling, exactitude and wile impressionism, subtlety and true innocence." A popular favorite since its first publication in 1897, the novel remains a classic story of youthful initiation--and a lively tribute to the author's famous code of bravery, loyalty, and honor among men. [via]

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  • A Christmas Carol
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553212443 (0-553-21244-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • Dickens, Charles: A Christmas Carol and Other Victorian Fairy Tales
    A Christmas Carol and Other Victorian Fairy Tales
    by Charles Dickens, U. C. Knoepflmacher
    ISBN 0553211269 (0-553-21126-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
    by Jack D. Zipes, Johnny Gruelle, Jacob W. Grimm
    ISBN 0553212389 (0-553-21238-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Enchanting, brimming with the wonder and magic of  Once Upon A Time, the fairy tales  of the Brothers Grimm are the special stories of  childhood that stay with us throughout our lives.  But most Americans know them only secondhand, in  adaptations that greatly reduce the tales' power to  touch our emotions and intrigue our imaginations.  Now, in the most comprehensive translation to  date, here are the classic fairy tales as the Bothers  Grimm intended them to be--rich, stark, spiced  with humor and violence, resonant with the rhythms of  folklore and song. Volume II contains 142  unabridged tales, including such bedtime favorites as  "Snow White and Rose Red" and "The  Worn-Out Dancing Shoes," as well as 32 little-known  tales that the Brothers Grimm omitted during the  course of their many revisions. These wonderful  tales of life, passion, and make-believe appeal not  only to children--who unabashedly love them--but  to readers of any age. [via]

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  • Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
    by Wilhelm Grimm, Jack David Zipes, Jacob Grimm, Johnny Gruelle
    ISBN 0553051849 (0-553-05184-9)
    Hardcover, Bantam

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    Book summary:

    A new translation of 239 fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Also includes a listing of their oral and/or literary sources. [via]

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  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
    by Mark Twain
    ISBN 0543903508 (0-543-90350-8)
    Softcover, Adamant Media

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    › Find signed collectible books: 'A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court'
    Book summary:

    This novel tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander who brings to King Arthurs Age of Chivalry the great and beneficent miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity. Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as well as his own eras faith in scientific and social progress.

    A central document in American intellectual history, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court is at once a hilarious comedy of anachronisms and incongruities, a romantic fantasy, a utopian vision, and a savage, anarchic social satire that only one of Americas greatest writers could pen. [via]

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  • Webster, Jean: Daddy Long-Legs
    Daddy Long-Legs
    by Jean Webster
    ISBN 0553209086 (0-553-20908-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Fables of Aesop
    by Ruth Spriggs
    ISBN 0528820702 (0-528-82070-2)
    Hardcover, Checkerboard Pr

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    Book summary:

    Retells 143 of Aesop's fables whose morals reflect virtues such as honesty, truth, goodness, and respect. [via]

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  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0553213318 (0-553-21331-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by helen paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special collector's edition of far from the madding crowd also features handwritten letters and drawings by hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: this edition reproduces the handwritten pages from virginia woolf's diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged thomas hardy at his home, max gate, in 1926.from the hardcover edition [via]

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  • Fathers and Sons
    by Ivan Turgenev, Barbara Makanowitzky, Alexandra Tolstoy
    ISBN 0553212591 (0-553-21259-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    When first published in 1862, this novel of a divided Russia, with peasants set against masters and fathers set against sons, caused great outrage. But its enduring legacy of social insight and conscience mixed with drama has given it universal appeal. Features an introduction by Anna Tolstoy in an exciting new Bantam Classics' package. [via]

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  • Faust, Part I
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
    ISBN 0553213482 (0-553-21348-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Goethes masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience, or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever. Here, in Faust, Part I, the tremendous versatility of Goethes genius creates some of the most beautiful passages in literature. Here too we experience Goethes characteristic humor, the excitement and eroticism of the witches Walpurgis Night, and the moving emotion of Gretchens tragic fate.

    This authoritative edition, which offers Peter Salms wonderfully readable translation as well as the original German on facing pages, brings us Faust in a vital, rhythmic American idiom that carefully preserves the grandeur, integrity, and poetic immediacy of Goethes words. [via]

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  • Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von: Faust/Bilingual
    Faust/Bilingual
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
    ISBN 055321182X (0-553-21182-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The First Quarto of Hamlet
    by William Shakespeare, Kathleen O. Irace, A. R. Braunmuller, Brian Gibbons
    ISBN 0521653908 (0-521-65390-8)
    Softcover, Cambridge University Press

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    Book summary:

    The first printed text of Shakespeare's Hamlet is about half the length of the more familiar second quarto and Folio versions. It reorders and combines key plot elements to present its own workable alternatives. This is the only modernized critical edition of the 1603 quarto in print. Kathleen Irace explains its possible origins, special features and surprisingly rich performance history, and while describing textual differences between it and other versions, offers alternatives that actors or directors might choose for specific productions. [via]

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  • Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings
    by Jonathan Swift
    ISBN 055321232X (0-553-21232-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Considered one of English literature's first and greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift possessed a timeless genius for pointing out the foibles of human nature that still has the power to provoke, amuse, and, at times, even outrage our modern sensibilities. This representative collection of Swift's major writings includes the complete Gulliver's Travels as well as A Tale of a Tub, "The Battle of the Books," "A Modest Proposal," "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity," "The Bickerstaff Papers," and many more of his brilliantly satirical works. Here too are selections from Swift's poetry and portions of his Journal to Stella. Swift's savage ridicule, corrosive wit, and sparkling humor are fully displayed in this comprehensive collection. [via]

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  • Hamlet
    by William Shakespeare, Richard Andrews, Rex Gibson
    ISBN 0521618746 (0-521-61874-6)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    Book summary:

    Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600.

    For many years interest focused on both Hamlet's inability to avenge his father's death, claiming that "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", and, according to none other than Freud, his oedipal fixation with his mother. However, more recently critics have turned their attention to Hamlet's bold theatrical self-reflexivity (most famously reflected in the performance of "The Mousetrap"), its fascination with issues of theology and Renaissance humanism, and its dense, complex poetic language. What is so remarkable about the play is the way in which it tends to uncannily reflect the concerns of different epochs. As a result, Hamlet has been at different moments defined as a romantic rebel, an angst-ridden existentialist, a paralysed intellectual and an ambivalent New Man. Whatever subsequent generations make of Hamlet, they are unlikely to exhaust the possibilities of this most extraordinary play. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton
    ISBN 0553213202 (0-553-21320-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • House of the Seven Gables
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne
    ISBN 0553212702 (0-553-21270-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the familys salvationor its downfall.

    Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables a Romance, and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel. [via]

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  • Jude
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0553211919 (0-553-21191-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    In 1895 Hardys final novel, the great tale of Jude the Obscure, sent shock waves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the institutions of marriage, education, and religion. But he had, in fact, created a deeply moral work. The stonemason Jude Fawley is a dreamer; his is a tragedy of unfulfilled aims. With his tantalizing cousin Sue Bridehead, the last and most extraordinary of Hardys heroines, Jude takes on the worldand discovers, tragically, its brutal indifference.

    The most powerful expression of Hardys philosophy, and a profound exploration of mans essential loneliness, Jude the Obscure is a great and beautiful book. His style touches sublimity. T. S. Eliot [via]

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  • The Jungle Books and Just So Stories
    by Kipling Rudyard
    ISBN 0553211994 (0-553-21199-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    First published in 1894 and 1895, The Jungle Books remain some of the most beloved tales of all time. Adored by readers of all ages, these classic stories in two volumes spin the unforgettable story of Mowglia boy raised by a pack of wolvesas he learns indelible lessons about the laws of the jungle as well as the needs of the heart. Through Mowglis journey, readers also meet the tiger Shere Khan, who stalks man and beast alike, the rock python Kaa, who dispenses wisdom, and the aging wolf Akela, who struggles as his leadership of the pack is challenged. Set in India, Kiplings great masterpiece is an allegory for Britains imperialism, filled with high adventure and extraordinary characters. The mythic tale of a boy looking for where he truly belongseither with the man-pack of the village or the wolf-pack of the wildThe Jungle Books touch both our intellect and our emotions, while Kiplings dazzling storytelling makes them the timeless archetype for popular tales to come. [via]

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  • Kidnapped
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 0553212605 (0-553-21260-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Publication Date: 1982 Kidnapped Paperback edition by author Robert Louis Stevenson [via]

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  • King Richard III
    by William Shakespeare, Pat Baldwin, Tom Baldwin
    ISBN 0521618738 (0-521-61873-8)
    Softcover, Cambridge University Press

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    "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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  • The Last of the Mohicans
    by James Fenimore Cooper
    ISBN 0553213296 (0-553-21329-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests. [via]

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  • Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim
    Lord Jim
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 0553210270 (0-553-21027-0)
    Softcover, Ballantine Books

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  • Medea
    by Euripides, Donald J. Mastronarde
    ISBN 0521643864 (0-521-64386-4)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    This edition presents Medea, the most famous play of the Athenian tragedian Euripides, in ancient Greek, with commentary designed for university Greek classes, from second-year Greek upward. It helps students experience a classic drama as they work through the process of careful translation and gives them an appreciation of the work's artistry and its relation to its culture and performance tradition. The introduction summarizes interpretive and cultural issues raised by the play and provides background on important aspects of Greek tragedy, including language, style, and metre. [via]

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  • The Merchant of Venice
    by William Shakespeare, Robert Smith, Jonathan Morris
    ISBN 0521618754 (0-521-61875-4)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    The Merchant of Venice has had a rich and varied stage history. It has aroused controversy for over four hundred years. The introduction to this edition challenges many of the preconceptions associated with the play, showing how historical events and cultural attitudes have influenced actors' interpretations and audience responses. The commentary describes how actors, directors and designers have approached the play from the first performances in the 1590s to the present. [via]

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  • The Metamorphosis: Including Selections from Kafka's Letters and Diaries and Critical Essays
    by Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold
    ISBN 055321196X (0-553-21196-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is one of the great novellas of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. This story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking up to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect-like creature. [via]

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  • Middlemarch
    by George Eliot
    ISBN 0553211803 (0-553-21180-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Middlemarch [Paperback] [via]

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  • Moll Flanders
    by Daniel Defoe
    ISBN 0553213288 (0-553-21328-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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 Nothing
    by William Shakespeare, David Bevington
    ISBN 0553213016 (0-553-21301-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • Night
    by Elie Wiesel
    ISBN 0553208071 (0-553-20807-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died. [via]

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  • Northanger Abbey
    by Barbara M. Benedict, Deirdre Le Faye
    ISBN 0521824192 (0-521-82419-2)
    Hardcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    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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  • Northanger Abbey
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 0553211978 (0-553-21197-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • Notes from Underground
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    ISBN 0553211447 (0-553-21144-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    "I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man," the irascible voice of a nameless narrator cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the brutal self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn and iconoclasm of alienated individual who has become one of the greatest antiheroes in all literature. Notes From Underground , published in 1864, marks a tuming point in Dostoevsky's writing: it announces the moral political, and social ideas he will treat on a monumental scale in Crime And Punishment , The Idiot , and The Brothers Karamazov . And it remains to this day one of the most searingly honest and universal testaments to human despair ever penned. "The political cataclysms and cultural revolutions of our century...confirm the status of Notes from Underground as one of the most sheerly astonishing and subversive creations of European fiction." -from the Introduction by Donald Fanger [via]

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  • Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!
    O Pioneers!
    by Willa Cather
    ISBN 055321358X (0-553-21358-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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  • Othello
    by William Shakespeare, Jane Coles
    ISBN 0521618762 (0-521-61876-2)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    Though this great tragedy of unsurpassed intensity and emotion is played out against Renaissance splendor, its story of the doomed marriage of a Venetian senator's daughter, Desdemona, to a Moorish general, Othello, is especially relevant to modern audiences. The differences in race and background create an initial tension that allows the horrifyingly envious villain Iago methodically to promote the "green-eyed monster" jealousy, until, in one of the most deeply moving scenes in theatrical history, the noble Moor destroys the woman he loves-only to discover too late that she was innocent. Each Edition Includes: Comprehensive explanatory notes Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography [via]

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  • The Paradiso
    by Dante Alighieri
    ISBN 0553212044 (0-553-21204-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    This brilliant new verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum captures the consummate beauty of the third and last part of Dante's Divine Comedy. The Paradiso is a luminous poem of love and light, of optics, angelology, polemics, prayer, prophecy, and transcendent experience. As Dante ascends to the Celestial Rose, in the tenth and final heaven, all the spectacle and splendor of a great poet's vision now becomes accessible to the modern reader in this highly acclaimed, superb dual language edition. With extensive notes and commentary. [via]

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  • Peter Pan
    by J. M. Barrie
    ISBN 0553211781 (0-553-21178-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Considered a masterpiece since its first appearance on stage in 1904, Peter Pan is J. M. Barries most famous work and arguably the greatest of all childrens stories. While it is a wonderful fantasy for the young, Peter Pan, particularly in the novel form Barrie published in 1911, says something important to all of us. Here the boy who wouldnt grow up and his adventures with Wendy and the lost boys in the Neverland evoke a deep emotional response as they give form to our feelings about parents, boys and girls, the unknown, freedom, and responsibility. Humorous, satiric, filled with suspenseful cliff-hangers and bittersweet truths, Peter Pan works an indisputable magic on readers of all ages, making it a true classic of imaginative literature. [via]

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  • The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde
    by Oscar Wilde
    ISBN 0553212540 (0-553-21254-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

    As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]

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  • The Portrait of a Lady
    by Henry James
    ISBN 0553211277 (0-553-21127-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Capturing the grandeur of a gracious, splendid Europe of wealth and Old World sensibilities, this glorious, complex novel has become a touchstone for a great writers entire literary achievement. From the opening pages, when the high-spirited American girl Isabel Archer arrives at the English manor Gardencourt, Jamess luminous, superbly crafted prose creates an atmosphere of intensity, expectation, and incomparable beauty.

    Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfill her potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and a brash American, as well as the secret adoration of her invalid cousin, Ralph Touchett. But her vulnerability and innocence lead her not to love but to a fatal entrapment in intrigue, deception, and betrayal. This brilliant interior drama of the forming of a womans consciousness makes The Portrait of a Lady a masterpiece of Jamess middle years. [via]

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  • The Return of the Native
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0553212699 (0-553-21269-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy's 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 Eustacia's dreams of escape are not to be realized-neither Wildeve nor the returning native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation.Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardy's 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 author's own unique and melancholy genius. [via]

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  • Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe
    ISBN 0553211056 (0-553-21105-6)
    Softcover, Ballantine Books

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    Daniel Defoe This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm, possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe- and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... [via]

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  • Romeo and Juliet
    by William Shakespeare, James N. Loehlin
    ISBN 0521667690 (0-521-66769-0)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    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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  • London, Jack: The Sea-Wolf
    The Sea-Wolf
    by Jack London
    ISBN 0553212257 (0-553-21225-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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  • Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Dozen
    by Arthur Conan Doyle
    ISBN 0553212419 (0-553-21241-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Sherlock Holmes
    The Complete Novels and Stories

    Volume I

    Since his first appearance in Beetons Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyles classic hero--a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmess adventures in crime!

    Volume I includes the early novel A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the eccentric genius of Sherlock Holmes to the world. This baffling murder mystery, with the cryptic word Rache written in blood, first brought Holmes together with Dr. John Watson. Next, The Sign of Four presents Holmess famous seven percent solution and the strange puzzle of Mary Morstan in the quintessential locked-room mystery.

    Also included are Holmess feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the chilling  The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the baffling riddle of The Musgrave Ritual, and the ingeniously plotted The Five Orange Pips, tales that bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time. [via]

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  • Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse
    ISBN 0553208845 (0-553-20884-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    In the shade of a banyan tree, a grizzled ferryman sits listening to the river. Some say he's a sage. He was once a wandering shramana and, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gautama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But this man, Siddhartha, was not a follower of any but his own soul. Born the son of a Brahman, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence, and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure and titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people," dragged around by his desires. Like Hesse's other creations of struggling young men, Siddhartha has a good dose of European angst and stubborn individualism. His final epiphany challenges both the Buddhist and the Hindu ideals of enlightenment. Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river. --Brian Bruya [via]

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  • The Taming of the Shrew
    by William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Schafer
    ISBN 0521667410 (0-521-66741-0)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    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 Tempest
    by William Shakespeare, Rex Gibson
    ISBN 0521618789 (0-521-61878-9)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    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'Urbervilles
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0553211684 (0-553-21168-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society. Scorned by outraged readers upon its publication in 1891, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is today one of the enduring classics of nineteenth-century literature. [via]

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  • The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553212966 (0-553-21296-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • Treasure Island
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 0553212494 (0-553-21249-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    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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  • Twelfth Night
    by William Shakespeare, Rex Gibson
    ISBN 0521618770 (0-521-61877-0)
    Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's finest comedies, Twelfth Night was written at the same time as Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, and whilst it shares their fascination with sex, death and confused identities, its exuberant comedy and linguistic inventiveness rises above the introspection of these plays. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated in a storm, which washes them both up at different points on the shores of Illyria. Believing each other to be dead, both attempt to survive by using their wits. Viola cross-dresses and enters the service of the lovesick Orsino, in love with Olivia, an heiress in mourning for the loss of her brother. Orsino's saucy young page Cesario (Viola) soon falls in love with "his" master, who tells "him", "all is semblative a woman's part". Unfortunately, whilst Viola falls in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with her alter ego, Cesario, whilst also being pursued at the same time by her pompous servant Malvolio. Olivia's house is also turned upside down by the antics of her drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the whole crazy situation reaches boiling point when Sebastian reappears.

    Despite the madcap plot, Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare's most complex and inventive comedies, fascinated with questions of cross-dressing, gender confusion, language and inversion, as well as retaining a darker edge to some of its laughter. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Villette: Library Edition
    by Charlotte Bronte
    ISBN 0553212435 (0-553-21243-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Bronte reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Bronte's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There, she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquetter. This first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journeya journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature. [via]

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