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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ambassadors'
The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Antony and Cleopatra'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'As You Like It'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide and Other Tales'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Canterbury Tales'
On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary genres. Five hundred years later, people are still reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If you haven't yet made the acquaintance of the Franklin, the Pardoner, or the Squire because you never learned Middle English, take heart: this edition of the Tales has been translated into modern idiom.
From the heroic romance of "The Knight's Tale" to the low farce embodied in the stories of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant, Chaucer treated such universal subjects as love, sex, and death in poetry that is simultaneously witty, insightful, and poignant. The Canterbury Tales is a grand tour of 14th-century English mores and morals--one that modern-day readers will enjoy. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cherry Orchard'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Poems'
Sensuous, passionate, disturbing, this is a collection of poems of love, violence and heroic deeds by arguably Shakspeare's greatest and most fascinating predecessor. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete English Poems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete English Poems of John Donne'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete English Poems of John Donne'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Plays'
Blasphemy, perversion, defiance and transgression...in a series of compelling tragedies, Marlowe challenged every authority of heaven and earth. From the proud wrath of Tamburlaine, the tyrant of Asia, to the racked anguish of Edward II, himself in thrall to unspeakable desires; from God's own Machiavel, the Duke of Guise, to Barabas, the Jew of Malta, curse of Christianity: all are taboo-breakers, to be broken in their turn. And in the tragedy of Doctor Faustus we perhaps read Marlowe's own: a tale of brilliance and audacity - and of terrible, inexorable punishment. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete Sonnets'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De Profundis'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Duchess of Malfi'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fathers and Children'
First translated in 1867, Turgenev portays the new generation of nihilists, with their reliance on the material and on science, and their lack of respect for tradition. However, the novel's hero, Bazarov, pleased neither the revolutionaries, who thought the portrait libellous, nor the reactionaries, who thought it a glorification of iconoclasm. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fathers and Sons'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Faust, Part One'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Times'
Part of the "Everyman" series, which includes a themed introduction, a chronology of the life and times of the author, notes, a selection of criticism, an annotated reading list and text summary. This edition has a new setting with wide margins. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry IV'
Written between 1596 and 1597, Henry IV Part One represents Shakespeare's increasingly mature talent in staging the history of the early Tudor monarchy. Midway in the cycle of Shakespeare's History Plays, which begin with Richard II and ultimately culminate in his last play, Henry VIII, Henry IV Part One tells the story of the troubled reign of Henry IV following his deposition of Richard II. The historical action revolves around the attempt by Henry Percy (known as Hotspur) to overthrow Henry at the Battle of Shrewsbury. However, over half the play deals with the transformation of Henry's profligate son, Prince Hal (the future King Henry V), from tavern joker to national icon.
The whole play is stolen from its kings and princes by Shakespeare's greatest comic creation, the "fat-kidneyed rascal" Sir John Falstaff, king of his own dominions--the taverns and brothels of London's Eastcheap district. The tavern scenes of the play are some of the most evocative accounts of 16th-century popular London life. They revolve around the comical but ultimately sinister relationship between Falstaff and his young apprentice Hal, who learns to "so offend to make offence a skill" as he learns the slippery ropes of realpolitik and kingship. The play is considered by many to be the liveliest and most profound of Shakespeare's History Plays, and remains one of its most popular examples. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling'
Tom Jones isn't a bad guy, but boys just want to have fun. Nearly two and a half centuries after its publication, the adventures of the rambunctious and randy Tom Jones still makes for great reading. I'm not in the habit of using words like bawdy or rollicking, but if you look them up in the dictionary, you should see a picture of this book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'
We owe 1902's The Hound of the Baskervilles to Arthur Conan Doyle's good friend Fletcher "Bobbles" Robinson, who took him to visit some scary English moors and prehistoric ruins, and told him marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed Baskerville Hall now has another mysterious death: that of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the culprit somehow be mixed up with secretive servant Barrymore, history-obsessed Dr. Frankland, butterfly-chasing Stapleton, or Selden, the Notting Hill murderer at large? Someone's been signaling with candles from the mansion's windows. Nor can supernatural forces be ruled out. Can Dr. Watson--left alone by Sherlock Holmes to sleuth in fear for much of the novel--save the next Baskerville, Sir Henry, from the hound's fangs?
Many Holmes fans prefer Doyle's complete short stories, but their clockwork logic doesn't match the author's boast about this novel: it's "a real Creeper!" What distinguishes this particular Hound is its fulfillment of Doyle's great debt to Edgar Allan Poe--it's full of ancient woe, low moans, a Grimpen Mire that sucks ponies to Dostoyevskian deaths, and locals digging up Neolithic skulls without next-of-kins' consent. "The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul," Watson realizes. "Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay ... while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet ... it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths." Read on--but, reader, watch your step! --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Italian Stories/Novelle Italiane: A Dual-Language Book'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'
Jane Eyre is a wildly emotional romance with a lonely heroine and a tormented Byronic hero, pathetic orphans, dark secrets, and a madwoman in the attic. When it was
published in 1847, it was a great popular success. The power of the writing, the masterly
handling of the narrative, and the boldly realistic style were much admired. But many found it difficult to believe that Currer Bell, the pseudonymous author, was Charlotte Brontë , a young woman from a bleak Yorkshire parsonage. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, orphaned, penniless, victim to a harsh Aunt, and miserable years at Lowood institution finds love as Governess to the sickly Adele, illegitimate daughter of Mr Rocheste. With their wedding interrupted by the sudden intrusion of Rochester's mad Creole wife, inhabitant of the upper regions of Thornfield Hall for years, Jane flees. Nursed from near-death on the moors by the Revd St John Rivers and his 2 sisters, Jane learns both that they are her cousins and that she is the recipient of some money from her Uncle. On the verge of yielding to River's appeal that she marry him, Jane is prevented by a telepathic appeal from Rochester and returns to the Hall to find the building burned, his wife dead and Rochester blinded. Yet marriage seemsaid in the restoration of his sight. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Richard III: The Tragedy of'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lyric Poems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Madame Bovary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Master of Ballantrae and Weir Herman'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Measure for Measure'
A dark and difficult play, Measure for Measure has been a popular play since the latter half of the 20th century for its prescient dramatisation of the issues of sexual and political hypocrisy, and the ways in which the state interferes in the private lives of its citizens. Set in Duke Vincentio's Vienna, where poverty, disease and prostitution are rife, Claudio and his fiancée Juliet are arrested for having sex before marriage, and Claudio is sentenced to death. Angelo, the Duke's deputy, who stands in for the Duke whilst he ostensibly goes off on a pilgrimage, enthusiastically endorses the sentence. In fact the Duke remains behind the scenes, watching Angelo as he falls for Claudio's sister Isabella, who comes to beg for her brother's life. Angelo is a wonderful creation, loathsome yet fascinating as he struggles with the double standards of his enforcement of draconian laws whilst lusting after the sister of the man he is prepared to execute, debating "The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?".
No one is spared Shakespeare's withering look at the mores of early 17th-century life, not even the pimps and madams who try to get by in the midst of the Duke's bizarre and coercive disguises and performances. The deeply ambiguous ending of Measure for Measure confirms it as one of Shakespeare's most ambivalent and arguably despairing plays. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Medea'
One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, Euripides' masterwork centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea - whom he marries and eventually abandons. Authoritative Rex Warner translation. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Medieval Europe: A Short History'
Marked by C. Warren Hollister's clear historical vision and engaging teaching style, this classic text has been judiciously revised by Judith Bennett; the tenth edition includes greater coverage of Byzantium and Islam, a revised map program, a new essay program on medieval myths, and more. In his preface to the eighth edition, Professor Hollister wrote of his realization, while in college, that our world today "is a product of the medieval past." Medieval Europe introduces today's students to the medieval roots of our own society. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Merchant of Venice'
Part of the "Everyman" series on Shakespeare, this edition provides facing-page text and notes, a chronology of Shakespeare's life and times and a selection of critical and theatrical responses to the plays over the centuries. The editor's introductions provide up-to-the-minute interpretation of the structure, atmosphere and content of each play and comment on sources and influences. The texts preserve the way Shakespeare's lines were meant to be spoken as well as their meaning. Derived from the earliest authoritative printings, they retain original spellings and punctuation which preserve puns and word play often lost in abridged versions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
This book is part of the "Everyman Shakespeare" series, providing facing-page text and notes, a chronology of Shakespeare's life and times and a selection of critical and theatrical responses to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" over the centuries. The "Everyman" texts preserve the way Shakespeare's lines were meant to be spoken as well as their meaning. Derived from the earliest authoritative printings, they retain original spellings and punctuations which preserve puns and and wordplay often lost. Sir John Gielgud, Zoe Caldwell, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Irons and other established actors, actresses and theatre directors have written forewards describing the plays in actual performance. John Andrews's introductions provide up-to-the-minute interpretation of the structure, atmosphere and content of each play and comment on sources and influences. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moby Dick'
'Command the murderous chalices!...Drink ye harpooners! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow - Death to Moby Dick!'. So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession - the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance. To Ahab, the monster that destroyed his body is not a creature, but the symbol of 'some unknown but still reasoning thing'. Uncowed by natural disasters, ill omens, even death, Ahab urges his ship towards 'the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale'. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Moll Flanders'
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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Much Ado About Nothing'
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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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'
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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'
By its evocation of a real or imaged heroic age, its contrasts of character and its variety of adventure, above all by its sheer narrative power, the Odyssey has won and preserved its place among the greatest tales in the world. It tells of Odysseus' adventurous wanderings as he returns from the long war at Troy to his home in the Greek island of Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus have been waiting for him for twenty years. He meets a one-eyed giant, Polyphemus the Cyclops; he visits the underworld; he faces the terrible monsters Scylla and Charybdis; he extricates himself from the charms of Circe and Calypso. After these and numerous other legendary encounters he finally reaches home, where, disguised as a beggar, he begins to plan revenge on the suitors who have for years been besieging Penelope and feasting on his own meat and wine with insolent impunity. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oresteia'
With wide format pages to give generous margins for notes, the editor presents the latest Aeschylus scholarship in an introduction, and also includes notes, plot summary, selected criticism and chronology of Aeschylus's life and times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers and the Furies'
Classic trilogy by great tragedian deals with the bloody history of the House of Atreus. Grand in style, rich in diction and dramatic dialogue, the plays embody Aeschylus' concerns with the destiny and fate of both individuals and the state, all played out under the watchful eye of the gods. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Othello'
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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Persuasion'
Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. In this case, she had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, social stationwise, and that Anne could do better. The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea. As always, Austen's storytelling is so confident, you can't help but allow yourself to be taken on the enjoyable journey. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Persuasion'
'All the privilege I claim for my own sex...is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.'. Anne Elliot's heartfelt words strike the keynote of Jane Austen's last completed novel. It features a heroine older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and its tone is more intimate and sober as Jane Austen unfolds a simple love-story. She described her heroine in a letter as 'almost too good for me': Anne Elliot's goodness is not of the cloying kind, but an unsentimental quality that, combined with stoicism and integrity, enables her to find happiness in love after seven years when it seemed she had for ever put an end to such a prospect. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portrait of a Lady'
"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]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man'
Masterpiece of semi-autobiographical fiction reveals a powerful portrait of the coming of age of a young man of unusual intelligence, sensitivity, and character. Telling portrayals of an Irish upbringing and schooling, the Catholic Church and its priesthood, Parnell and Irish politics, sexual experimentation and its aftermath, and problems with art and morality. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince'
Pulp version of the Prince, a Renaissance classic! [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Republic'
A newly designed second edition of the classic translation of Plato's timeless work, "The Republic," by the author of "The Closing of the American Mind." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Republic'
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Toward the end of the astonishing period of Athenian creativity that furnished Western civilization with the greater part of its intellectual, artistic, and political wealth, Plato wrote The Republic, his discussion of the nature and meaning of justice and of the ideal state and its ruler. All subsequent European thinking about these subjects owes its character, directly or indirectly, to this most famous (and most accessible) of the Platonic dialogues. Although he describes a society that looks to some like the ideal human community and to others like a totalitarian nightmare, in the course of his description Plato raises enduringly relevant questions about politics, art, education, and the general conduct of life.Translated by A. D. Lindsay [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Republic of Plato'
"What is at stake is far from insignificant: it is how one should live one's life."Plato's The Republic is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, it is an inquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation, other questions are raised: What is goodness? What is reality? What is knowledge? The Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the roles of both women and men as "guardians" of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and ruled by "philosopher kings." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Return of the Native'
Wild passion leads to tragedy as love is perverted by marriage. But the concerns of mortals are belittled by the sombre, immemorial presence of Egdon Heath, perhaps Hardy's finest evocation of his native landscape. The text is accompanied by a critical introduction. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Room With a View'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Russian Stories Pycckne Paccka3Bl: A Dual-Language Book'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'
Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'She Stoops to Conquer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Shropshire Lad'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sonnets'
Part of the "Everyman" series which has been re-set with wide margins for notes and easy-to-read type. Each title includes a themed introduction by leading authorities on the subject, life-and-times chronology of the author, text summaries, annotated reading lists and selected criticism and notes. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tale of Two Cities'
The spectre of the French Revolution--the rumbling of the death carts, thethud of the guillotine, the ferocious mobs and the storming of the Bastille--isvividly portrayed in this lavish BBC production, complete with a full cast andstirring music. Dickens' epic tale is a listening experience to betreasured. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Taming of the Shrew'
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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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tempest'
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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Men in a Boat'
Describes a comic expedition by middle-class Victorians up the Thames to Oxford. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Men in a Boat: (to Say Nothing of the Dog)'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tragedy of Julius Caesar'
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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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncle Vanya'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Utopia'
Published in Latin in 1516, "Utopia" is one of the most influential books in the Western philosophical and literary tradition and an achievement of Renaissance humanism. This edition combines More's Latin text with an English translation, a commentary, a textual guide and an introduction. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems'
After sitting through T.S. Eliot's reading of "The Waste Land," listeners may be inclined to hang up the earphones for a spell. There are no flaws to Eliot's steady-toned interpretation; in fact, his delivery is quite remarkable in its ability to match the poem's constant, somber mood. It's just that 25-plus minutes of Eliot's desolate landscapes--rendered even more real by the author's incessant tones--can wear on the emotions.
In addition to the full-length version of "The Waste Land," this recording includes Eliot's stirring narration of "The Hollow Men," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," and "Macavity the Mystery Cat." Listen to Eliot read from "The Waste Land." Visit our audio help page for more information. (Running time: 47 minutes, 1 cassette) --Rob McDonald [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'William Shakespeare'
A few narrative poems and many sonnets that have shaped the language of love from the body of Shakespeare's verse. It is some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wings of the Dove'
The Wings of the Dove is a classic example of Henry James's morality tales that play off the naiveté of an American protagonist abroad. In early-20th-century London, Kate Croy and Merton Densher are engaged in a passionate, clandestine love affair. Croy is desperately in love with Densher, who has all the qualities of a potentially excellent husband: he's handsome, witty, and idealistic--the one thing he lacks is money, which ultimately renders him unsuitable as a mate. By chance, Croy befriends a young American heiress, Milly Theale. When Croy discovers that Theale suffers from a mysterious and fatal malady, she hatches a plan that can give all three characters something that they want--at a price. Croy and Densher plan to accompany the young woman to Venice where Densher, according to Croy's design, will seduce the ailing heiress. The two hope that Theale will find love and happiness in her last days and--when she dies--will leave her fortune to Densher, so that he and Croy can live happily ever after. The scheme that at first develops as planned begins to founder when Theale discovers the pair's true motives shortly before her death. Densher struggles with unanticipated feelings of love for his new paramour, and his guilt may obstruct his ability to avail himself of Theale's gift. James deftly navigates the complexities and irony of such moral treachery in this stirring novel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Winter's Tale : Texts and Contexts'
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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