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books tagged “english lit”
books tagged “english lit”
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Amsterdamby Ian McEwanISBN 0676972179 (0-676-97217-9)
Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amsterdam'Book summary:When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top. Ian McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine [via]
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Anne of Green Gablesby L.M. Montgomery, Deborah FelderISBN 0679854673 (0-679-85467-3)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of Green Gables'Book summary:When Marilla Cuthbert's brother, Matthew, returns home to Green Gables with a chatty redheaded orphan girl, Marilla exclaims, "But we asked for a boy. We have no use for a girl." It's not long, though, before the Cuthberts can't imagine how they could ever do without young Anne of Green Gables--but not for the original reasons they sought an orphan. Somewhere between the time Anne "confesses" to losing Marilla's amethyst pin (which she never took) in hopes of being allowed to go to a picnic, and when Anne accidentally dyes her hated carrot-red hair green, Marilla says to Matthew, "One thing's for certain, no house that Anne's in will ever be dull." And no book that she's in will be, either. This adapted version of the classic, Anne of Green Gables, introduces younger readers to the irrepressible heroine of L.M. Montgomery's many stories. Adapter M.C. Helldorfer includes only a few of Anne's mirthful and poignant adventures, yet manages to capture the freshness of one of children's literature's spunkiest, most beloved characters. There's just enough to make beginning readers want more--luckily, there's a lot more in the originals! Illustrator Ellen Beier creates vibrant pictures to portray the beauty of the land around Green Gables and the spirited nature of Anne herself. (Ages 5 to 8) --Emilie Coulter [via]
More editions of Anne of Green Gables:
- Anne of Green Gables: ISBN 0679444750 (0-679-44475-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - Anne of Green Gables: ISBN 0679994289 (0-679-99428-9)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books - Anne of Green Gables: ISBN 0681007702 (0-681-00770-2)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - Anne of Green Gables: ISBN 0679854673 (0-679-85467-3)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
- Anne of Green Gables: ISBN 0679444750 (0-679-44475-0)
Audenby W. H. AudenISBN 0679443673 (0-679-44367-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Auden'More editions of Auden:
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Catch-22by Joseph HellerISBN 0679437223 (0-679-43722-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catch-22'Book summary:There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.
Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. [via] -
A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679436391 (0-679-43639-1)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Christmas Carol'Book summary:In the history of English literature, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which has been continuously in print since it was first published in the winter of 1843, stands out as the quintessential Christmas story. What makes this charming edition of Dickens's immortal tale so special is the collection of 80 vivid illustrations by Everett Shinn (1876-1953). Shinn, a well-known artist in his time, was a popular illustrator of newspapers and magazines whose work displayed a remarkable affinity for the stories of Charles Dickens, evoking the bustling street life of the mid-1800s. Printed on heavy, cream-colored paper stock, the edges of the pages have been left rough, simulating the way in which the story might have appeared in Dickens's own time. Though countless editions of this classic have been published over the years, this one stands out as particularly beautiful, nostalgic, and evocative of the spirit of Christmas. [via]
Complete English Peoms: Everyman's Libraryby John Milton, Gordon CampbellISBN 0679409971 (0-679-40997-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete English Peoms: Everyman's Library'More editions of Complete English Peoms: Everyman's Library:
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The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donneby John Donne, Charles M. CoffinISBN 0679601023 (0-679-60102-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne'Book summary:This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", "The Extasie", and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie", "His Parting From Her", and "To His Mistris Going to Bed". Presented as well are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many of his private letters; B>Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's Duell". "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time." [via]
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Corelli's Mandolinby Louis De Bernieres, Robin DesserISBN 067976397X (0-679-76397-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Corelli's Mandolin'Book summary:Fictional Novel, Literary Fiction [via]
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Dombey and Sonby Charles DickensISBN 0679435913 (0-679-43591-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dombey and Son'Book summary:Charles Dickens set this tale of a hard-hearted businessman, the son he pins all his hopes on, and the daughter he cruelly neglects in a country undergoing the storms of change brought by the Industrial Revolution.
It is said that all England mourned the heartbreaking fate of little Paul Dombey, but it is the ordeal of his loving and long-suffering sister, Florence, that carries the full emotional weight of the story. Their fathers cold obsession with the future of his business empire, the malevolent plotting of his greedy manager, Mr. Carker, and the tragic self-contempt of his proud second wife, Edith, cast a dark shadow over the life of the motherless girl. But as the world of Dombey and Son begins to fall to pieces, Florence is sustained by the warmth and brightness of humbler allies: her fiercely loyal nurse, Susan Nipper; her haplessly devoted suitor, Toots; the rough but loveable old salt Captain Cuttle and his friend Sol Gills; and her fervent admirer, the orphan Walter Gay. In its locomotive power and its transcendent moments of suspense and revelation, Dombey and Son is a superb example of Dickenss ability to combine the qualities of a social historian, a theatrical artist, and a poet of the utmost tenderness and insight.
This edition reprints the original Everyman preface by G. K. Chesteron and features forty illustrations by Phiz.With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
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Ethan Fromeby Edith WhartonISBN 0684515652 (0-684-51565-2)
Softcover, Stationery Office, The
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Fahrenheit 451by Ray BradburyISBN 067187036X (0-671-87036-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fahrenheit 451: A Novel'Book summary:In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman [via]
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Gardenby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles RobinsonISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'Book summary:Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
More editions of Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden:
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681303840 (0-681-30384-0)
Hardcover, Xs Books - Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681400560 (0-681-40056-0)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden: ISBN 0681303840 (0-681-30384-0)
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Ghostwrittenby David MitchellISBN 0679463046 (0-679-46304-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ghostwritten'Book summary:"What is real and what is not?" David Mitchell's Ghostwritten: A Novel in Nine Parts plays with precisely this question throughout its elaborately compartmentalized narrative. (That there are 10 chapters in this 9-part invention is just one more aspect of the author's mysterious schema.) With its multitude of voices and globe-girdling locations--Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Petersburg, London--this first novel offers readers a vertiginous, sometimes seductive, display of persona and place.
At the heart of Mitchell's book is the global extension of the postmodern city, and the networks (cultural, technological, phantasmagoric) to which it gives rise. A metropolis like Tokyo is quite literally beyond our comprehension:
Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It's long since filled up the plain, and now it's creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it's already become out of date. It's a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one.
At this level, urban sprawl becomes an epistemological condition. On one hand it leads to a Japanese death cult, purging the "unclean" from the city's subway with nerve gas. And on the other, it produces a certain splintering of the human personality. "I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too," chants Neal, the narrator of the book's second part. "No wonder it's all such a ... mess." He's talking about his life as a Hong Kong trader, a "man of departments, compartments, apartments." But he might also be describing the experience of reading Ghostwritten. At once loquacious and knowing, leisurely and frantic, Mitchell offers a huge, but fragmentary, portmanteau. And while he's labored diligently to solder together the many parts--the aching bodies, the reality police, the impossibly complex machinery of contemporary life--his novel, too, may suffer from an excess of split personality. --Vicky Lebeau [via]More editions of Ghostwritten:
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The Grapes of Wrathby John Steinbeck, Brad LeithauserISBN 0679420401 (0-679-42040-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Grapes of Wrath'Book summary:When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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The Great Gatsbyby F. Scott FitzgeraldISBN 0684101548 (0-684-10154-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Gatsby'Book summary:In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. [via]
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The Great Gatsbyby Hoffman, Frederick John, EdISBN 0684412845 (0-684-41284-5)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Gatsby'Book summary:An assortment of articles treating issues surrounding the Great Gatsby. Part I - From This Side of Paradise to Great Gatsby, Part II, The Great Gatsby and its world, Part III, The Great Gatsby, and Part IV, The Permanence of the Great Gatsby. Includes a bibliography. [via]
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The Happy Prince and Other Talesby Oscar Wilde, Charles RobinsonISBN 0679444734 (0-679-44473-4)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Happy Prince and Other Tales'Book summary:A pleasure seeking prince, a selfish giant, and more: Wilde's fairy tales, first published in 1888, for childlike people from eighteen to eighty." [via]
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The History of Tom Jones: A Foundlingby Henry FieldingISBN 0679405690 (0-679-40569-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling'Book summary: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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I, Claudiusby Robert GravesISBN 067972477X (0-679-72477-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I, Claudius'Book summary:Having never seen the famous 1970s television series based on Graves' historical novel of ancient Rome and being generally uneducated about matters both ancient and Roman, I wasn't prepared for such an engaging book. But it's a ripping good read, this fictional autobiography set in the Roman Empire's days of glory and decadence. As a history lesson, it's fabulous; as a novel it's also wonderful. Best is Claudius himself, the stutterer who let everyone think he was an idiot (to avoid getting poisoned) but who reveals himself in the narrative to be a wry and likable observer. His story continues in Claudius the God. [via]
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Island of Dr Moreauby H. G. WellsISBN 0679602305 (0-679-60230-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Island of Dr. Moreau'Book summary:A shipwreck in the South Seas, a palm-tree paradise where a mad doctor conducts vile experiments, animals that become human and then "beastly" in ways they never were before--it's the stuff of high adventure. It's also a parable about Darwinian theory, a social satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), and a bloody tale of horror. Or, as H. G. Wells himself wrote about this story, "The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, and I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation." This colorful tale by the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds lit a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication in 1896. [via]
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Ivanhoeby Walter ScottISBN 0679642234 (0-679-64223-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ivanhoe'Book summary:Hailed by Victor Hugo as 'the real epic of our age,' Ivanhoe was an immensely popular bestseller when first published in 1819. The book inspired literary imitations as well as paintings, dramatizations, and even operas. Now Sir Walter Scott's sweeping romance of medieval England has prompted a lavish new television production.
In the twelfth century, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe returns home to England from the Third Crusade to claim his inheritance and the love of the lady Rowena. The heroic adventures of this noble Saxon knight involve him in the struggle between Richard the Lion-Hearted and his malignant brother John: a conflict that brings Ivanhoe into alliance with the mysterious outlaw Robin Hood and his legendary fight for the forces of good.
'Scott's characters, like Shakespeare's and Jane Austen's, have the seed of life in them,' observed Virginia Woolf. 'The emotions in which Scott excels are not those of human beings pitted against other human beings, but of man pitted against Nature, of man in relation to fate. His romance is the romance of hunted men hiding in woods at night; of brigs standing out to sea; of waves breaking in the moonlight; of solitary sands and distant horsemen; of violence and suspense.' For Henry James, 'Scott was a born storyteller. . . . Since Shakespeare, no writer has created so immense a gallery of portraits.' [via] -
Ivanhoeby Scott, Walter, Sr.ISBN 0679602631 (0-679-60263-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ivanhoe'Book summary:Hailed by Victor Hugo as "the real epic of our age," Ivanhoe was an immensely popular bestseller when first published in 1819. The book inspired literary imitations as well as paintings, dramatizations, and even operas. Now Sir Walter Scott's sweeping romance of medieval England has prompted a lavish
new television production.
In the twelfth century, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe returns home to England from the Third Crusade to claim his inheritance and the love of the lady Rowena. The heroic adventures of this noble Saxon knight involve him in the struggle between Richard the Lion-Hearted and his malignant brother John: a conflict that brings Ivanhoe into alliance with the
mysterious outlaw Robin Hood and his legendary fight for the forces of good.
"Scott's characters, like Shakespeare's and Jane Austen's, have the seed of life in them," observed Virginia Woolf. "The emotions in which Scott excels are not those of human beings pitted against other human beings, but of man pitted against
Nature, of man in relation to fate. His romance is the romance of hunted men hiding in woods at night; of brigs standing out to sea; of waves breaking in the moonlight; of solitary sands and distant horsemen; of violence and suspense." For Henry James, "Scott was a born
storyteller. . . . Since Shakespeare, no writer has created so immense a gallery of portraits." [via]More editions of Ivanhoe:
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The Jungle Bookby Rudyard Kipling, Kurt WieseISBN 0679436375 (0-679-43637-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jungle Book'Book summary:Among the best loved of all childrens classics, Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book is set among a community of animals in the jungles of India, where Kipling was born and grew up. Three of the stories feature the adventures of an abandoned man cub, a boy named Mowgli, who is raised by wolves in the jungle. Other well-known stories in the collection include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the tale of a heroic mongoose who outwits vicious cobras in order to save his human benefactors, and "Toomai of the Elephants," the story of a ten-year-old elephant-handler.This edition includes black-and-white illustrations by Kurt Wiese and William Henry Drake. [via]
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Just So Storiesby Rudyard KiplingISBN 0679417974 (0-679-41797-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Just So Stories'Book summary:Kipling's own drawings, with their long, funny captions, illustrate his hilarious explanations of How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Armadillo Happened, and other animal How's. He began inventing these stories in his American wife's hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, to amuse his eldest daughter--and they have served ever since as a source of laughter for children everywhere. [via]
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Kidnappedby Robert Louis Stevenson, Rowland HilderISBN 0679436383 (0-679-43638-3)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'Book summary:A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule. [via]
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Lady Chatterley's Loverby D. H. Lawrence, Archibald Macleish, Mark SchorerISBN 0679600655 (0-679-60065-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'Book summary:Lyric and sensual, D.H. Lawrence's last novel is one of the major works of fiction of the twentieth century. Filled with scenes of intimate beauty, explores the emotions of a lonely woman trapped in a sterile marriage and her growing love for the robust gamekeeper of her husband's estate. The most controversial of Lawrence's books, Lady Chatterly's Lover joyously affirms the author's vision of individual regeneration through sexual love. The book's power, complexity, and psychological intricacy make this a completely original worka triumph of passion, an erotic celebration of life.
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Lady Chatterley's Lover:
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Little Dorrit: Library Editionby Charles DickensISBN 0679417257 (0-679-41725-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Dorrit: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Of the complex, richly rewarding masterworks he wrote in the last decade of his life, Little Dorrit is the book in which Charles Dickens most fully unleashed his indignation at the fallen state of mid-Victorian society. Crammed with persons and incidents in whose recreation nothing is accidental or spurious, containing, in its picture of the Circumlocution Office, the most witheringly exact satire of a bureaucracy we possess, Little Dorrit is a stunning example of how thoroughly Dickens could put his flair for the theatrical and his comic genius the service of his passion for justice. [via]
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London Fieldsby Martin AmisISBN 0679730346 (0-679-73034-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'London Fields'Book summary:London Fields is Amis's murder story for the end of the millennium. The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch? [via]
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Martin Chuzzlewitby Charles DickensISBN 067943884X (0-679-43884-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Martin Chuzzlewit'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)At The Center of Martin Chuzzlewit -- the novel Angus Wilson called "one of the most sheerly exciting of all Dickens stories" -- is Martin himself, very old, very rich, very much on his guard. What he suspects (with good reason) is that every one of Iris close and distant relations. now converging in droves on the country inn where they believe he is dying, will stop at nothing to become the inheritor of Iris great fortune.Having unjustly disinherited Iris grandson, young Martin, the old fellow now trusts no one but Mary Graham, the pretty girl hired as Iris companion. Though she has been made to understand she will not inherit a penny, she remains old Chuzzlewit's only ally. As the viperish relations and hangers-on close in on him, we meet some of Dickens's most marvelous characters -- among them Mr. Pecksniff (whose name has entered the language as a synonym for ultimate hypocrisy and self-importance); the fabulously evil Jonas Chuzzlewit; the strutting reptile Tigg Montague; and the ridiculous, terrible, comical Sairey Gamp.Reluctantly heading for America in search of opportunity, the penniless young Martin goes west, rides a riverboat, and is overtaken by bad company and mortal danger -- while the battle for his grandfather's gold reveals new depths of family treachery, cunning, and ruthlessness. And in scene after wonderful scene of conflict and suspense, of high excitement and fierce and hilarious satire, Dickens's huge saga of greed versus decency comes to its magnificent climax. [via]
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The Mayor of Casterbridgeby Thomas Hardy, Craig RaineISBN 0679420355 (0-679-42035-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Thomas Hardys almost supernatural insight into the course of wayward lives, his instinctive feeling for the beauty of the rural landscape, and his power to invest that landscape with moral significance all came together in an utterly fluent way in The Mayor of Casterbridge. A classically shaped story about the rise and fall of the brooding and sometimes brutal Michael Henchard in the harsh world of nineteenth-century rural England, The Mayor of Casterbridge is an emblematic product of Hardys maturityvigorous, forceful, and unclouded by illusions. [via]More editions of The Mayor of Casterbridge:
The Mezzanineby Nicholson BakerISBN 0679725768 (0-679-72576-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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A Midsummer Night's Dreamby Leon Garfield, Elena Prorokova, William ShakespeareISBN 0679838708 (0-679-83870-8)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'Book summary:An illustrated, abridged verison of the Shakespeare comedy with background information and explanatory stage directions. [via]
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More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guideby Douglas AdamsISBN 0681403225 (0-681-40322-5)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide'Book summary:1991: by Douglas Adams. You would not believe what can happen to a pennyless hitchhiker. [via]
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Oliver Twistby Charles Dickens, Les Martin, Jean Day ZallingerISBN 0679803912 (0-679-80391-2)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oliver Twist'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickenss great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creationthrough the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikesof the vast London underworld of pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickens to task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believable way, but readers over the last 150 years have delivered an alternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned Oliver Twist one of its authors most loved works.
This edition reprints the original Everymans introduction by G. K. Chesterton and includes twenty-four illustrations by George Cruikshank.
[via] 
On Histories and Stories: Selected Essaysby A. S. ByattISBN 0674008332 (0-674-00833-2)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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On the Origin of Species a Facsimile of the Firstby C. DarwinISBN 0674637526 (0-674-63752-6)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Origin of Species a Facsimile of the First'Book summary:It is now fully recognized that the publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species in 1859 brought about a revolution in mans attitude toward life and his own place in the universe. This work is rightly regarded as one of the most important books ever published, and a knowledge of it should be part of the intellectual equipment of every educated person. The book remains surprisingly modern in its assertions and is also remarkably accessible to the layman, much more so than recent treatises necessarily encumbered with technical language and professional jargon.
This first edition had a freshness and uncompromising directness that were considerably weakened in later editions, and yet nearly all available reprints of the work are based on the greatly modified sixth edition of 1872. In the only other modern reprinting of the first edition, the pagination was changed, so that it is impossible to give page references to significant passages in the original. Clearly this facsimile reprint of the momentous first edition fills a need for scholars and general readers alike.
[via]More editions of On the Origin of Species a Facsimile of the First:
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The Origin of Species: Library Editionby Charles Robert DarwinISBN 0679600701 (0-679-60070-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origin of Species: Library Edition'Book summary:Voyage with Darwin as he gathers the raw material that ushered in the greatest intellectual revolution in 2,000 years upon the publication of this very book! [via]
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Our Mutual Friendby Charles DickensISBN 0679420282 (0-679-42028-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Mutual Friend'Book summary:Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host of unforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing the author's heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, and the story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The mood is set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, and his daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned men whose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to the authorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that is later identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning from abroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered and thrown into the river.
Harmon's death is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on the condition that he marry a girl he'd never met, Bella Wilfer. His death, however, brings a new heir onto the scene, Nicodemus Boffin, the kind-hearted but low-born assistant to Harmon's father. Boffin and his wife adopt young Bella, who is determined to marry money, and also hire a mysterious young secretary, John Rokesmith, who takes an uncommon interest in their ward. Not content with just one plot, Dickens throws in a secondary love story featuring the riverman's daughter, Lizzie Hexam; a dissolute young upper-class lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn; and his rival, the headmaster Bradley Headstone. Dark as the novel is, Dickens is careful to leaven it with secondary characters who are as funny as they are menacing--blackmailing Silas Wegg and his accomplice Mr. Venus, the avaricious Lammles, and self-centered Charlie Hexam. Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens's most satisfying novels, and a fitting denouement to his prolific career. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Parade's Endby Ford Madox FordISBN 0679417281 (0-679-41728-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parade's End'Book summary:Ford Madox Ford's acclaimed masterpiece is widely considered one of the best novels of the twentieth century.
[via]
Parade's End was originally published in four parts (Some Do Not . . ., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up--, and Last Post) between 1924 and 1928. It explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of World War I, as seen through the life of Christopher Tietjens, an officer from a wealthy family who is torn between his unfaithful wife, Sylvia, and his suffragette mistress, Valentine. With scenes of sexual warfare that rival the devastation of its battlefield scenes, Parade's End is a profound dramatization of one man's internal struggles during a time of brutal world conflict. The culminating achievement of Ford's career, it fulfills his ambitious conception of the novelist's role as the historian of the present, capturing the essence of the age.More editions of Parade's End:
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Peter Panby J. M. Barrie, Cathy East Dubowski, Jean Day ZallingerISBN 0679810447 (0-679-81044-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Peter Pan'Book summary:Peter, Wendy, Captain Hook, the lost boys, and Tinker Bell have filled the hearts of children ever since Barrie's play first opened in London in 1904 and became an immediate sensation. Now this funny, haunting modern myth is presented with Bedford's wonderful illustrations, which first appeared in the author's own day, have long been out of print, and have never been equaled. [via]
More editions of Peter Pan:
- Peter Pan: ISBN 0679417923 (0-679-41792-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group - Peter Pan: ISBN 0684166119 (0-684-16611-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - Peter Pan: ISBN 0684132141 (0-684-13214-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Peter Pan: ISBN 0679810447 (0-679-81044-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
- Peter Pan: ISBN 0679417923 (0-679-41792-3)
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The Portrait of a Ladyby Henry JamesISBN 0679405623 (0-679-40562-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portrait of a Lady'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The Portrait of a Lady is the most stunning achievement of Henry James's early period--in the 1860s and '70s when he was transforming himself from a talented young American into a resident of Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatest novelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of this transformation informs every page of this masterpiece. Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled--the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle--are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting--in England and Italy--provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama. [via] -
The Quiet Americanby Graham GreeneISBN 0679600140 (0-679-60014-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quiet American'Book summary:Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy. As his native optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, cannot stand aside and just watch.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Quiet American:
A Room With a Viewby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679724761 (0-679-72476-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Secret Agentby Joseph ConradISBN 0679417230 (0-679-41723-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secret Agent'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and innocent alike.
Introduction by Paul Theroux [via]More editions of Secret Agent:
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The Secret Gardenby James Howe, Nancy CarpenterISBN 0679947515 (0-679-94751-5)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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A Series of Murdersby Simon BrettISBN 0684190966 (0-684-19096-6)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Series of Murders'Book summary:Charles Paris is in clover. He has been contracted for three whole months to play brainless bobby Sergeant Clump, foil to the charismatic amateur sleuth, Stanislas Braid, in a TV series of that name. Recourse to the Bells is still needed, however, to get him through a days filmingone made all the more arduous by the pompous posturings of the shows star, and the constant outraged interruptions of the ancient author whose detective novels are being adapted. Indeed, there is plenty of friction about, but when a particularly unpromising actress is killed, crushed to death, there seems no reason to doubt it was an accidentexcept in Charless mind. Leaving behind a trail of broken resolutions and empty bottles, Charles indulges in some sleuthing of his own. He may lack the panache of the suave Stanislas Braid, but unlike the great detective the danger Paris encounters is only too real. A Series of Murders is a witty and delightful addition to Simon Bretts popular series. [via]
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Shirleyby Charlotte BrontëISBN 0679602755 (0-679-60275-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Story of King Arthur and His Knightsby Howard PyleISBN 0684148145 (0-684-14814-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hallby Anne BrontëISBN 0679602798 (0-679-60279-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'Book summary:Over a short period in the 1840s, the three Brontë sisters working in a remote English
parsonage produced some of the best-loved and most-enduring of all novels: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a book that created a scandal when it was published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell.
Compelling in its imaginative power and bold naturalism, the novel opens in the autumn of 1827, when a mysterious woman who calls herself Helen Graham seeks refuge at the desolate moorland mansion of Wildfell Hall. Brontë's enigmatic heroine becomes the object of gossip and jealousy as neighbors learn she is escaping from an abusive marriage and living under an assumed name. A daring story that exposed the dark brutality of Victorian chauvinism, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was nevertheless attacked by some critics as a celebration of the same excesses it criticized.
"Every reader who has felt the power of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights comes, sooner or later, to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," observed Brontë scholar Margaret Lane. "Anne Brontë, with all the Brontë taste for violence and drama, and with her experience of the same rude scenes and savage Yorkshire tales that had fed the imaginations of her sisters, did not shrink. She used the material at hand, and shaped it with singular honesty and seri-
ousness....Anne is a true Brontë."
This edition of The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.
The Modern Library of the World's
Best Books
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a dramatic serial on Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, a public television series presented by WGBH-TV, Boston, made possible by a grant from the Mobil Corporation.
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was conceived in the same atmosphere as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Wildfell Hall has power and imagination, and is so close to one of the tragedies in the sisters' own lives, that no perceptive reader can be indifferent to it."
--Margaret Lane
"I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it."
--Anne Bronte [via]More editions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
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Time's Arrowby Martin AmisISBN 0679735720 (0-679-73572-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time's Arrow'Book summary:Amis attempts here to write a path into and through the inverted morality of the Nazis: how can a writer tell about something that's fundamentally unspeakable? Amis' solution is a deft literary conceit of narrative inversion. He puts two separate consciousnesses into the person of one man, ex-Nazi doctor Tod T. Friendly. One identity wakes at the moment of Friendly's death and runs backwards in time, like a movie played in reverse, (e.g., factory smokestacks scrub the air clean,) unaware of the terrible past he approaches. The "normal" consciousness runs in time's regular direction, fleeing his ignominious history. [via]
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To the Lighthouseby Virginia WoolfISBN 0679405372 (0-679-40537-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Lighthouse'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Though its fame as an icon of twentieth-century literature rests primarily on the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose, To the Lighthouse is above all the story of a quest, and as such it possesses a brave and magical universality.
Observed across the years at their vacation house facing the gales of the North Atlantic, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. Though it is the death of Mrs. Ramsay on which the novel turns, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Virginia Woolfs great book enacts a powerful allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life. [via]More editions of To the Lighthouse:
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Tom Jonesby Henry FieldingISBN 0679601260 (0-679-60126-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tom Jones'Book summary:One of the great comic novels in the English language, Tom Jones was an instant success when it was published in 1749: Ten thousand copies were sold in its first year. A foundling, Tom is discovered one evening by the benevolent Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget and brought up as a son in their household until it is time for him to set out in search of both his fortune and his true identity.
Amorous, high-spirited, and filled with what Fielding called "the glorious lust of doing good" but with a tendency toward dissolution, Tom Jones is one of the first characters in fiction to display legitimate sides of human virtue and vice. "Upon my word, I think Tom Jones is one of the most perfect plots ever planned," said Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Now, Tom Jones has been brought to television in a magnificent new co-production from A&E Network and BBC television. Max Beesley stars as Tom, with Samantha Morton (who appeared in A&E's Emma and Jane Eyre) as Sophia. The cast also includes Benjamin Whitrow, Brian Blessed, Frances De La Tour, and John Sessions. Tom Jones is directed by Metin Huseyin, produced by Suzan Harrison, with a screenplay by Simon Burke.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via] 
The Tragedy of Othello, Moor of Veniceby William ShakespeareISBN 0673157148 (0-673-15714-8)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley
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Treasure Islandby Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn PeakeISBN 0679418008 (0-679-41800-8)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasure Island'Book summary:Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. --Naomi Gesinger [via]
More editions of Treasure Island:
- Treasure Island: ISBN 0684171600 (0-684-17160-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Treasure Island: ISBN 0679203931 (0-679-20393-1)
Hardcover, D. McKay Co - Treasure Island: ISBN 0681007699 (0-681-00769-9)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - Treasure Island: ISBN 0681400595 (0-681-40059-5)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - Treasure Island: ISBN 0679418008 (0-679-41800-8)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
- Treasure Island: ISBN 0684171600 (0-684-17160-0)
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Ulyssesby James JoyceISBN 0679722769 (0-679-72276-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
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Villette: Library Editionby Charlotte BronteISBN 0679409882 (0-679-40988-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Villette: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of Villette, achieves by degrees an authentic independence from both outer necessity and inward grief. Charlotte Brontë's last novel, published in 1853, has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as strikingly modern psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallet. [via]More editions of Villette: Library Edition:
Washington Squareby Henry James, Elizabeth Hardwick, Library of American Art StaffISBN 0679732292 (0-679-73229-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Washington Square'Book summary:"Washington Square is perhaps the only novel in which a man has successfully invaded the feminine field and produced work comparable to Jane Austen's," said Graham Greene.
Inspired by a story Henry James heard at a dinner party, Washington Square tells how the rakish but idle Morris Townsend tries to win the heart of heiress Catherine Sloper against the objections of her father. Precise and understated, the book endures as a matchless social study of New York in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-
able hardbound editions of impor-
tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-
fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring
as its emblem the running torch-
bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-
gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via]-
The Way of All Fleshby Samuel ButlerISBN 0679417184 (0-679-41718-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way of All Flesh'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Samuel Butler was among the most wide-ranging of the accomplished crew of late Victorian writers to which be belonged -- a forceful controversialist in the debates that surrounded Darwin's theory of evolution, a painter who sometimes exhibited at the Royal Academy, an idiosyncratic critic and a gifted travel writer, and even, in his early years, a highly successful sheep farmer in New Zealand. He was also, as The Way of All Flesh, his deterministic tale of the havoc wrought by genetic inheritance, suggests, one of the great British masters of the novel of ideas. [via]More editions of The Way of All Flesh:
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What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century Englandby Daniel PoolISBN 0671882368 (0-671-88236-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Enland'Book summary:From fox-hunting to whist, this lively guide to the intricate manners, mores, social distinctions, sports, games, and sundry peculiarities of 19th-century England is a grand resource for anyone interested in Albion at its most arcane, eccentric, and imperial. Line drawings. [via]
More editions of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England:
- What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England: ISBN 0671793373 (0-671-79337-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Enland: ISBN 0671882368 (0-671-88236-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England: ISBN 0671793373 (0-671-79337-3)
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The Wind in the Willowsby Kenneth Grahame, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679418024 (0-679-41802-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind in the Willows'Book summary:Inspired by correspondence from Wind in the Willow's author Kenneth Grahame to his young son, award-winning illustrator Michael Foreman took up paint and brush to follow Mole, Ratty, Mr. Badger, and Toad through another edition of this well-loved kids classic.
Grahame's time-honored story, an adventure-filled idyll that meanders across a lovingly described English countryside, cemented its status as a masterpiece generations ago. But this newest edition adds some noteworthy extras: the unabridged text includes two chapters that don't appear in some modern versions ("The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn" and "Wayfarers All"), and the book closes with reproductions of two of Grahame's actual letters to his son Alistair ("My darling Mouse") in 1907, written on ornate, old-timey stationery from two Cornwall hotels and recounting one of Toad's first adventures (which Toad fans will recognize as the train-assisted escape of a certain "washerwoman").
These inclusions alone might merit a new edition, but Foreman's illustrations stand shoulder to shoulder with those of previous Winds artists (among them Ernest Shepard, the original illustrator, and Arthur Rackham, both of whom Foreman modestly stands "in awe" of). The lively, full-color illustrations appear generously throughout the book, as they convincingly capture both the story's small moments (like the washerwoman's weeping, for one) and more explosive events (like the storming of Toad Hall). (All ages) --Paul Hughes [via]
More editions of The Wind in the Willows:
- The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0684128195 (0-684-12819-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0684179571 (0-684-17957-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0684193450 (0-684-19345-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing - The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0681007680 (0-681-00768-0)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr - The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0679418024 (0-679-41802-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
- The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0684128195 (0-684-12819-5)
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The Woman in Whiteby Wilkie CollinsISBN 0679405631 (0-679-40563-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woman in White'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Introduction by Nicholas Rance [via]More editions of The Woman in White:
The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Writingsby Charlotte Perkins GilmanISBN 0679783407 (0-679-78340-7)
Softcover, Princeton Review
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Writings'More editions of The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Writings:
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