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› Find signed collectible books: 'Adam Bede'
Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, whose only delights are her baubles - and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand. Betrayed by their innocence, both Adam and Hetty allow their foolish hearts to trap them in a triangle of seduction, murder, and retribution. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Adventures of Don Quixote'
The best-known book in Spanish literature, telling the story of the adventurous knight-errant and his squire Sancho Panzo, who set out to right the wrongs of the world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There'
That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amelia'
With its combination of satire and sentiment, its focus on the seedy side of London life, and its unexpected shifts in tone, Amelia has intrigued and disturbed readers since its first publication. Eagerly awaited by Henry Fielding's eighteenth-century readers of Tom Jones, the novel perplexed many of them. Amelia counters the traditional courtship plot of eighteenth-century novels with its convincing portrayal of a marriage between an errant husband and his wife, and is ahead of its time in its depiction of the alienation of modern city life. Appendices include contemporary criticism and related works by Alexander Pope and Sarah Fielding. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Around the World in Eighty Days'
For a bet, Phileas Fogg sets out with his servant Passeportout to achieve an incredible journey - from London to Paris, Brindisi, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco, New York and back to London again, all in just eighty days. There are many alarms and surprises along the way - and a last minute setback that makes all the difference between winning and losing. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Autobiography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Autobiography, and Other Writings'
OTHER WRITINGS INCLUDE: A RECEIPT TO MAKE A NEW ENGLAND FUNERAL ELEGY; ADVICE TO A FRIEND ON CHOOSING A MISTRESS; THE SPEECH OF MISS POLLY BAKER; HOW TO SECURE HOUSES, &C. FROM LIGHTNING; THE KITE EXPERIMENT; THE WAY TO WEALTH; AN EDICT BY THE KING OF PRUSSIA; THE MORALS OF CHESS (EXCERPT); THE ELYSIAN FIELDS; INFORMATION TO THOSE WHO WOULD REMOVE TO AMERICA (EXCERPT); AN ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY; A MISCELLANY OF FRANKLIN'S OPINIONS. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Claverings'
First serialized in the "Cornhill Magazine" in 1866-67, this most socially accurate of Trollope's novels, rich in contemporary developments, was published in book form in 1867. It concerns the crucial choices that men and women must make in their profession and marriage partner. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau'
Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, "The Confessions" is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his "Confessions" he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of "Emile". Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, "The Confessions" is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Count of Monte Cristo'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cranford ; Cousin Phillis'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crime and Punishment'
Table of Contens:
Translator's Preface
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Epilogue
Search a title: enter Forward2
forward2.wordpress.com [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
British parliamentarian and soldier Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) conceived of his plan for Decline and Fall while "musing amid the ruins of the Capitol" on a visit to Rome. For the next 10 years he worked away at his great history, which traces the decadence of the late empire from the time of the Antonines and the rise of Western Christianity. "The confusion of the times, and the scarcity of authentic memorials, pose equal difficulties to the historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration," he writes. Despite these obstacles, Decline and Fall remains a model of historical exposition, and required reading for students of European history. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Desperate Remedies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Eye for an Eye'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Faust'
A brief analysis of the development, style, and protagonists of "Faust" is included with Goethe's classic tale about a troubled man who sells his soul to the devil. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Felix Holt, the Radical'
When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalizes the town of Treby Magna with his decision to stand for Parliament as a Radical. But, after the idealistic Felix Holt also returns to the town, the difference between Harold's opportunistic values and Holt's profound beliefs becomes apparent. Forthright, brusque and driven by a firm desire to educate the working-class, Felix is at first viewed with suspicion by many, including the elegant but vain Esther Lyon, the daughter of the local clergyman. As she discovers, however, his blunt words conceal both passion and deep integrity. Soon the romantic and over-refined Esther finds herself overwhelmed by a heart-wrenching decision: whether to choose the wealthy Transome as a husband, or the impoverished but honest Felix Holt. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fixed Period'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous 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]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Golden Ass'
It has been long disputed whether Apuleius meant this last-minute conversion seriously or as a final comic surprise and the challenge of interpretation continues to keep readers fascinated by this work. Apuleius Golden Ass is the most continuously and accessibly amusing book that has come down to us from classical antiquity.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Golden Lion of Granpere'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hand Of Ethelberta'
Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of four very different suitors. Will she bestow her hand upon the richest of them, or on the man she loves? Ethelberta Petherwin, alias Berta Chickerel, moves with easy grace between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a tissue of lies to aid her meteoric rise. In "The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876), Hardy drew on conventions of popular romances, illustrated weeklies, plays, fashion plates and even his wife's diary in this comic story of a woman in control of her destiny. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is the fate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteen centuries - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that led to its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes three and four, Gibbon vividly recounts the waves of barbarian invaders under commanders such as Alaric and Attila, who overran and eventually destroyed the West. He then turns his gaze to events in the East, where even the achievements of the Byzantine emperor Justinian and the campaigns of the brilliant military leader Belisarius could not conceal the fundamental weaknesses of their empire. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'
The story and characters in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame have resonated with succeeding generations since its publication in 1831. It has tempted filmmakers, and most recently animators, who have exploited its dramatic content to good effect but have inevitably lost some of the grays that make the original text so compelling.
From Victor Hugo's flamboyant imagination came Quasimodo, the grotesque bell ringer; La Esmeralda, the sensuous gypsy dancer; and the haunted archdeacon Claude Frollo. Hugo set his epic tale in the Paris of 1482 under Louis XI and meticulously re-created the
day-to-day life of its highest and lowest inhabitants. Written at a time of perennial political upheaval in France, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is the product of an emerging democratic sensibility and prefigures the teeming masterpiece Les Misé rables, which Hugo would write thirty years later.
He made the cathedral the centerpiece of the novel and called it Notre-Dame de Paris. (It received its popular English title at the time of its second translation in 1833.) Hugo wrote that his inspiration came from a carving of the word "fatality" in Greek that he had found in the cathedral. The inscription had been eradicated by the time the book was published, and Hugo feared that Notre-Dame's Gothic splendor might soon be lost to the contemporary fad for tearing down old buildings. Notre-Dame has survived as one of the great monuments of Paris, and Hugo's novel is a fitting celebration of it, a popular classic that is proving to be just as enduring.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was foundedin 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.
Jacket paintings: (front) detail from Notre Dame by Paul Lecomte, courtesy of David David Gallery/SuperStock; (spine) Victor Hugo, 1833, by Louis Boulanger of Giraudon/Art Resource, N.Y. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'John Caldigate'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Joseph Andrews'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Joseph Andrews and Shamela'
Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kissing?
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fieldings first full-length novel, depicts the many colourful and often hilarious adventures of a comically chaste servant. After being sacked for spurning the lascivious Lady Booby, Joseph takes to the road, accompanied by his beloved Fanny Goodwill, a much-put-upon foundling girl, and Parson Adams, a man often duped and humiliated, but still a model of Christian charity. In the boisterous short tale Shamela, a brilliant parody of Richardsons Pamela, the spirited and sexually honest heroine uses coyness and mock modesty to catch herself a rich husband. Together these works anticipate Fieldings great comic epic Tom Jones, with their amiable good humour and pointed social satire.
Judith Hawleys introduction compares the works of Fielding and Richardson, and discusses sex and class relations, and the literary and political world of the time. This volume also includes a chronology and suggestions for further reading.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Journal of the Plague Year'
The shocking immediacy of Daniel Defoe's description of a plague-racked city makes it one of the most convincing accounts of the Great Plague of 1665 ever written. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'
Once an ancient book is opened by the eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, his life - and the life of his nephew Axel - is changed forever. An old piece of paper has tumbled from the book, a priceless parchment that will lead them on the expedition to end all expeditions. So begins a voyage thousands of feet under the sea, as the pair embark on a terrifying journey to find what lies at the centre of the earth. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kellys and the O'Kellys'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kept in the Dark'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'
This edition looks at the Scottish identity through the text of Stevenson's classic. The duality of Scottish life - the mercantile, "respectable" Lowland Scot, as represented by David Balfour, and the romantic, rebellious Highlander, Alan Breck Stewart - runs deep in the psyche and literature of Scotland. Although Stevenson claimed that "Kidnapped" was simply an adventure tale to while away the long winter evenings, the journey and experiences of the characters can be seen as a rite of passage. He questions both the values of the "civilized" Lowland society, and the sentimental view of the highlands portrayed by Sir Walter Scott and others. The topography of the novel is detailed in extensive notes, with a Scots glossary to supplement Stevenson's own. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Vendee'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Land-Leaguers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Laodicean: A Story of Today'
Paula's vacillation, however, is not only romantic. Her ambiguity regarding religion, politics and social progress is a reflection of the author's own. This new Penguin Classics edition of Hardy's text contains an introduction and notes that illuminate and clarify these themes and draws parallels between the text and the author's life and views.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'
This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe-and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... Consistently popular since its first publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe's story of human endurance in an exotic, faraway land exerts a timeless appeal. The first important English novel, "Robinson Crusoe" has taken its rightful place among the great myths of Western civilization. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'
No one description will fit this strange, eccentric, endlessly complex masterpiece. It is a fiction about fiction-writing in which the invented world is as much infused with wit and genius as the theme of inventing it. It is a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction, and a wry demonstration of its limitations. This Penguin Classic contains Christopher Ricks's introductory essay, itself a classic of English literary criticism, together with a new introduction on the recent critical history and influence of Tristram Shandy by Melvyn New. The text and notes are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, making the scholarship of the Florida editors readily available for the first time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'
A comic masterpiece -- bawdy, profane, irreverent, brazenly illogical -- and one of the most entertaining and original works in English literature
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy is a brilliant pastiche of character sketches, obscene and hilarious vignettes, parodies of scholarly treatises on theology, art, and science, comments to the reader, blank pages, playful typography and graphics, narrative threads that appear, disappear, and reappear at whim, and incidents and images that relate, at one and the same time, to the characters and to the novel itself. The technical audacity and stylistic virtuosity Sterne brought to this eccentric fiction about fiction-writing redefined the form and scope of the novel forever. Both James Joyce and Thomas Mann acknowledged their debt to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and its influence is apparent in the works of Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, and other contemporary novelists. The text and notes in this edition are taken from the acclaimed (and definitive) Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great'
Following the most notorious criminal of his generation, Fielding relays a moral satire on the true nature of greatness when it is not legitimized by political institutions or worldly eminence, as he romanticizes the "greatness" of his hero even unto the gallows. 6 cassettes. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Linda Tressel'
First published anonymously in "Blackwood's Magazine" in eight instalments, this story appeared in book form in 1868. In this novel, Trollope explores the religious and economic forces that motivate the need for marriage. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lord Jim'
This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero. A classic novel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The MacDermots of Ballycloran'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man in the Iron Mask'
In the Musketeers final adventure, DArtagnan remains in the service of the corrupt King Louis XIV after the Three Musketeers have retired and gone their separate ways. Meanwhile, a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask wastes away deep inside the Bastille. When the destinies of king and prisoner converge, the Three Musketeers and DArtagnan find themselves caught between conflicting loyalties.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mansfield Park'
Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.
Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Marion Fay'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
This is Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, a widely acclaimed work based on the actual murder, in 1831, of a progressive mill owner. It follows Mary Barton, daughter of a man implicated in the murder, through her adolescence, when she suffers the advances of the mill owner, and later through love and marriage. Set in Manchester, between 1837-42, it paints a powerful and moving picture of working-class life in Victorian England. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
O Jem, her father wont listen to me, and its you must save Mary! Youre like a brother to her
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owners son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Marys dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist John Barton, Mary Barton (1848) powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the hungry forties as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskells great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.
In his introduction Maconald Daly discusses Elizabeth Gaskells first novel as a pioneering book that made public the great division between rich and poor a theme that inspired much of her finest work.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Master of Ballantrae'
Set at the time of the Jacobite uprising, The Master of Ballantrae tells of a family divided. James Durie, Master of Ballantrae, abandons his ancestral home to support the Scottish rebellion - leaving his younger brother Henry, who is faithful to the English crown, to inherit the title of Lord Durrisdeer. But he is to return years later, embittered by battles and a savage life of piracy on the high seas, to demand his inheritance. Turning the people against the Lord, he begins a savage feud with his brother that will lead the pair from the Scottish Highlands to the American Wilderness. Satanic and seductive, the Master was regarded by Stevenson as all I know of the devil'; his darkly manipulative schemes dominate this subtle and compelling tragedy. This edition takes as its text the Edinburgh Edition of the novel, the last approved by the author. The introduction considers the novel's inspiration and its place as one of Stevenson's greatest studies in cruelty. [via]
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› 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]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Monk: A Longman Cultural Edition'
Few could sustain the glance of his eye, at once fiery and penetrating
Savaged by critics for its supposed profanity and obscenity, and bought in large numbers by readers eager to see whether it lived up to its lurid reputation, The Monk became a succès de scandale when it was published in 1796 not least because its author was a member of parliament and only twenty years old. It recounts the diabolical decline of Ambrosio, a Capuchin superior, who succumbs first to temptations offered by a young girl who has entered his monastery disguised as a boy, and continues his descent with increasingly depraved acts of sorcery, murder, incest and torture. Combining sensationalism with acute psychological insight, this masterpiece of Gothic fiction is a powerful exploration of how violent and erotic impulses can break through the barriers of social and moral restraint.
This edition is based on the first edition of 1796, which appeared before Lewiss revisions to avoid charges of blasphemy. In his introduction, Christopher MacLachlan discusses the novels place within the Gothic genre, and its themes of sexual desire and the abuse of power.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nina Balatka'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'North and South'
This novel is a study of the contrast between the values and habits of rural southern England and industrial northern England. The heroine, Margaret Hale, is the daughter of a parson whose religious doubts force him to resign his Hampshire living and to move with his family to a northern city. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'An Old Man's Love'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'
Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pilgrim's Progress'
The great religious allegory of Christian's journey, through the Slough of Despond to the Celestial City, in search of the truth. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Railway Children'
When Father has to go away for a time, the three children and their mother leave their London house and go to live in a small house in the country. They seek solace in the nearby railway station, making friends with Perks the porter and with the station master himself. But the mystery remains: where is their father and is he ever going to return? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rob Roy'
This novel, first published in 1817, achieved a huge success and helped establish the historical novel as a literary form. In rich prose and vivid description, Rob Roy follows the adventures of a businessman's son, Frank Osbaldistone, who is sent to Scotland and finds himself drawn to the powerful, enigmatic figure of Rob Roy MacGregor, the romantic outlaw who fights for justice and dignity for the Scots. This is an incomparable portrait of the haunted Highlands and Scotland's glorious past. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robinson Crusoe'
With 'Robinson Crusoe', Defoe became the author of one of the earliest English novels and created one of the most famous and resonant myths in literature. This gripping adventure story begins as Crusoe leaves the English coast for Africa and finds himself the sole survivor of a shipwreck. On the desert island he comes across another human footprint on the shore, encounters cannibals, and befriends a native he calls Friday. Crusoe's story is also an account of one man's physical survival and his psychological and spiritual development in an alienating and dangerous solitude. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Scarlet Letter'
Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country, " Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth. With "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Scarlet Letter and Selected Tales'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'
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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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
It is a remarkably subtle and accomplished poem, in which the hero's knightly virtues of courage, courtesy and fidelity are put to the test in a strange adventure involving a huge green knight on a green horse, a winter journey, a lady in a mysterious castle and a challenge answered. It ranks as one of the greatest works of the English Middle Ages and perhaps the greatest triumph of the English alliterative tradition.
Unlike The Canterbury Tales, however, Sir Gawain is written in a dialect belonging to Cheshire, Lancashire or Staffordshire, and this seems more remote to the modern reader than Chaucer's London language. The aim of this edition has been to remove unnecessary impediments while retaining the integrity of the original. Notes and a glossary have been provided to assist an informed, critical reading of the text.
@GawainsWorld So listen here, some green man came to the hall and wants someone to cut his head off. Some sort of dare? Could be fun, right?
The deal is I cut off his head now, and he cuts off mine a year later. What a jester, doesnt he know hell be dead?
This goblin fellow is totally dead.
All seemed fine until Ichabod Crane here fell to the floor, stood up, and picked up his head. His head, in his hands. In HIS HANDS!
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde: And Other Stories'
Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote "Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde" as a "chilling shocker." He then burned the draft and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self, Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, "Jekyll And Hyde" is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature -- as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror. Published in 1866, "Jekyll And Hyde" was an instant success and brought Stevenson his first taste of fame. Though sometimes dismissed as a mere mystery story, the book has evoked much literary admirations. Vladimir Nabokov likened it to "Madame Bovary" and "Dead Souls" as "a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Symposium'
Of all the Greek philosophers Plato (427-347 B.C.) was perhaps the greatest. The Symposium - a masterpiece of dramatic dialogue - is set at a dinner party to which are invited several of the literary celebrities of Athenian society. After dinner it is proposed that each member of the company should make a speech in praise of love. A full discussion follows and the dialogue ends with a brilliant character sketch of Socrates by Alcibiades. Throughout Plate reveals, as few other authors have done, the beauty, power, and flexibility of Greek prose. --Back Cover [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from Shakespeare'
This work gives a perfect introduction to Shakespeare's greatest plays. Charles and Mary Lamb bring vividly alive all the power of "Hamlet" and "Othello", the fun of "As You Like It", and the drama of "Pericles". Conveying all of Shakespeare's wit, wisdom and humanity, and never losing the feel of his beautiful language, these tales are classic literature in their own right. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Men in a Boat to Say Nothing of the Dog! & Three Men on the Bummel'
So popular did it prove that Jerome reunited his heroes for a bicycle tour of Germany. Despite some sharp, and with hindsight, prophetic observations of the country, Three Men on the Bummel describes an equally picaresque journey constrained only 'by the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started'.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel'
D'Artagnan, arriving in Paris from Gascony with no horse and few worldly goods wishes to join the King's Guards. He finds himself in the company of three musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the most renowned fighters of their day. The adventures they share, fighting for the honour of the Queen against the machinations of 'Milady', are rich in drama, colour and romance, which is why "The Three Musketeers" has remained so popular since its first serialisation in 1844. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasure Island'
The quintessential adventure story that first established pirates in the popular imagination, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" is edited with an introduction by John Seelye in "Penguin Classics". When a mysterious sailor dies in sinister circumstances at the Admiral Benbow inn, young Jim Hawkins stumbles across a treasure map among the dead man's possessions. But Jim soon becomes only too aware that he is not the only one who knows of the map's existence, and his bravery and cunning are tested to the full when, with his friends Squire Trelawney and Dr Livesey, he sets sail in the Hispaniola to track down the treasure. With its swift-moving plot and memorably drawn characters - Blind Pew and Black Dog, the castaway Ben Gunn and the charming but dangerous Long John Silver - Stevenson's tale of pirates, treachery and heroism was an immediate success when it was first published in 1883 and has retained its place as one of the greatest of all adventure stories. In his introduction John Seelye examines Stevenson's life and influences and the novel's place within adventure fiction. This edition also includes Stevenson's essay on the composition of "Treasure Island". Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous civil engineer. Although he began his career as an essayist and travel writer, the success of "Treasure Island" (1883) and "Kidnapped" (1886) established his reputation as a writer of tales of action and adventure. Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing lent him a preoccupation with predestination and a fascination with the presence of evil, themes he explored in "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886), and "The Master of Ballantrae" (1893). If you enjoyed "Treasure Island", you might like Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", also available in "Penguin Classics". [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Trilby'
In the Latin Quarter of Paris, Trilby O'Ferrall - graceful, charming and innocent - is working as an artist's model. Her ingenuous nature makes her the perfect prey for the cruel magnetism of the demonic musician Svengali, under whose spell she falls. Using hypnotic powers Svengali shapes her into a virtuoso singer and soon she becomes Europe's most captivating soprano. But her golden voice, and even her life, will become fatally tied to him. With its thrilling plot and legendary villain, "Trilby" caused a sensation when it appeared in 1894, spawning songs, shoes and, most famously, the Trilby hat. Yet it is also a fascinating portrayal of its times, holding up a mirror to fin de siecle obsessions with sexuality, mesmerism and the occult. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Two on a Tower'
Science and romance are destined to collide, however, as work, ambition and the pressures of the outside world intrude upon the pair. In what Sally Shuttleworth calls 'a drama of oppositions and conflicts', Hardy's story sets male desire against female constancy, and 'describes an arc across the horizon of late nineteenth-century social and cultural concerns: sexuality, class, history, science and religion'.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Typee'
Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Hindi thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of Typee by Herman Melville was edited for three audiences. The first includes Hindi-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFLý or TOEICý preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Hindi speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Hindi in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placementý (APý) or similar examinations. By using the Webster's Hindi Thesaurus Edition when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Hindi or English.
TOEFLý, TOEICý, APý and Advanced Placementý are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vicar of Bullhampton'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vicar of Wakefield'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walden and Civil Disobedience'
'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.' Disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods by Walden Pond. Walden, the classic account of his stay there, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his solitary musings were often disturbed by his social conscience. 'Civil Disobedience', expressing his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, has influenced nonviolent resistance movements worldwide. Michael Meyer's introduction points out that Walden is not so much an autobiographical study as a 'shining example' of Transcendental individualism. So, too, 'Civil Disobedience' is less a call to political activism than a statement of Thoreau's insistence on living a life of principle. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wives and Daughters'
1865 novel from the English novelist and short story writer, whose writings can be seen as critiques of Victorian era attitudes, particularly those toward women, with complex narratives and dynamic women characters. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woodlanders'
The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woodlanders'
The setting is gentler than in some of Hardy's novels, but the story is similar - thwarted love and ruined lives. [via]
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