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  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    by Mark Twain
    ISBN 1593080689 (1-59308-068-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    "Most people easily picture Twain's long white handlebar moustache and can practically hear his riverman's drawl. Readers know he's Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and he's Mark Twain, and they've painted fences right alongside Tom Sawyer. Any number of young men have had crushes on Becky Thatcher, and any number of young women have laughed at Huck Finn's way of threading a needle. But none of Twain's eleven novels, nine travel books, and countless short stories and essays would have achieved their status had he not first paid attention himself: to everyone and everything that lived in his world."

    -- from Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction [via]

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  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll, Eliza Gatewood Warren, Lea Kaster
    ISBN 1596792353 (1-59679-235-3)
    Hardcover, Spotlight

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  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
    by Lewis Carroll, Tan Anthony Lin, John Tenniel
    ISBN 1593083459 (1-59308-345-9)
    Hardcover, Barnes & Noble

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    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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  • Anne of Avonlea
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 1595401091 (1-59540-109-1)
    Softcover, Authorhouse

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain school-teacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions. [via]

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  • Anne of Green Gables
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 1595401105 (1-59540-110-5)
    Softcover, Authorhouse

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof. [via]

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  • The Autobiography of Ben Franklin
    by Benjamin Franklin
    ISBN 1595479562 (1-59547-956-2)
    Softcover, Nuvision Pubns

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    This isn't a tale of Ben Franklin the revolutionary -- the text comes to its end long years before that -- but it does give a fascinating portrait of the man who would become one of America's founding fathers. Oh, we see hints of the trouble developing in Britain's relations with "the colonies"; and Franklin surely had dealings with the British military; but here Franklin is just coming into his own as a political figure when the tale comes to its end. But there is a wisdom, here, and a charm; and certainly a fascinating look into the everyday life of our country's pre-Revolutionary era. Even if Franklin had died after completing this text he would have left behind a powerful legacy. [via]

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  • Cabell, James Branch: Beyond Life
    Beyond Life
    by James Branch Cabell
    ISBN 1596050977 (1-59605-097-7)
    Softcover, Cosimo Inc

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  • Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Black Arrow
    The Black Arrow
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 1595405119 (1-59540-511-9)
    Softcover, 1st World Library

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  • Jewett, Sarah Orne: The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction
    The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction
    by Sarah Orne Jewett, Ted Olson
    ISBN 1593082622 (1-59308-262-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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  • Daniel Deronda
    by George Eliot, Earl L. Dachslager
    ISBN 1593082908 (1-59308-290-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    George Eliots last, most ambitious novel, Daniel Deronda aroused scandal when it first appeared in 1876. What begins as a passionate love story takes a surprising turn into the hidden world of the early Zionist movement in Victorian England.

    The story opens memorably at a roulette table, where we first meet the young and idealistic Daniel Deronda and the enchanting Gwendolen Harleth—whom many critics consider to be George Eliots finest creation. Although the two are immediately drawn to one another, Gwendolen—outwardly alluring and vivacious, inwardly complex and unsettled—is forced by circumstance into an oppressive marriage with the harsh aristocratic Henleigh Grandcourt.

    Deeply unhappy, she turns for friendship to Daniel, only to discover his involvement with Mirah Lapidoth, a talented young Jewish woman. Torn between his devotion to Gwendolen and his passion for Mirah and the plight of her people, Daniel is forced to look at his own mysterious past and find out who he really is—and who he wants to become.

    Earl L. Dachslager is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Houston and an adjunct professor in the Universitys Distant Education Program. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland. He reviews books regularly for the Houston Chronicle.

    [via]

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  • The Devil's Dictionary
    by Ambrose Bierce
    ISBN 1595479406 (1-59547-940-6)
    Softcover, Nuvision Pubns

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    The Devil's Dictionary is often considered Ambrose Bierce's most famous work. Portions of it were published in the San Francisco Wasp as a weekly column and in The Cynic's Word Book of 1906. Finally published in its entirety in 1911, the definitions found therein are as apt today as they were nearly a century ago. An example: "HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers." [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stroker, Brooke Allen
    ISBN 1593080042 (1-59308-004-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

    Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.
     
    Brooke Allen is a book critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hudson Review. A collection of her essays, Twentieth-Century Attitudes, will be published in 2003.
    [via]

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  • Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
    by Al Gore
    ISBN 1594866376 (1-59486-637-6)
    Softcover, Rodale Pr

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    What's most inspiring about Earth in the Balance is who wrote it. It's a big deal, after all, that a sitting senator was willing to write, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." And that's not all. In his 1992 book, Al Gore also wrote:

    I have become very impatient with my own tendency to put a finger to the political winds and proceed cautiously.... [E]very time I pause to consider whether I have gone too far out on a limb, I look at the new facts [on the environment crisis] that continue to pour in from around the world and conclude that I have not gone far enough.... [T]he time has long since come to take more political risks--and endure more political criticism--by proposing tougher, more effective solutions and fighting hard for their enactments.

    And the buzz on the street is that Gore actually wrote those words himself.

    When Earth in the Balance first came out, it caused quite a stir--and for good reason. It convincingly makes the case that a crisis of epidemic proportions is nearly upon us and that if the world doesn't get its act together soon and agree to some kind of "Global Marshall Plan" to protect the environment, we're all up a polluted creek without a paddle. Myriad plagues are upon us, but the worst include the loss of biodiversity, the depletion of the ozone layer, the slash-and-burn destruction of rainforests, and the onset of global warming. None of this is new, of course, nor was it new in 1992. But most environmentalists will still get a giddy feeling reading such a call to action as written by a prominent politician.

    The book is arranged into three sections: the first describes the plagues; the second looks at how we got ourselves into this mess; and the final chapters present ways out. Gore gets his points across in a serviceable way, though he could have benefited from a firmer editor's hand; at times the analogies are arcane and the pacing is odd--kind of like a Gore speech that climaxes at weird points and then sinks just as the audience is about to clap. Still, at the end you understand what's been said. Gore believes that if we apply some American ingenuity, the twin engines of democracy and capitalism can be rigged to help us stabilize world population growth, spread social justice, boost education levels, create environmentally appropriate technologies, and negotiate international agreements to bring us back from the brink. For example, a worldwide shift to clean, renewable energy sources would create huge economic opportunities for companies large and small to design, build, and maintain solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells, and other ecofriendly innovations.

    Gore doesn't mince words when describing just how hard it will be to get out of this jam. Real hope is contingent on a swelling up of concern among the public--and fast. A year into the vice presidency, in an interview with writer Bill McKibben, Gore paraphrased a key passage in his book, "The minimum that is scientifically necessary far exceeds the maximum that is politically feasible." Ah, a political out. Some readers will ask of Gore: what has he done since publishing his book to advance the political feasibility of decisive environmental action? --Chip Giller [via]

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  • The Essential Phantom of the Opera
    by Gaston Leroux, Leonard Wolf
    ISBN 1596871970 (1-59687-197-0)
    Softcover, ibooks, Incorporated

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    The Essential Phantom of the Opera is the most comprehensive edition ever produced of the classic 1911 novel of romance, mystery, and psychological suspense, fully annotated with thousands of fascinating facts and legends. Here is the complete, authoritative edition of literature's most bizarre tale of love, obsession, and aberration-a story that has held an irresistible fascination for audiences and readers for nearly a century. [via]

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  • Cleland, John: Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
    Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
    by John Cleland
    ISBN 1596540427 (1-59654-042-7)
    Softcover, Disruptive Pub

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  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    by Thomas Hardy, Jonathan A. Cook
    ISBN 1593082231 (1-59308-223-1)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Far From the Maddening Crowd, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    The first of Thomas Hardys great novels, Far From the Madding Crowd established the author as one of Britains foremost writers. It also introduced readers to Wessex, an imaginary county in southwestern England that served as the pastoral setting for many of the authors later works.

    Far From the Madding Crowd tells the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, a fiercely independent woman who inherits a farm and decides to run it herself. She rejects a marriage proposal from Gabriel Oak, a loyal man who takes a job on her farm after losing his own in an unfortunate accident. He is forced to watch as Bathsheba mischievously flirts with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, unleashing a passionate obsession deep within the reserved man. But both suitors are soon eclipsed by the arrival of the dashing soldier, Frank Troy, who falls in love with Bathsheba even though hes still smitten with another woman. His reckless presence at the farm drives Boldwood mad with jealousy, and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leads to both murder and marriage.

    A delicately woven tale of unrequited love and regret, Far from the Madding Crowd is also an unforgettable portrait of a rural culture that, by Hardys lifetime, had become threatened with extinction at the hands of ruthless industrialization.

    Jonathan A. Cook has a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of Satirical Apocalypse: An Anatomy of Melvilles The Confidence Man, and has published numerous articles on the works of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other nineteenth-century writers.

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  • Faust
    ISBN 1840221151 (1-84022-115-1)
    Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc

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    Book summary:

    Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, it became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. Beginning with an intriguing wager between God and Satan, it charts the life of a deeply flawed individual, his struggle against the nihilism of his diabolical companion Mephistopheles. Part One presents Faust's pact with the Devil and the harrowing tragedy of his love affair with the young Gretchen. Part Two shows Faust's experience in the world of public affairs, including his encounter with Helen of Troy, the emblem of classical beauty and culture. The whole is a symbolic and panoramic commentary on the human condition and on modern European history and civilisation. This new translation of both parts of Faust preserves the poetic character of the original, its tragic pathos and hilarious comedy. In addition, John Williams has translated the Urfaust, a fascinating glimpse into the young Goethe's imagination, and a selection from the draft scenarios for the Walpurgis Night witches' sabbath - material so ribald and blasphemous that Goethe did not dare publish it. [via]

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  • Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Charles T. Brooks
    ISBN 1598181106 (1-59818-110-6)
    Hardcover, Alan Rodgers Books

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    Faust calls itself "A Tragedy" right enough, but it might just as well be described as a musical comedy -- it's ripe with comic passages, features many songs, and lacks a tragic ending. And Faust isn't a classic tragic figure, either. In fact, his characteristic yearning for experience and knowledge created a type for the romantic age still known as the Faustian hero. The villain of the piece -- Mephistopheles -- is one of the most likeable characters in the play. His yearnings draw him toward the heavens, yet he is also powerfully attracted to the physical world. [via]

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  • Verne, Jules: From the Earth to the Moon
    From the Earth to the Moon
    by Jules Verne
    ISBN 1598184547 (1-59818-454-7)
    Softcover, Alan Rodgers Books

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  • The Heart of Darkness
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1599869500 (1-59986-950-0)
    Softcover, Filiquarian Pub Llc

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  • Heart Of Darkness And Selected Short Fiction
    by Joseph Conrad, George Stade, A. Michael Matin, Michael Matin
    ISBN 1593080212 (1-59308-021-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    One of the most haunting stories ever written, Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, a riverboat captain, on a voyage into the African Congo at the height of European colonialism. Astounded by the brutal depravity he witnesses, Marlow becomes obsessed with meeting Kurtz, a famously idealistic and able man stationed farther along the river. What he finally discovers, however, is a horror beyond imagining. Heart of Darkness is widely regarded as a masterpiece for its vivid study of human nature and the greed and ruthlessness of imperialism.

    This collection also includes three of Conrads finest short stories: Youth, the authors largely autobiographical tale of a young mans ill-fated sea voyage, in which Marlow makes his first appearance, The Secret Sharer, and Amy Forster.

    Features a map of the Congo Free State.
    A. Michael Matin is a professor in the English Department of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has published articles on various twentieth-century British and postcolonial writers.

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  • History of the Peloponnesian War
    by Thucydides
    ISBN 1593080913 (1-59308-091-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    A monumental work unsurpassed for its brilliant description, accuracy, and penetrating insights, Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War is a spectacular eyewitness report of the war between Greeces two most powerful city-states, Athens and Sparta, as it unfolded during the fifth century B.C.
    The first recorded political and moral analysis of a nations war policies, the History is a tragic story of virtue, ambition, and failed deterrence. All aspects of the conflict—from the battlefield strategies and the political landscape to the peoples thoughts and feelings as the long war dragged on—are presented in startlingly vivid detail.
     
    From the treachery of Alcibiades and the disastrous invasion of Sicily to the plague that devastated Athens and Pericles famous funeral oration, Thucydides has written more than a mere account of war. His History is nothing less than a classic Greek drama about the rise and fall of Athens. More than two thousand years have passed since the History was written, but its impact on modern politics, military strategy, and foreign relations has been timeless.
     
    Donald Lateiner teaches Greek, Latin, Ancient History and Comparative Folklore in the Humanities-Classics department at Ohio Wesleyan University. His scholarship focuses on Homer and Herodotus, and he has published a book on each. He also researches nonverbal behaviors in ancient literature.
    [via]

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  • Inferno
    by Dante Alighieri, Peter Bondanella, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    ISBN 1593083319 (1-59308-331-9)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The Inferno remains literatures most hallowed and graphic vision of Hell. Dante plunges readers into this unforgettable world with a deceptively simpleand now legendarytercet:

    Midway upon the journey of our life
    I found myself within a forest dark
    For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

    With these words, Dante plunges readers into the unforgettable world of the Infernoone of the most graphic visions of Hell ever created. In this first part of the epic The Divine Comedy, Dante is led by the poet Virgil down into the nine circles of Hell, where he travels through nightmare landscapes of fetid cesspools, viper pits, frozen lakes, and boiling rivers of blood and witnesses sinners being beaten, burned, eaten, defecated upon, and torn to pieces by demons. Along the way he meets the most fascinating characters known to the classical and medieval worldthe silver-tongued Ulysses, lustful Francesca da Rimini, the heretical Farinata degli Uberti, and scores of other intriguing and notorious figures.

    This edition of the Inferno revives the famous Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation, which first introduced Dantes literary genius to a broad American audience. Opening the book we stand face to face with the poet, wrote William Dean Howells of Longfellows Dante, and when his voice ceases we may marvel if he has not sung to us in his own Tuscan. Lyrically graceful and brimming with startlingly vivid images, Dantes Inferno is a perpetually engrossing classic that ranks with the greatest works of Homer and Shakespeare.

    Features a map of Hell and illustrations by Gustave Doré.
     
    Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University and a past president of the American Association for Italian Studies. His publications include a number of translations of Italian classics, books on Italian Renaissance literature and Italian cinema, and a dictionary of Italian literature.

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  • The Inferno
    by Peter Bondanella, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Gustave Dore, Alighieri Dante
    ISBN 1593080514 (1-59308-051-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The Inferno remains literatures most hallowed and graphic vision of Hell. Dante plunges readers into this unforgettable world with a deceptively simple—and now legendary—tercet:

    Midway upon the journey of our life
    I found myself within a forest dark
    For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

    With these words, Dante plunges readers into the unforgettable world of the Inferno—one of the most graphic visions of Hell ever created. In this first part of the epic The Divine Comedy, Dante is led by the poet Virgil down into the nine circles of Hell, where he travels through nightmare landscapes of fetid cesspools, viper pits, frozen lakes, and boiling rivers of blood and witnesses sinners being beaten, burned, eaten, defecated upon, and torn to pieces by demons. Along the way he meets the most fascinating characters known to the classical and medieval world—the silver-tongued Ulysses, lustful Francesca da Rimini, the heretical Farinata degli Uberti, and scores of other intriguing and notorious figures.

    This edition of the Inferno revives the famous Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation, which first introduced Dantes literary genius to a broad American audience. “Opening the book we stand face to face with the poet, wrote William Dean Howells of Longfellows Dante, “and when his voice ceases we may marvel if he has not sung to us in his own Tuscan. Lyrically graceful and brimming with startlingly vivid images, Dantes Inferno is a perpetually engrossing classic that ranks with the greatest works of Homer and Shakespeare.

    Features a map of Hell and illustrations by Gustave Doré.
     

    Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University and a past president of the American Association for Italian Studies. His publications include a number of translations of Italian classics, books on Italian Renaissance literature and Italian cinema, and a dictionary of Italian literature.

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  • The Island of Doctor Moreau: Library Edition
    by H. G. Wells
    ISBN 1595400281 (1-59540-028-1)
    Softcover, Authorhouse

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    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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  • Ivanhoe
    by Walter Scott, Gillen D'Arcy Wood
    ISBN 1593082460 (1-59308-246-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Medieval England. King Richard the Lion-hearted, coming home from the Crusades, has been captured and imprisoned in Austria. His wicked brother, John, has seized the throne and refuses to pay Richards ransom. Meanwhile the conflict between Saxon and Norman threatens to turn into civil war.

    Standing above it all is Wilfred of Ivanhoe, the disinherited son of Cedric, a Saxon noble. Ivanhoe enraged his father by following the Norman Richard to the Crusades. Now back in England, he wants to help rescue Richard—and marry Cedrics ward, Rowena. But Cedric has pledged her to a highborn Saxon in hopes of creating a new Saxon royal line. To this mix Walter Scott adds several ferocious Norman villains, the legendary Robin Hood, a Shakespearean “wise fool who constantly offers wryly sardonic comments on the action, and a sidelong look at English anti-Semitism, as a pair of Jewish characters, the beautiful Rebecca and her father, Isaac of York, alternately protect and garner protection from Ivanhoe.

    With its clanging swords, burning castles, damsels in distress, and kings in disguise, Ivanhoe remains Scotts best-loved novel of historical romance.
     
    Gillen D'Arcy Wood was born in Australia, and came to New York on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1992. He took his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2000, and is now Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of an historical novel, Hosacks Folly (Other Press, 2005), and a cultural history of Romantic literature and art, The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860 (Palgrave, 2001), as well as numerous articles on nineteenth-century British literature and culture.
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  • Lady Chatterly's Lover
    by D. H. Lawrence, Susan Ostrov Weisser
    ISBN 1593082398 (1-59308-239-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters. [via]

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  • Leaves of Grass
    by Walt Whitman, Karen Karbiener
    ISBN 1593080832 (1-59308-083-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    When Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855 as a slim tract of twelve untitled poems, Walt Whitman was still an unknown. But his self-published volume soon became a landmark of poetry, introducing the world to a new and uniquely American form. The "father of free verse," Whitman drew upon the cadence of simple, even idiomatic speech to "sing" such themes as democracy, sexuality, and frank autobiography.

    Throughout his prolific writing career, Whitman continually revised his work and expanded Leaves of Grass, which went through nine, substantively different editions, culminating in the final, authoritative "Death-bed Edition." Now the original 1855 version and the "Death-bed Edition" of 1892 have been brought together in a single volume, allowing the reader to experience the total scope of Whitman's genius, which produced love lyrics, visionary musings, glimpses of nightmare and ecstasy, celebrations of the human body and spirit, and poems of loneliness, loss, and mourning.

    Alive with the mythical strength and vitality that epitomized the American experience in the nineteenth century, Leaves of Grass continues to inspire, uplift, and unite those who read it.

     

    Karen Karbiener received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and currently teaches at New York University. She also wrote the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Frankenstein.

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  • Lord Jim
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1593080840 (1-59308-084-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    With Lord Jim, first published in 1900, Joseph Conrad transformed a tale of seafaring adventure into a subtle study of the meaning of honor and courage, loyalty and betrayal. When Jim, an idealistic merchant seaman and ships officer, abandons the supposedly sinking Patna and its passengers, he dashes his youthful dreams of glory in a single stroke. Condemned in court for his impetuous act of cowardice, Jim relegates himself to a life roaming the Far East.

    Unforgettably told by Marlow, who also narrates Conrads Heart of Darkness, the story of Lord Jim plumbs the mysteries of a man renounced by society but driven by a desire for redemption.

    A. Michael Matin is a professor in the English Department of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has published articles on various twentieth-century British and postcolonial writers, and has written the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad.

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  • Lysistrata
    by Aristophanes, Ranjit Bolt
    ISBN 1840026456 (1-84002-645-6)
    Softcover, Theatre Communications Group

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    Aristophanes is astonishingly ahead of his time in this, probably his greatest and most enduring comedy.
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  • Madame Bovary
    by Gustave Flaubert, Chris Kraus, Eleanor Marx Aveling
    ISBN 1593080522 (1-59308-052-2)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctors wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads to ruin and self-destruction.

    Along with Tolstoys Anna Karenina, Flauberts tragic novel stands as a brilliant portrayal of infidelity, an incisive psychological portrait of a woman torn between duty and desire. Written with acute attention to telling detail, Madame Bovary not only exposes the emptiness of one womans bourgeois existence and failure to fill that void with fantasies, sex, and material objects. Emmas thirst for life mirrors the universal human impulse for idealized fulfillment.
     
    Chris Kraus is the author of the novels I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, and Torpor, and a collection of essays, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. She is co-editor, with Sylvere Lotringer and Hedi El Kholti, of the independent press Semiotext(e). She teaches in the graduate program of the San Francisco Art Institute.
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  • Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street
    Main Street
    by Sinclair Lewis, Brooke Allen
    ISBN 1593080360 (1-59308-036-0)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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  • Goldstein-Lynch, Ellen: Making Leather Handbags and Other Stylish Accessories
    Making Leather Handbags and Other Stylish Accessories
    by Ellen Goldstein-Lynch, Sarah Mullins, Nicole Malone
    ISBN 1592530761 (1-59253-076-1)
    Softcover, Quarry Books

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  • The Man in the Iron Mask
    by Alexandre Dumas, Barbara T. Cooper
    ISBN 1593082339 (1-59308-233-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Deep inside the dreaded Bastille, a twenty-three-year-old prisoner called merely "Philippe" has languished for eight long, dark years. He does not know his real name or what crime he is supposed to have committed. But Aramis, one of the original Three Musketeers, has bribed his way into the cell to reveal the shocking secret that has kept Philippe locked away from the world. That carefully concealed truth could topple Louis XIV, king of France, which is exactly what Aramis is plotting to do! A daring jailbreak, a brilliant masquerade, and a terrifying fight for the throne may make Aramis betray his sacred vow, "All for one, and one for all!" In this concluding episode of the Three Musketeers saga, the actions of Aramis and the other Musketeers - Athos, Porthos, and the most dashing of them all, D'Artagnan - bring either honor or disgrace...and a horrifying punishment for the final loser in the battle royal. [via]

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  • My Antonia
    by Willa Cather
    ISBN 1593080247 (1-59308-024-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.

    Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.

    As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak [via]

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  • Of Human Bondage
    by W. Somerset Maugham, Carin Companick
    ISBN 159308238X (1-59308-238-X)
    Softcover, Fine Communications

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    Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great distance. The child did not answer, but smiled comfortably. He was very happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him. He tried to make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his mother, and he kissed her sleepily. In a moment he closed his eyes and was fast asleep. The doctor came forwards and stood by the bedside. "Oh, don't take him away yet," she moaned. [via]

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  • Oliver Twist
    by Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank, Jill Muller
    ISBN 1593080301 (1-59308-030-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    One of Dickenss most popular novels, Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, "Please, sir, I want some more." After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured readers imaginations for more than 150 years: the loathsome Fagin, the beautiful and tragic Nancy, the crafty Artful Dodger, and perhaps one of the greatest villains of all time—the terrifying Bill Sikes.

    Rife with Dickenss disturbing descriptions of street life, the novel is buoyed by the purity of the orphan Oliver. Though he is treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, his pious innocence leads him at last to salvation—and the shocking discovery of his true identity.
     
    Features illustrations by George Cruikshank.
     

    Jill Muller was born in England and educated at Mercy College and Columbia University, and currently teaches at Mercy College and Columbia University. She is working on a book on the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, to be published by Routledge.

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  • Oliver Twist
    by Neil Bartlett, Charles Dickens
    ISBN 1840024275 (1-84002-427-5)
    Softcover, Oberon Books, Limited

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    Taking their inspiration from the vivid world of the Victorian music-hall, a company of 13 actors conjure up a host of unforgettable charactersFagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes, the Artful Dodger and, of course, little Oliver himself. Neil Bartlett is artistic director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith and has adapted and translated numerous plays for the stage, many of which are published by Oberon Books.

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  • Pantagruel Gargantua
    by Francois Rabelais
    ISBN 1840221070 (1-84022-107-0)
    Softcover, Wordsworth Edition

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    The World Literature series reproduces the greatest books the world over with only the highest production standards. History, philosophy, psychology, political theory, fiction, and ancient texts are now accessible to everyone at an extremely affordable price. [via]

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  • Phantom Of The Opera
    by Gaston Leroux, Isabel Roche
    ISBN 1593082495 (1-59308-249-5)
    Softcover, Fine Communications

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. [via]

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  • The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli, W.K. Marriott
    ISBN 1598189360 (1-59818-936-0)
    Softcover, Alan Rodgers Books

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    "Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they see him take most delight; whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes, worthy of their greatness. Desiring therefore to present myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my devotion towards you, I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity; which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into a little volume, to your Magnificence." (From the author's dedication to "To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De' Medici.") [via]

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  • Prince And Other Writings
    by Niccolo Machiavelli, Wayne A. Rebhorn
    ISBN 1593080603 (1-59308-060-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Prince and Other Writings, by Niccolo Machiavelli, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    One of historys greatest political philosophers, Niccolò Machiavelli is notorious for his treatise The Prince, which has become a cornerstone of modern political theory. Written in 1513 and published in 1532, after Machivellis death, The Prince immediately provoked controversy that has continued unabated to this day.

    Defining human nature as inherently selfish, Machiavelli proposes that social conflict and violence are natural phenomena that help determine the ablest, most versatile form of government. Asserting that idealism has no place in the political arena, The Prince primarily addresses a monarchs difficulties in retaining authority. Considered the first expression of political realism, it has often been accused of advocating a political philosophy in which the end justifies the means. Indeed the emphasis in The Prince on practical success, at the expense even of traditional moral values, earned Machiavelli a reputation for ruthlessness, deception, and cruelty. Many scholars contend, however, that the authors pragmatic views of ethics and politics reflected the realities of his time, as exemplified by the Medici family of Florence.

    Debates about Machiavellis theories are as lively today as they were 450 years ago, but no one questions the importance of his fundamental contribution to Western political thought. This newly translated edition also includes Machiavellis Letter to Francesco Vettori, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, and excerpts from the Discourses on Livy.
     

    Wayne A. Rebhorn, Celanese Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas, has authored numerous studies of Renaissance European literature. His Foxes and Lions: Machiavellis Confidence Men won the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the Modern Language Association of America in 1990.

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  • The Red and the Black
    by Stendhal, Bruce Robbins, Horace Barnett Samuel
    ISBN 159308286X (1-59308-286-X)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Red and the Black, by Stendhal, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    After Napoleons defeat, the French aristocracy tried to reassert its power in a government known as the Restoration. Venal and corrupt, the Restoration fell in 1830. Later that year, Stendhal published his scathing satire of Restoration society, The Red and the Black. Its title refers to the military and the clergy, the two career paths open to young men of intelligence and ambition but no social standing.

     

    Stendhals hero, Julien Sorel, is such a young man. A seminary student, he is nevertheless an admirer of Napoleon, and dreams of military glory. When he is hired to tutor the mayors children, he quickly seduces the mayors wife, then moves on to Paris where he conquers a noblemans daughter. Sorel comes to believe that the secret of success is to outperform the hypocrites and vicious opportunists who surround him—and hes right. But when the rich and powerful he so admires align against him, his downfall becomes unavoidable.

     

    A master of characterization, Stendhal paints a fascinating, multi-layered portrait of Julien Sorel, who endures as one of literatures most complex and surprisingly sympathetic—a would-be manipulator out of his depth in a sea of sharks.

     

    Bruce Robbins is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress, The Servants Hand: English Fiction from Below, and Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture.

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  • The Republic
    by Plato
    ISBN 1593080972 (1-59308-097-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Republic, by Plato, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    One of the greatest works of philosophy, political theory, and literature ever produced, Platos Republic has shaped Western thought for thousands of years, and remains as relevant today as when it was written during the fourth century B.C.

    Republic begins by posing a central question: "What is justice, and why should we be just, especially when the wicked often seem happier and more successful?" For Plato, the answer lies with the ways people, groups, and institutions organize and behave. A brilliant inquiry into the problems of constructing the perfect state, and the roles education, the arts, family, and religion should play in our lives, Republic employs picturesque settings, sharply outlined characters, and conversational dialogue to drive home the philosophers often provocative arguments.

    It has been said that the entire history of Western philosophy consists of nothing more than "a series of footnotes to Plato." Vastly entertaining, occasionally shocking, and always stimulating, Republic continues to enrich and expand the outlook of all who read it.


     

    Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger holds degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia University. A specialist in the culture and literature of Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., she teaches at Columbia University and New York Universitys Gallatin School.

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  • Rilla of Ingleside
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 1594624275 (1-59462-427-5)
    Softcover, Standard Pubns Inc

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    This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. [via]

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  • Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe
    ISBN 1593080115 (1-59308-011-5)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant success when first published in 1719 and has inspired countless imitations.

    In his own words, Robinson Crusoe tells of the terrible storm that drowned all his shipmates and left him marooned on a deserted island. Forced to overcome despair, doubt, and self-pity, he struggles to create a life for himself in the wilderness. From practically nothing, Crusoe painstakingly learns how to make pottery, grow crops, domesticate livestock, and build a house. His many adventures are recounted in vivid detail, including a fierce battle with cannibals and his rescue of Friday, the man who becomes his trusted companion.

    Full of enchanting detail and daring heroics, Robinson Crusoe is a celebration of courage, patience, ingenuity, and hard work.

    L. J. Swingle is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Kentucky, where his primary field of study is the intellectual contexts of British Romanticism as reflected in the works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets and novelists.

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  • The Satyricon
    by Petronius
    ISBN 1840221100 (1-84022-110-0)
    Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc

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    Hailed as the first example of the novel form, this text gives a sardonic view and realistic picture of the luxuries, vices and social manners of Imperial Rome. [via]

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  • Selected Poems
    by Carl Sandburg, Paul Berman
    ISBN 159853100X (1-59853-100-X)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    With the publication of Chicago Poems in 1916, Carl Sandburg became one of the most famous poets in America: the voice of a midwestern literary revolt, fusing free-verse poetics with hard-edged journalistic observation and energetic, sometimes raucous protest. By the time his first book appeared, Sandburg had been many things--a farm hand, a soldier in the Spanish-American War, an active Socialist, a newspaper reporter and movie reviewer-and he was determined to write poetry that would explode the genteel conventions of contemporary verse. His poems are populated by factory workers, washerwomen, crooked politicians, hobos, vaudeville dancers, and battle-scarred radicals. Writing from the bottom up, bringing to his poetry the immediacy of America's streets and prairies, factories and jails, Sandburg forged a distinctive style at once lyrical and vernacular, by turns angry, gritty, funny, and tender. Paul Berman takes a fresh look at Sandburg's work and what it can tell us about 20th-century America in a volume that draws on such volumes as Cornhuskers, Smoke and Steel, and Slabs of the Sunburnt West. [via]

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  • Sense And Sensibility
    by Jane Austen, Laura Engel
    ISBN 1593080492 (1-59308-049-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    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 neighbour. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behaviour 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. 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, Amazon.com [via]

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  • Louys, Pierre: The She Devils
    The She Devils
    by Pierre Louys
    ISBN 1596543620 (1-59654-362-0)
    Softcover, Olympiapress.Com

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  • Sister Carrie
    by Theodore Dreiser, Herbert Leibowitz
    ISBN 1593082266 (1-59308-226-6)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.

    Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason [via]

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  • Swann's Way
    by Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Elizabeth Dalton
    ISBN 1593082959 (1-59308-295-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Swanns Way is the first novel of Marcel Prousts seven-volume magnum opus À la rechercheé du temps perdu, or Remembrance of Things Past. Following Charles Swanns opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literatures most famous and influential scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a decoction of lime-flowers, the associative act from which the remainder of the narrative unfurls. After elaborate reminiscences about Swanns childhood in Paris and rural Combray, Proust describes his protagonists exploits in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society and his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crécy.

     

    Filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society, this novel showcases Prousts innovative prose style, characterized by lengthy, intricate sentences that elongate, stop, and reverse time. With narration that alternates between first and third person, Swanns Way unconventionally introduces Prousts recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experienceand for nearly a century readers have deliciously savored each moment.

     

    Elizabeth Dalton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. She has published fiction and criticism in the New Yorker, Partisan Review, Commentary, and the New York Times Book Review.

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  • A Tale of Two Cities
    by Charles Dickens, Gillen D'Arcy Wood
    ISBN 1593080557 (1-59308-055-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of historys most explosive eras—the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novels hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney who, inspired by a woman, makes the supreme sacrifice on the bloodstained streets of Paris.

    One of Dickenss most exciting novels, A Tale of Two Cities is a stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrection.

    Gillen DArcy Wood received his Ph.D in English from Columbia University in 2000 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860.

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  • Wilde, Oscar: Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal
    Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal
    by Oscar Wilde
    ISBN 1595690360 (1-59569-036-0)
    Softcover, Mondial

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  • Tess of the D'urbervilles
    by Thomas Hardy, David Galef
    ISBN 1593082282 (1-59308-228-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Highly controversial because of its frank look at the sexual hypocrisy of Victorian society, Thomas Hardys Tess of the DUrbervilles was nonetheless a great commercial success when it appeared in 1891. It is now considered one of the finest novels in English.

    Using richly poetic language to frame a shattering narrative of love, seduction, betrayal, and murder, Hardy tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, a beautiful young woman living with her impoverished family in Wessex, the southwestern English county immortalized by Hardy. After the family learns of their connection to the wealthy dUrbervilles, they send Tess to claim a portion of their fortune. She meets and is seduced by the dissolute Alec dUrberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in infancy. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer Tess love and salvation, but he rejects her—on their wedding night—after learning of her past. Emotionally bereft, financially impoverished, and victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality, Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.

    With its compassionate portrait of a young rural woman, powerful criticism of social convention, and disarming consideration of the role of destiny in human life, Tess of the DUrbervilles is one of the most moving and memorable of Hardys novels.

    David Galef has published nine books: the novels Flesh and Turning Japanese; two children's books, The Little Red Bicycle and Tracks; two translations of Japanese proverbs, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees and Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk; a work of literary criticism, The Supporting Cast; an edited anthology of essays called Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading; and, most recently, the short-story collection Laugh Track. In addition, he has written more than seventy short stories for magazines ranging from the British Punch to the Czech Prague Revue, the Canadian Prism International, and the American Shenandoah. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice, Twentieth Century Literature, The Columbia History of the British Novel, and many other places. He is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where he also administers the M.F.A. program in creative writing.

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  • Thejungle Books
    by Rudyard Kipling
    ISBN 159308109X (1-59308-109-X)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    P. Craig Russell is well on his way to being the premiere emissary of classic literary gems to the world of comics. His Arabian Nights collaboration with Neil Gaiman in The Sandman #50, comics versions of Mozart's Magic Flute, and his continuing adaptations of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales all stand as testament to his amazing graphic and narrative sensibilities. His treatment of the last three chapters of Kipling's Jungle Book ("The King's Ankus," "Red Dog," and "The Spring Running") will inspire both Kipling enthusiasts and lovers of fine illustration. Russell's composition is amazing: he has the ability to create harmony in a single page while each panel sings its melody. This collection also features enhanced colors, either reshot or reseparated, and the results are a treat. [via]

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  • The Time Machine and the Invisible Man
    by H. G. Wells, Alfred Mac Adam
    ISBN 1593083254 (1-59308-325-4)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Time Machine and The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The Time Machine, H. G. Wellss first novel, is a tale of Darwinian evolution taken to its extreme. Its hero, a young scientist, travels 800,000 years into the future and discovers a dying earth populated by two strange humanoid species: the brutal Morlocks and the gentle but nearly helpless Eloi.

    The Invisible Man mixes chilling terror, suspense, and acute psychological understanding into a tale of an equally adventurous scientist who discovers the formula for invisibilitya secret that drives him mad.

    Immensely popular during his lifetime, H. G. Wells, along with Jules Verne, is credited with inventing science fiction. This new volume offers two of Wellss best-loved and most critically acclaimed scientific romances. In each, the author grounds his fantastical imagination in scientific fact and conjecture while lacing his narrative with vibrant action, not merely to tell a ripping yarn, but to offer a biting critique on the world around him. The strength of Mr. Wells, wrote Arnold Bennett, lies in the fact that he is not only a scientist, but a most talented student of character, especially quaint character. He will not only ingeniously describe for you a scientific miracle, but he will set down that miracle in the midst of a country village, sketching with excellent humour the inn-landlady, the blacksmith, the chemists apprentice, the doctor, and all the other persons whom the miracle affects.
     
    Alfred Mac Adam teaches literature at Barnard College-Columbia University. He is a translator and art critic.
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  • Treasure Island
    by Robert Louis Stevenson, Angus Fletcher
    ISBN 1593082479 (1-59308-247-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    "Rum," he repeated. "I must get away from here. Rum! Rum!" I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlor, and running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible color. . . . [via]

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  • Vanity Fair
    by William Makepeace Thackery, Nicholas Dames, William Makepeace Thackeray
    ISBN 1593080719 (1-59308-071-9)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year, observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedestand most appealingwomen in all of literature. Becky is just one of the many fascinating figures that populate William Makepeace Thackerays novel Vanity Fair, a wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

    Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From Londons ballrooms to the battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt, his rich sister, Miss Crawley, and Pitts dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Beckys misguided sexual entanglements.



    Filled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterizations, Vanity Fair is a richly entertaining comedy that asks the reader, Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

    Features more than 100 illustrations drawn by Thackeray himself for the initial publication.
     
    Nicholas Dames is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is the author of Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 18101870, and other commentary on nineteenth-century British and French fiction.

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  • War and Peace
    by Leo Tolstoy, Constance Black Garnett, Joseph Frank
    ISBN 1593080735 (1-59308-073-5)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The most famous—and perhaps greatest—novel of all time, Tolstoys War and Peace tells the story of five families struggling for survival during Napoleons invasion of Russia.
     
    Among its many unforgettable characters is Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud, dashing man who, despising the artifice of high society, joins the army to achieve glory.  Badly wounded at Austerlitz, he begins to discover the emptiness of everything to which he has devoted himself.  His death scene is considered one of the greatest passages in Russian literature.
     
    The novel's other hero, the bumbling Pierre Bezukhov, tries to find meaning in life through a series of philosophical systems that promise to resolve all questions. He at last discovers the Tolstoyan truth that wisdom is to be found not in systems but in the ordinary processes of daily life, especially in his marriage to the novel's most memorable heroine, Natasha.
     
    Both an intimate study of individual passions and an epic history of Russia and its people, War and Peace is nothing more or less than a complete portrait of human existence.

     

    Joseph Frank is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of a five-volume study of Dostoevskys life and work.

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  • The War of the Worlds
    by H. G. Wells
    ISBN 1593080859 (1-59308-085-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. [via]

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  • Winesburg, Ohio
    by Irving Howe, Sherwood Anderson
    ISBN 1598186809 (1-59818-680-9)
    Softcover, Alan Rodgers Books

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    No sooner did Winesburg, Ohio make its appearance than a number of critical labels were fixed on it: the revolt against the village, the espousal of sexual freedom, the deepening of American realism. Such tags may once have had their point, but by now they seem dated and stale. The revolt against the village (about which Anderson was always ambivalent) has faded into history. The espousal of sexual freedom would soon be exceeded in boldness by other writers. And as for the effort to place Winesburg, Ohio in a tradition of American realism, that now seems dubious. Only rarely is the object of Anderson's stories social verisimilitude, or the "photographing" of familiar appearances, in the sense, say, that one might use to describe a novel by Theodore Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis. Only occasionally, and then with a very light touch, does Anderson try to fill out the social arrangements of his imaginary town -- although the fact that his stories are set in a mid-American place like Winesburg does constitute an important formative condition. [via]

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