Modern Classics: books tagged “Modern Classics” (33/44) @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780451528193 (0-451-52819-0, 0451528190)

by Jules Verne, Mendor T. Brunetti

ISBN 0451528190 (0-451-52819-0)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. [via]

More editions of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: ISBN 0460050710 (0-460-05071-0)
Hardcover, J M Dent & Sons Ltd
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: ISBN 0451524535 (0-451-52453-5)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: ISBN 0451528190 (0-451-52819-0)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451527707 (0-451-52770-4, 0451527704)

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An American Tragedy

by Theodore Dreiser

ISBN 0451527704 (0-451-52770-4)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Theodore Dreiser set out to create an epic character and, in the form of Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy, he succeeded. Griffiths is just a Midwest kid, the son of a preacher in Kansas City, who tastes a little sophistication and then hits the road seeking pleasure and success. He has his moments, conducting more than one romantic affair, until that ill-advised pursuit ensnares him. Then he reads about an "accident" of a young woman and ponders a dastardly deed ... Dreiser spins these scenes with the eye of a master in control of his form. An American Tragedy stands as an American masterpiece. [via]

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ISBN 9780460873062 (0-460-87306-7, 0460873067)

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Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells, Sylvia Hardy

ISBN 0460873067 (0-460-87306-7)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

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Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story: ISBN 0460873067 (0-460-87306-7)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

ISBN 9780451525116 (0-451-52511-6, 0451525116)

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Anton Chekhov Selected Stories

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

ISBN 0451525116 (0-451-52511-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Selected Stories, by Chekhov, Anton; tr. by Ann Dunnigan [via]

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Anton Chekhov Selected Stories: ISBN 0451525116 (0-451-52511-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780452259133 (0-452-25913-4, 0452259134)

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At Swim-Two-Birds

by Flann O'Brien

ISBN 0452259134 (0-452-25913-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

If you try to read it too closely, the structure of this book will drive you crazy. Ask me how I know. On the first level, it seems to emanate from the addled mind of a navel-gazing Irish university student stumbling around thinking about writing a book or a school paper. As I said, you can go nuts trying to follow it. Yet At Swim-Two-Birds is a modernist masterpiece, the best-known fictional work of Irish newspaper writer Flann O'Brien. Published in 1939, the book's great charm is O'Brien's constant reinvention of the English language, fueled and altered by an Irish sensibility and language; the sentences come out in a torrent of musical, drunken ramblings. [via]

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At Swim-Two-Birds: ISBN 0452259134 (0-452-25913-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780451527080 (0-451-52708-9, 0451527089)

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Babbitt

by Sinclair Lewis

ISBN 0451527089 (0-451-52708-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

A satire on the small-town American business man. [via]

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ISBN 9780451528650 (0-451-52865-4, 0451528654)

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Black Beauty

by Anna Sewell

ISBN 0451528654 (0-451-52865-4)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

A horse is a horse of course unless of course the horse is Black Beauty. Animal-loving children have been devoted to Black Beauty throughout this century, and no doubt will continue through the next. Although Anna Sewell's classic paints a clear picture of turn-of-the-century London, its message is universal and timeless: animals will serve humans well if they are treated with consideration and kindness.

Black Beauty tells the story of the horse's own long and varied life, from a well-born colt in a pleasant meadow to an elegant carriage horse for a gentleman to a painfully overworked cab horse. Throughout, Sewell rails--in a gentle, 19th-century way--against animal maltreatment. Young readers will follow Black Beauty's fortunes, good and bad, with gentle masters as well as cruel. Children can easily make the leap from horse-human relationships to human-human relationships, and begin to understand how their own consideration of others may be a benefit to all. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]

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ISBN 9780452273054 (0-452-27305-6, 0452273056)

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Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison

ISBN 0452273056 (0-452-27305-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus [via]

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ISBN 9780451529497 (0-451-52949-9, 0451529499)

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Captains Courageous

by Rudyard Kipling, Marilyn Sides

ISBN 0451529499 (0-451-52949-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

After being washed overboard from an ocean liner, a spoiled millionaire's son is rescued by New England fishermen who put him to work on their boat. [via]

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Charles Chaplin: My Autobiography

by Charlie Chaplin

ISBN 0452270782 (0-452-27078-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Charles Chaplin: My Autobiography: ISBN 0452270782 (0-452-27078-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780451529589 (0-451-52958-8, 0451529588)

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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

by Mark Twain

ISBN 0451529588 (0-451-52958-8)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

A blow on the head transports a Yankee to 528 A.D. where he proceeds to modernize King Arthur's kingdom by organizing a school system, constructing telephone lines, and inventing the printing press. [via]

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ISBN 9780451527233 (0-451-52723-2, 0451527232)

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Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sidney Monas, James D. Hardy, Leonard J. Stanton

ISBN 0451527232 (0-451-52723-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution. [via]

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ISBN 9780460019637 (0-460-01963-5, 0460019635)

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The Diary of a Nobody

by George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith

ISBN 0460019635 (0-460-01963-5)
Softcover, J M Dent & Sons Ltd

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Book summary:

The diary is that of a man who acknowledges that he is not a "Somebody" - Charles Pooter of 'The Laurels', Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, a clerk in the city of London - and it chronicles in hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle class during the Great Victorian age. [via]

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The Financier

by Theodore Dreiser

ISBN 0452008255 (0-452-00825-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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ISBN 9780452273337 (0-452-27333-1, 0452273331)

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Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

ISBN 0452273331 (0-452-27333-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

An early Ayn Rand novel about perseverance and determination . [via]

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The Good Soldier

by Ford Madox Ford

ISBN 0451525531 (0-451-52553-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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The Good Soldier: ISBN 0451525531 (0-451-52553-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

The History of Mr Polly

by H. G. Wells, Norman Ian MacKenzie

ISBN 0460872605 (0-460-87260-5)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

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The History of Mr Polly: ISBN 0460872605 (0-460-87260-5)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

ISBN 9780451528018 (0-451-52801-8, 0451528018)

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The Hound of the Baskervilles

by Arthur Conan Doyle

ISBN 0451528018 (0-451-52801-8)
Softcover, Signet Classic

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Book summary:

We owe 1902's The Hound of the Baskervilles to Arthur Conan Doyle's good friend Fletcher "Bobbles" Robinson, who took him to visit some scary English moors and prehistoric ruins, and told him marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed Baskerville Hall now has another mysterious death: that of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the culprit somehow be mixed up with secretive servant Barrymore, history-obsessed Dr. Frankland, butterfly-chasing Stapleton, or Selden, the Notting Hill murderer at large? Someone's been signaling with candles from the mansion's windows. Nor can supernatural forces be ruled out. Can Dr. Watson--left alone by Sherlock Holmes to sleuth in fear for much of the novel--save the next Baskerville, Sir Henry, from the hound's fangs?

Many Holmes fans prefer Doyle's complete short stories, but their clockwork logic doesn't match the author's boast about this novel: it's "a real Creeper!" What distinguishes this particular Hound is its fulfillment of Doyle's great debt to Edgar Allan Poe--it's full of ancient woe, low moans, a Grimpen Mire that sucks ponies to Dostoyevskian deaths, and locals digging up Neolithic skulls without next-of-kins' consent. "The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul," Watson realizes. "Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay ... while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet ... it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths." Read on--but, reader, watch your step! --Tim Appelo [via]

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ISBN 9780451527561 (0-451-52756-9, 0451527569)

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The House of Mirth

by Edith Wharton

ISBN 0451527569 (0-451-52756-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]

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ISBN 9780451528049 (0-451-52804-2, 0451528042)

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The Jungle

by Upton Beall Sinclair

ISBN 0451528042 (0-451-52804-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, the astonishing truth about "packingtown, " the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the "muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of "wage-slavery, " the bewildering chaos of urban life. "The Jungle," a story so shocking that it launched a government investigation, recreates this startling chapter if our history in unflinching detail. Always a vigorous champion on political reform, Sinclair is also a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one of the most important -- and moving -- works in the literature of social change. [via]

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Kim

by Rudyard Kipling

ISBN 0451521447 (0-451-52144-7)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:

Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.

From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"

In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber [via]

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Kipps

by H. G. Wells, Peter Vansittart

ISBN 046087277X (0-460-87277-X)
Softcover, Everyman

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Kipps: ISBN 046087277X (0-460-87277-X)
Softcover, Everyman

ISBN 9780451521699 (0-451-52169-2, 0451521692)

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Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Choderlos de Laclos, Richard Aldington, Harry Levin

ISBN 0451521692 (0-451-52169-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Book summary:

Au petit jeu du libertinage, l'adorable Valmont et la délicieuse Madame de Merteuil se livrent à une compétition amicale et néanmoins acharnée : c'est à celui qui aura le plus de succès galants, et le moins de scrupules. Peu importent les sentiments, seule la jouissance compte. Les conquêtes se succèdent de part et d'autre, jusqu'à ce que Valmont rencontre la vertu incarnée : la présidente de Tourvel. Elle est belle, douce, mariée et chaste : en un mot, intouchable. Voilà une proie de choix pour Valmont : saura-t-il relever ce défi sans tomber dans les pièges de l'amour ? De lettre en lettre, les héros dévoilent leurs aventures, échangent leurs impressions et nous entraînent dans un tourbillon de plaisirs qui semble n'avoir pas de fin.

Ce sulfureux roman a longtemps été censuré, ce qui ne l'a pas empêché de fasciner des générations de lecteurs et, plus près de nous, de captiver bon nombre de cinéastes : Les Liaisons Dangereuses de Stephen Frears mais aussi les adaptations de Roger Vadim, et de Milos Forman. --Karla Manuele [via]

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Les Liaisons Dangereuses: ISBN 0451521692 (0-451-52169-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

ISBN 9780451530370 (0-451-53037-3, 0451530373)

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The Major Plays

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Ann Dunnigan

ISBN 0451530373 (0-451-53037-3)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

"What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood...by anybody," said Leo Tolstoy of Chekhov's plays, which express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere. [via]

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The Major Plays: ISBN 0451530373 (0-451-53037-3)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780452008991 (0-452-00899-9, 0452008999)

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The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov

ISBN 0452008999 (0-452-00899-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Book summary:

Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.

Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"

Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park [via]

More editions of The Master and Margarita:

The Master and Margarita: ISBN 0452008999 (0-452-00899-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

ISBN 9780451526991 (0-451-52699-6, 0451526996)

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Moby Dick

by Herman Melville, Elizabeth Renker

ISBN 0451526996 (0-451-52699-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

'Command the murderous chalices!...Drink ye harpooners! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow - Death to Moby Dick!'. So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession - the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance. To Ahab, the monster that destroyed his body is not a creature, but the symbol of 'some unknown but still reasoning thing'. Uncowed by natural disasters, ill omens, even death, Ahab urges his ship towards 'the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale'. [via]

More editions of Moby Dick:

ISBN 9780451524553 (0-451-52455-1, 0451524551)

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Moby-Dick, Or, The White Whale

by Herman Melville

ISBN 0451524551 (0-451-52455-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Avec Moby Dick, Melville a donné naissance à un livre-culte et inscrit dans la mémoire des hommes un nouveau mythe : celui de la baleine blanche. Fort de son expérience de marin, qui a nourri ses romans précédents et lui a assuré le succès, l'écrivain américain, alors en pleine maturité, raconte la folle quête du capitaine Achab et sa dernière rencontre avec le grand cachalot. Véritable encyclopédie de la mer, nouvelle Bible aux accents prophétiques, parabole chargée de thèmes universels, Moby Dick n'en reste pas moins construit avec une savante maîtrise, maintenant un suspense lent, qui s'accélère peu à peu jusqu'à l'apocalypse finale. L'écriture de Melville, infiniment libre et audacieuse, tour à tour balancée, puis hachée au rythme des houles, des vents et des passions humaines, est d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Il faut remonter à Shakespeare pour trouver l'exemple d'une langue aussi inventive, d'une poésie aussi grandiose. --Scarbo [via]

More editions of Moby-Dick, Or, The White Whale:

Moby-Dick, Or, The White Whale: ISBN 0451524551 (0-451-52455-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451522856 (0-451-52285-0, 0451522850)

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O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather

ISBN 0451522850 (0-451-52285-0)
Softcover, New Amer Library

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Willa Cather's second novel is a timeless tale of a strong pioneer woman facing great challenges, shining a light on the immigrant experience, and revealing the emerging voice of one of our greatest authors. [via]

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ISBN 9780451525567 (0-451-52556-6, 0451525566)

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Of Human Bondage

by W. Somerset Maugham

ISBN 0451525566 (0-451-52556-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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From an orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

ISBN 0460011987 (0-460-01198-7)
Softcover, J M Dent & Sons Ltd

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Book summary:

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

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

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ISBN 9780451523846 (0-451-52384-9, 0451523849)

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Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories

by Oscar Wilde

ISBN 0451523849 (0-451-52384-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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More editions of Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories:

Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories: ISBN 0451523849 (0-451-52384-9)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780460013208 (0-460-01320-3, 0460013203)

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The Portrait of a Lady

by Henry James

ISBN 0460013203 (0-460-01320-3)
Softcover, J M Dent & Sons Ltd

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Seeking the opportunities of Europe, Isabel Archer, a young American, is courted by three men, comes to rely on an invalid cousin, an falls prey to a scheming, sophisicated older woman. Reissue. [via]

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The Rainbow

by D. H. Lawrence

ISBN 0451530306 (0-451-53030-6)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you.

This is Volume Volume 3 of 3-Volume Set. To purchase the complete set, you will need to order the other volumes separately: to find them, search for the following ISBNs: 9781427048561, 9781427048776

The novel covers the life-span of three generations. Lawrence delves deep into the psychology of his characters and comments on the qualities and their descent through generations. He discusses sexual dynamics and relations between characters of different generations. The book created ripples due to its bold topic when it was published, and is still widely-read.

To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

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More editions of The Rainbow:

ISBN 9780451527011 (0-451-52701-1, 0451527011)

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Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

ISBN 0451527011 (0-451-52701-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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For more than two centuries, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has delighted readers with its delicate portrayal of physical and emotional survival. Shipwrecked upon a deserted island, a sailor most somehow build a new life. [via]

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ISBN 9780451628213 (0-451-62821-7, 0451628217)

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The Screwtape Letters

by C. S. Lewis, Richard Gilman

ISBN 0451628217 (0-451-62821-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Book summary:

This adaptation of C.S. Lewis's biting satire received a 1999 Grammy nomination for best spoken-word performance, and it's easy to see why--the story fits the format perfectly. It's relatively brief (the unabridged reading takes a mere four hours), and contains only one character--the demon Screwtape, who writes letters to his novice nephew Wormwood, instructing him on how to best tempt his "patient" (a wayward soul on earth) into the bosom of "our Lord below."

Obviously, the book wasn't written with former Monty Python John Cleese in mind, but it's hard to imagine a better Screwtape. Cleese's voice provides the perfect vehicle for Lewis's dry, razor-edged wit. His uncanny comic timing and ability to milk each phrase for maximum effect betray an infectious enthusiasm for the story. It's clear that he's having a great time reading, and it's impossible not to laugh along with him. This inspired pairing of two of the 20th century's greatest wits makes for a meditation on the dark side of spiritual guidance that's as relevant and funny today as it was in Lewis's war-torn England. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --Andrew Neiland [via]

More editions of The Screwtape Letters:

The Screwtape Letters: ISBN 0451628217 (0-451-62821-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

Selected Stories

by Anton Chekhov, Ann Dunnigan

ISBN 0451528794 (0-451-52879-4)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Selected Stories: ISBN 0451528794 (0-451-52879-4)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451527608 (0-451-52760-7, 0451527607)

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Sister Carrie

by Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman

ISBN 0451527607 (0-451-52760-7)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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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]

More editions of Sister Carrie:

ISBN 9780451530004 (0-451-53000-4, 0451530004)

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Sons And Lovers

by D. H. Lawrence, Jackson, Dennis (AFT)

ISBN 0451530004 (0-451-53000-4)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence's own account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."

Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Paul's Miriam from the start, understanding that the girl's deep love of her son will oust her: "She's not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him." Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: "Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her--and he easily hated her." Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: "I really don't love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you."

The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes, who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother's. "There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work was hers."

The cycles of Paul's relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and "shimmeriness" to Paul's sensitive spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It's nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner. --Melanie Rehak [via]

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Tono-bungay

by H. G. Wells, John Hammond

ISBN 0460872591 (0-460-87259-1)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

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Tono-bungay: ISBN 0460872591 (0-460-87259-1)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

ISBN 9780451526069 (0-451-52606-6, 0451526066)

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Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

ISBN 0451526066 (0-451-52606-6)
Softcover, Signet Classic

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Book summary:

For lucidity and compactness of style, James's short novels, or novelles, are shining examples of his genius. Few other writings of the century have so captured the American imagination. When "Daisy Miller," the tale of the girl from Schenectady, first appeared in 1878, it was an extraordinary success. James had discovered nothing less than "the American girl"--free spirited, flirtatious, an innocent abroad determined to defy European convention even if it meant scandal . . . or tragedy. But the subtle danger lurking beneath the surface in "Daisy Miller" evolves into a classic tale of terror and obsession in "The Turn Of The Screw." "The imagination, " Henry James said to Bernard Shaw, "has a life if its own." In this blood-curdling story, that imagination weaves the lives of two children, a governess in love with her employer, and a sprawling country house into a flawless story, still unsurpassed as the prototype of modern horror fiction.

" "The Turn Of The Screw" seems to have proved more fascinating to the general reading public than anything else of James's except "Daisy Miller.""--Edmund Wilson [via]

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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Jules Verne

ISBN 046001319X (0-460-01319-X)
Softcover, J M Dent & Sons Ltd

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Book summary:

An American frigate, tracking down a ship-sinking monster, faces not a living creature but an incredible invention -- a fantastic submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Suddenly a devastating explosion leaves just three survivors, who find themselves prisoners inside Nemo's death ship on an underwater odyssey around the world from the pearl-laden waters of Ceylon to the icy dangers of the South Pole . . .as Captain Nemo, one of the greatest villians ever created, takes his revenge on all society.

More than a marvelously thrilling drama, this classic novel, written in 1870, foretells with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the twentieth century and has become a literary stepping-stone for generations of science fiction writers. [via]

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Under the Volcano

by Malcolm Lowry

ISBN 0452255953 (0-452-25595-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Under the Volcano: ISBN 0452255953 (0-452-25595-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780451527769 (0-451-52776-3, 0451527763)

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The Vaudevilles

by Ann Dunnigan, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Robert Brustein

ISBN 0451527763 (0-451-52776-3)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Newly repackaged, here are the five masterpieces by one of the world's greatest playwrights, in translation by Ann Dunnigan. As Robert Brustein declares in the foreword to this edition: "in the modern theater...there are none who bring the drama to a higher realization of its human role." [via]

More editions of The Vaudevilles:

The Vaudevilles: ISBN 0451527763 (0-451-52776-3)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451522702 (0-451-52270-2, 0451522702)

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The Vaudevilles

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Ann Dunnigan

ISBN 0451522702 (0-451-52270-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Newly repackaged, here are the five masterpieces by one of the world's greatest playwrights, in translation by Ann Dunnigan. As Robert Brustein declares in the foreword to this edition: "in the modern theater...there are none who bring the drama to a higher realization of its human role." [via]

More editions of The Vaudevilles:

The Vaudevilles: ISBN 0451522702 (0-451-52270-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

Victory : An Island Tale

by Joseph Conrad, Frederick R. Karl

ISBN 0451525310 (0-451-52531-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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More editions of Victory : An Island Tale:

Victory : An Island Tale: ISBN 0451525310 (0-451-52531-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

ISBN 9780451525550 (0-451-52555-8, 0451525558)

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The Voyage Out

by Virginia Woolf, Louise A. DeSalvo

ISBN 0451525558 (0-451-52555-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Book summary:

Books for All Kinds of Readers. ReadHowYouWant offers the widest selection of on-demand, accessible format editions on the market to-day. Our 7 different sizes of EasyRead are optimized by increasing the font size and spacing between the words and the letters. We partner with leading publishers around the globe. Our goal is to have accessible editions simultaneously released with publishers new books so that all readers can have access to the books they want to read. To find more books in your format visit www.readhowyouwant.com [via]

More editions of The Voyage Out:

The Voyage Out: ISBN 0451525558 (0-451-52555-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

ISBN 9780451526847 (0-451-52684-8, 0451526848)

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The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot, Helen Hennessy Vendler

ISBN 0451526848 (0-451-52684-8)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

This all-new Signet Classic contains many of T.S. Eliot's most important early poems, leading to perhaps his greatest masterpiece, The Waste land, which has long been regarded as one of the fundamental texts of modernism. By combining poetic elements from many diverse sources with bits of popular culture and common speech linked in a fragmented narrative, Eliot recreated the chaos and disillusionment of Europe in the aftermath of WWI. The Waste Land is a modernist literary masterpiece. Contains a number of early poems, including Spleen, The Death of St. Narcissus, The Love Song of J. Prufrock, Preludes, Gerontion, The Hippopotmaus, and Sweeny Among the Nightingales. T.S. Eliot is the winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature, and is one of America's greatest poets. Edited and with an Introduction by Helen Vendler, a foremost scholar of moderism at Harvard University who writes regularly for the New Yorker and The New Republic. Vendler is also the author of books on other essential poets, including W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, George Herbert, and the forthcoming The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnete. @DeadFlowers Note From Ezra Pound: Maybe cut 75%? From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less [via]

More editions of The Waste Land:

The Waste Land: ISBN 0451526848 (0-451-52684-8)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451525581 (0-451-52558-2, 0451525582)

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White Fang and Call of the Wild

by Jack London

ISBN 0451525582 (0-451-52558-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author's unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest. [via]

More editions of White Fang and Call of the Wild:

White Fang and Call of the Wild: ISBN 0451525582 (0-451-52558-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

ISBN 9780451529954 (0-451-52995-2, 0451529952)

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Winesburg, Ohio

by Sherwood Anderson, Koontz, Dean R. (AFT), Irving Howe

ISBN 0451529952 (0-451-52995-2)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics

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Book summary:

Library Journal praised this edition of Sherwood Anderson's famed short stories as "the finest edition of this seminal work available." Reconstructed to be as close to the original text as possible, Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented by his hands. In "Adventure," lonely Alice Hindman impulsively walks naked into the night rain. Threaded through the stories is the viewpoint of George Willard, the young newspaper reporter who, like his creator, stands witness to the dark and despairing dealings of a community of isolated people. [via]

More editions of Winesburg, Ohio:

ISBN 9780451525918 (0-451-52591-4, 0451525914)

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Women in Love

by D. H. Lawrence, Louise A. DeSalvo

ISBN 0451525914 (0-451-52591-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Book summary:

The erotic sequel to The Rainbow chronicles the lives, loves, obsessions, and struggles of the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and their lovers, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, as they search for fulfillment in post-World War I society. Reprint. [via]

More editions of Women in Love:

Women in Love: ISBN 0451525914 (0-451-52591-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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