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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf: The Fight at Finnsburh'
The finest literary work passed down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, Beowulf celebrates the existence of heroism in a dark world of feuds, violence, and uncertainty. Set in the legendary Scandinavian past, Beowulf comes to the aid of the Danish king Hrothgar by killing the terrifying monster Grendel and its vengeful mother. A lifetime later, Beowulf courageously prepares for another great battle when a fiery dragon threatens his own kingdom. This acclaimed translation contains a critical introduction, a full index of names, and extensive notes. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Canterbury Tales'
On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary genres. Five hundred years later, people are still reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If you haven't yet made the acquaintance of the Franklin, the Pardoner, or the Squire because you never learned Middle English, take heart: this edition of the Tales has been translated into modern idiom.
From the heroic romance of "The Knight's Tale" to the low farce embodied in the stories of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant, Chaucer treated such universal subjects as love, sex, and death in poetry that is simultaneously witty, insightful, and poignant. The Canterbury Tales is a grand tour of 14th-century English mores and morals--one that modern-day readers will enjoy. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Condition of the Working Class in England'
This, the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, is the best known and in many ways the best study of the working class in Victorian England. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire combine to make Engels's account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change into a classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Condition of the Working Class in England'
This, the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, is the best known and in many ways the most astute study of the working class in Victorian England. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire all combiine to make Engels's account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change an undeniable classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories'
The Country of the Blind is Wells's own selection of his best short stories. They range from light-hearted comic tales like "The Obliterated Man" to breath-taking masterpieces of science fiction like "The Star." In this, the first annotated edition, a new Introduction and Notes place Wells's stories in their historical, biographical, and literary contexts. The text presented here was revised by Wells, and for the first time corrected with reference to earlier and later versions of the stories. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Copperfield'
Beginning in 1854 up through to his death in 1870, Charles Dickens abridged and adapted many of his more popular works and performed them as staged readings. This version, each page illustrated with lovely watercolor paintings, is a beautiful example of one of these adaptations.
Because it is quite seriously abridged, the story concentrates primarily on the extended family of Mr. Peggotty: his orphaned nephew, Ham; his adopted niece, Little Emily; and Mrs. Gummidge, self-described as "a lone lorn creetur and everythink went contrairy with her." When Little Emily runs away with Copperfield's former schoolmate, leaving Mr. Peggotty completely brokenhearted, the whole family is thrown into turmoil. But Dickens weaves some comic relief throughout the story with the introduction of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and David's love for his pretty, silly "child-wife," Dora. Dark nights, mysterious locations, and the final destructive storm provide classic Dickensian drama. Although this is not David Copperfield in its entirety, it is a great introduction to the world and the language of Charles Dickens. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Devolution in the United Kingdom'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Diary of a Nobody'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dictionary of Britain'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English People/the Greater Chronicle Bede's Letter to Egbert'
Starting with the invasion of Julius Caesar in the fifth century, Bede recorded the history of the English up to his own day in 731 A.D. A scholarly monk working in the north-east of England, Bede wrote the five books of his history in Latin. The Ecclesiastical History is his most famous work, and this edition provides the authoritative Colgrave translation, as well as a new translation of the Greater Chronicle, never before published in English. His Letter to Egbert gives his final reflections on the English Church just before his death. This is the only edition to include all three texts, and they are illuminated further by a detailed introduction and explanatory notes. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'English History 1914-1945'
This final volume in The Oxford History of England chronicles the period 1914-1945 - three decades largely overshadowed by war and mass unemployment. It was a period that saw at home the formation of a national government, the only genuine incidence of three-party politics, the fruition of campaigns for trades union recognition, women's suffrage, and Irish independence, and abroad withdrawal from the Gold Standard and involvement in collective security. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Expectations'
With a new introduction and notes, this edition of Great Expectations offers new insights into one of Dickens's most fascinating and disturbing novels. Charting the progess of Pip from childhood to adulthood, Dickens shows the dangers of being driven by a desire for wealth and social status. As Pip moves from the Kent marshes to busy, commercial London, encountering many extraordinary characters--from Magwitch, the escaped convict, to Miss Havisham, a woman locked up with her past--he is confronted with the challenge of establishing a sense of his own identity and values contrary to the plans others have for him. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels'
George Orwell considered Gulliver's Travels among the six most indispensable books in world literature. Recognized as a masterpiece since it first appeared in 1726, Swift's tale of a seaman's adventures is a brilliant, biting piece of satirical writing--aimed originally at Swift's contemporaries, but strikingly relevant to modern life and the unchanging defects of human nature. This edition is based on the 1735 edition, incorporating Swift's revisions to the earlier text. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels'
In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. An extraordinarily skillful blend of fantasy and realism makes Gulliver's Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift's alter ego plays tricks on us, and our gullibility uncovers one of the world's most disturbing satires of the human condition.
The fullest, most up-to-date paperback of Gulliver's Travels currently available, this new edition contains an astute analysis of the nature of Swift's satire. It includes the changing frontispiece portraits of Gulliver that appeared in successive early editions and whose subtle changes contribute to the reader's uncertainty about the veracity of the author. A new introduction by Claude Rawson draws on the latest scholarship and considers Swift's role-playing and the relationship of the author to Gulliver. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Times'
An edition of "Hard Times" with an introduction, notes and Dickens' working notes for the novel. It tells the tragic story of Louisa starved of the graces of the imagination so essential to emotional well-being, and trapped in a loveless marriage. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays'
Oscar Wilde was already one of the best-known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and 1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays which spearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s and retain their power today. This collection offers newly edited texts of Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, Salome, An Ideal Husband, and, arguably the greatest farcical comedy in English, The Importance of Being Earnest. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invisible Man'
Griffin, the Promethean hero of The Invisible Man (1897), is one of Wells's most striking and tragic conceptions--a scientist whose apparently omnipotent power of passing unseen among his fellow humans rebounds on him as a terrible curse. From its opening in a small village inn, the narrative moves inexorably towards a climax of terror as the whole of England unites to hunt down and destroy the invisible alien. The Introduction examines not only the many imitations, but also Wells's own skillful blending of contemporary scientific ideas and chilling Gothic effects. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Journal of the Plague Year'
Defoe's reconstruction of the Great Plague of 1665 is literature's most compelling account of a natural disaster. An imaginary citizen of London wanders the stricken capital recording the appalling suffering of plague victims. The account is horrifying, yet movingly compassionate. The new introduction sheds fresh light on the relationship of "The Journal" to Pepys's diary, and a new medical note based on epidemiological research. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jude the Obscure'
The first truly critical edition of Hardy's most controversial novel, presenting a "clean" text in which Hardy's own light punctuation is restored. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'
'I ran to the side of the ship. "Help, help! Murder!" I screamed, and my uncle slowly turned to look at me. I did not see any more. Already strong hands were pulling me away. Then something hit my head; I saw a great flash of fire, and fell to the ground ...' And so begin David Balfour's adventures. He is kidnapped, taken to sea, and meets many dangers. He also meets a friend, Alan Breck. But Alan is in danger himself, on the run from the English army across the wild Highlands of Scotland ... [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Windermere's Fan/Salome/a Woman of No Importance/an Ideal Husband/the Importance of Being Earnest'
Oscar Wilde was already one of the best-known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and 1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays which spearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s and retain their power today. This collection offers newly edited texts of Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, Salome, An Ideal Husband, and, arguably the greatest farcical comedy in English, The Importance of Being Earnest. [via]
More editions of Lady Windermere's Fan/Salome/a Woman of No Importance/an Ideal Husband/the Importance of Being Earnest:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Leviathan'
Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations in every generation. This new edition reproduces the first printed text, retaining the original punctuation but modernizing the spelling. It offers exceptionally thorough and useful annotation, an introduction that guides the reader through the complexities of Hobbes's arguments, and a substantial index. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of King John/The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII: 2 in 1'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Dorrit: Library Edition'
This complex, sombre work, haunted by the symbol of the prison, is more than any other Dickens novel a study of society. George Bernard Shaw called it 'a masterpiece among many masterpieces' and claimed it converted him to socialism. Although many of the social conditions to which it refers have passed into history, Lionel Trilling asserts in his Introduction that "'Little Dorrit," one of the most profound of Dickens's novels and one of the most significant works of the nineteenth century, will not fail to be thought of as speaking with a peculiar passion and intimacy to our own time.' [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mansfield Park'
The Mansfield Park of the title, a magnificent, idyllic estate which is home to the wealthy Bertram family, stands as a bastion of English tradition and stability. The novel's heroine, Fanny Price, is a "poor relation" living with the Bertrams, acutely conscious of her inferior status and yet daring to love their son Edmund--but from afar. However, with five marriageable young people on the premises, the peace at Mansfield cannot last. Courtships, entertainments and intrigues throw the place into turmoil, and Fanny finds herself unwillingly competing with a dazzlingly witty and lovely rival. As critic Margaret Drabble has pointed out, the house becomes "full of the energies of discord--sibling rivalry, greed, ambition, illicit sexual passion, and vanity," and the novel becomes ever more engrossing as it builds to Mansfield's final scandal and, finally, a satisfying conclusion. Unique in its moral design and brilliant interplay of the forces of tradition and change, Mansfield Park was the first novel of Jane Austen's maturity, and the first in which the author turned her unerring eye on the concerns of English society at a time of great upheaval. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
This is Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, a widely acclaimed work based on the actual murder, in 1831, of a progressive mill owner. It follows Mary Barton, daughter of a man implicated in the murder, through her adolescence, when she suffers the advances of the mill owner, and later through love and marriage. Set in Manchester, between 1837-42, it paints a powerful and moving picture of working-class life in Victorian England. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
Set in Manchester in the 1840s, Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself--a factory-worker's daughter who attracts the attentions of the mill-owner's son, who becomes caught up in the violence of class conflict when a brutal murder forces her to confront her true feelings and allegiances.
This new edition reproduces the last edition of the novel supervised by Gaskell. The introduction provides historical and biographical context to the novel, a survey of critical responses to Mary Barton, and argues that Gaskell was chiefly concerned with the importance of communication as a means of healing breaches between people. In addition, the book contains an up-to-date critical biography, revised notes and appendixes that include Gaskell's rough draft and outline of the novel's conclusion. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'
Thomas Hardy spent much of his youth in the historical town of Dorchester, and it is to these familiar surroundings that he turns for the setting of this novel. This edition is the first critically established text of The Mayor of Casterbridge, based on a detailed study of the manuscript and of Hardy's revised printed versions. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'North and South'
Mary Gaskell's North and South examines the nature of social authority and obedience and provides an insightful description of the role of middle class women in nineteenth century society. Through the story of Margaret Hale, a southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skillfully explores issues of class and gender, as Margaret's sympathy for the town mill workers conflicts with her growing attraction to the mill owner, John Thornton. This new and revised expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'North and South'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Old Curiosity Shop'
The sound of Little Nell clattering hurriedly over cobblestones immediately sets the stage by bringing to mind the narrow and dangerous streets of Victorian London. No fewer than 20 performers are called upon to conjure up the Dickensian world of wanderers, ne'er-do-wells, con artists, and kind Samaritans--and each performance is excellent. Tom Courtenay plays the sadistic Quilp, "the ugliest dwarf that could be seen anywhere for a penny" with magnificent sarcastic glee, and Teresa Gallagher's silvery, childlike voice is ideally suited for the role of the angelic Little Nell.
Nell is on her way home to the dusty shop where she and her grandfather live a rather mysterious life. The old man disappears every night--visiting gambling dens with the naive hope of winning a fortune. Instead he sinks deeper and deeper into debt. Enter Daniel Quilp, moneylender, who becomes furious upon learning that the grandfather is a pauper and will never be able to repay his tremendous debt. Quilp seizes the curiosity shop and begins making lecherous overtures to Nell, so she and her grandfather steal away one morning to seek their fortunes elsewhere. But the demonic dwarf is never far behind.
Sound effects are employed judiciously and serve mainly as a springboard for the listener's imagination. The sound of a crying baby is enough to convey the image of crowded lodgings and genteel Victorian poverty, while raucous laughter and high-pitched squawks evoke the barely controlled chaos of an outdoor Punch and Judy show. The dramatization pares Dickens's weighty novel down to two and one-half hours, but does so skillfully, retaining Dickens's wit, marvelous dialogue, and delightful characterizations. (Running time: 155 minutes, 2 cassettes) --Elizabeth Laskey [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oliver Twist'
"I have thrown my whole heart and soul into Oliver Twist", wrote young Charles Dickens in 1836. After the work was published, Oliver and Mr. Bumble soon became household words. In tracing the boy's story, Dickens made a scathing comment on the inhumanity of the newly enacted Poor Law and startled readers with his convincing picture of the criminal underworld. This edition includes eight plates from Cruikshank's original illustrations. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes'
Here is a sparkling collection of Crown jewels--from amusing tales that humanize their subjects to dramatic stories of martyrdoms, palace intrigues, and bloody battles. Elizabeth Longford, intimate of the royal family and biographer of Victoria and Elizabeth II, has assembled the best anecdotes ever written and reported abut the kings and queens of England, across the full range of Britain's history from the first century A.D. to the present day.
Scholars and versifiers, lawgivers and saints crowd the pages alongside soldiers, scallywags, and imbeciles, and never have these distant figures been brought more vividly to life than in this splendid anthology. We read of Alfred's burnt cakes, Cnut and the wolves, Henry VIII and his six wives, George III resigning himself to American independence, Edward VII's gambling habits, and much more. There are samplings of royal wit (as when James I said of John Donne's poetry: Dr Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding."), of royal modesty (as in Elizabeth II's explanation of why she wore no crown at the musician Robert Mayer's 100th birthday party: "I thought it was Sir Robert's night, not mine."), and of royal certitude (as in Victoria's comment during a dark moment of the Boer War: "Please understand that there is no one depressed this house; we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.")
The Countess of Longford's helpful commentary clarifies the complexities of royal genealogy and adds a sharp and often humorous perspective to bygone events. Her sources range from the earliest medieval chroniclers to biographers and historians of today, from dispassionate descriptions to intimate and revealing accounts from the letters and journals of the monarchs themselves. The result is truly a historical feast fit for a king. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oxford History of the British Army'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain'
This beautifully illustrated volume tells the story of Britain and its people over two thousand years, from the coming of the Roman legions to the present day.
Edited by esteemed historian Kenneth O. Morgan, this informative volume illuminates the political, social, economic, and cultural developments of the British Isles. Ten leading historians--including Peter Salway, John Morrill, and Morgan himself--provide a penetrating and dramatic narrative, offering the fruits of the best modern scholarship to the general reader in authoritative form, complementing their text with carefully chosen pictures and maps. A vivid, sometimes surprising picture emerges of continuous turmoil and change in every period of Britain's history. By exploring the many ways in which Britain has shaped and been shaped by contact with Europe and the wider world, this comprehensive book brings the modern reader face to face with the past and thus the foundations of modern British society. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy'
The rich pageant of Britain's history emerges nowhere more colorfully than in the story of its kings and queens. This spectacular book offers the most authoritative account of the British monarchy ever published for the general reader. With over 400 illustrations--a third of them in color--it traces the crown's full history from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.
The authors begin with the rise of recognizable kingdoms in Scotland, Wales, and England in the fifth century and conclude with a discussion of the crown's constitutional role, which emerged in Queen Victoria's reign, and how this has affected the monarchy of today. Along the way, we see how key traditions evolved: the right of succession, coronations and marriages, oaths of loyalty and military service, the granting of lands and titles, and the propagation of a powerful image of royalty.
Supporting the text and illustrations are sidebars on each of the monarchs and on key general themes, color maps, an illustrated section on royal residences and tombs, a consolidated list of monarchs, genealogies, annotated lists of further reading, and a full index with personal dates. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paradise Lost'
Paradise Lost is the great epic poem of the English language, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle ranges across heaven, hell, and earth, as Satan and his band of rebel angels conspire against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, motivated by all too human temptations, but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.
This marvelous edition boasts an introduction by one of Milton's most famous modern admirers, the best-selling novelist Philip Pullman. Indeed, Pullman not only provides a general introduction, but also introduces each of the twelve books of the poem. In these commentaries, Pullman illuminates the power of the poem and its achievement as a story, suggests how we should read it today, and describes its influence on him and his acclaimed trilogy His Dark Materials, which takes its title from a line in the poem. His observations offer a tribute that is both personal and insightful, and his enthusiasm for Milton's language, skill, and supreme gifts as a storyteller is infectious. He encourages readers above all to experience the poem for themselves, and surrender to its enchantment.
Pullman's tremendous admiration and passion for Paradise Lost will attract a whole new generation of readers to this classic of English literature. An ideal gift, the book is beautifully produced, printed in two colors throughout, illustrated with the twelve engravings from the first illustrated edition published in 1688, with ribbon marker. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pickwick Papers'
In 1836 the 23-year-old Dickens was invited by his publishers to write `a monthly something' illustrated by sporting plates. Thus the Pickwick Club was born: its supposed `papers' soom outgrew their origins and became a brilliantly comic novel, still among Dicken's most popular works. This book is intended for general; courses on early 19th-century English novel; courses specifically on Dickens [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Piers Plowman: A New Translation of the B-Text'
This is a new annotated translation of the B-text, Langland's own extensive revision of his original text. One of the greatest poems of the English Middle Ages, Piers Plowman remains of enduring interest for its vivid picture of the whole life of medieval society, its deeply imaginative religious vision, and its passionate concern to see justice and truth prevail in our world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pride & Prejudice'
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.
Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pride and Prejudice'
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.
Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prisoner of Zenda'
Five times made into film versions since its original publication in 1894, The Prisoner of Zenda is a perennially popular adventure and romance story. Hope's swashbuckling romance transports his English gentleman hero, Rudolf Rassendyll, from a comfortable life in London to fast-paced adventures in Ruritania, a mythical land steeped in political intrigue. Rassendyll must impersonate the rightful king in order to rescue him from the castle Zenda, all the while facing tests of honor with the beautiful Princess Flavia, and enduring tests of strength in his encounters with the villainous Black Michael and his handsome, debonair bodyguard, Rupert of Hentzau. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Private Memoirs And Confessions of a Justified Sinner'
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / General; Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Psychological; True Crime / Murder / General; [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Revel, Riot And Rebellion: Popular Politics And Culture in England 1603-1660'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sons and Lovers'
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]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'
Pocket book. Classic works. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess Of The d'Urbervilles'
Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice.
Hardy's indictment of society's double standards, and his depiction of Tess as "a pure woman," caused controversy in his day and has held the imagination of readers ever since. Hardy thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. This unique critical text is taken from the authoritative Clarendon edition, which is based on the manuscript collated with all Hardy's subsequent revisions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Early Modern Utopias'
With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More provided a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia.
This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Bringing together these three New World texts, and situating them in a wider Renaissance context, this edition--which includes letters, maps, and alphabets that accompanied early editions--illustrates the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put. [via]
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Part of a series designed to provide English language students at all levels of comprehension with the opportunity to extend their reading and appreciation of English, this story at Level 4 concerns the comic adventures of three men in a boat. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Men in a Boat'
This volume stands as the only available critical edition of two of the most popular classics in English literature. Three Men in a Boat describes a comic expedition by middle-class Victorians up the Thames to Oxford, providing along the way brilliant snap-shots of London's playground in the late 1880s. In Three Men on the Bummel, the three Englishmen escape from the claustrophobia of suburban life some ten years later to go on a cycling tour in the Black Forest of Germany. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Three Men in a Boat'
'I like work. I find it interesting ...I can sit and look at it for hours.' With ideas like this, perhaps it is not a good idea to spend a holiday taking a boat trip up the River Thames. But this is what the three friends - and Montmorency the dog - decide to do. It is the sort of holiday that is fun to remember afterwards, but not so much fun to wake up to early on a cold, wet morning. This famous book has made people laugh all over the world for a hundred years ...and they are still laughing. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Lighthouse'
"Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain." So reflects the beautiful, middle-aged Mrs Ramsay, mother of eight, as she surveys her family and guests at her dinner table, and sees their fleeting harmony, a fleeting reflection of eternity. This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. For the children, it is an earthly Paradise. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transcience, she creates an enduring work of art. "To The Lighthouse" is one of ten World's Classics by Virginia Woolf, and includes an introduction and notes to provide guidance for readers new to this author. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tono-bungay'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tragedy of King Richard III'
Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays on the stage and has been adapted successfully for film. This new and innovative edition recognizes the play's pre-eminence as a performance work: a perspective that informs every aspect of the editing. Challenging traditional practice, the text is based on the 1597 Quarto which, brings us closest to the play as it would have been staged in Shakespeare's theater. The introduction, which is illustrated, explores the long performance history from Shakespeare's time to the present. The commentary gives detailed explanation of matters of language, staging, text, and historical and cultural contexts, providing coverage that is both carefully balanced and alert to nuance of meaning.
Documentation of the extensive textual variants is organized for maximum clarity: the readings of the Folio and the Quarto are presented in separate sections, and more specific information is given at the back of the book. Appendices also include selected passages from the main source and a special index of actors and other theatrical personnel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Trollope: A Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Greenwood Tree'
This edition presents a critically established text based on comparisons of every revised version. Hardy placed this tale among his Novels of Character and Environment, a group which is held to include his most characteristic work. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The War of the Worlds'
This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that "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..."
Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled. --Craig E. Engler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wives and Daughters'
According to many critics, Wives and Daughters is Elizabeth Gaskell's masterpiece. Set in a provincial English town, the novel is a subtle representation of historical change explored in human terms. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wives and Daughters'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women in Love'
In Women in Love (1920), Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen who first appeared in Lawrence's earlier novel, The Rainbow, take center stage as Lawrence explores their growth and development in their relationships with two powerful men, Rupert Birkin and his friend Gerald Crich. A novel of regeneration and dark, destructive human passion, Women in Love reflects the impact on Lawrence of the First World War in the potential both for annihilation and salvation of the self. A full introduction and detailed notes offer an illuminating discourse on one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative, and unsettling works. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Works of Geoffrey Chaucer'
This complete critical edition of Chaucer's poetry and prose has, as the Cambridge Review prophesied when it first appeared, become the standard edition of Chaucer for all who are seriously interested in his writings. [via]
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