Recognized today as the undisputed master of the American Gothic horror story, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1949) revealed his genius in tales of death, terror, evil, and perversity. Highly skilled in achieving a calculated psychological effect, Poe created chilling fictional nightmares permeated by mysterious forces, grotesque creatures, and improbable hallucinations.Poe's immense powers as a storyteller are at their peak in this anthol ...
Although Polish by birth, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, and Heart of Darkness, first published in 1902, is considered by many his «most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story.» — Encyclopaedia Britannica. The tale concerns the journey of the narrator (Marlow) up the Congo River on behalf of a Belgian trading company. Far upriver, he encounters the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory ...
Among the country's greatest artistic contributions, 20th-century Russian literature was revolutionary in its approach to realism, injecting characters with human weaknesses familiar to all. It also provided fodder for other such important concepts as existentialism and even passive resistance, which was rooted in the works of Tolstoy, and practiced resistance, which was rooted in the works of Tolstoy and practiced successfully by Gandhi an ...
Test? Paper? Class discussion? Don't worry, we have you covered. This book has everything you need.<BR>Not only does it feature the complete text of <I>Gulliver's Travels</I>, it offers a comprehensive study guide that will easily help you understand Swift's classic novel.<BR>You'll make the grade with:<BR>• Complete and unabridged text<BR>• Chapter-by-chapter summaries& ...
Featuring 19 of the finest works from the most distinguished writers in the American short-story tradition, this new compilation begins with Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 tale «Young Goodman Brown» and ranges across an entire century, concluding with Ernest Hemingway's 1927 classic, «The Killers.» Other selections include Poe's «The Tell-Tale Heart,» Melville's «Bartleby,» Harte's «The Luck of Roaring Camp,» «To Build a Fir ...
A compulsive gambler himself at a certain period of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote this novel with real authority. Set in the appropriately named Roulettenburg, a German spa with a casino and an international clientele, it concerns the gambling episodes, tangled love affairs, and complicated lives of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young gambler; Polina Alexandrovna, the woman he loves; a pair of French adventurers, and other characters.Although not as dark a ...
Leonora and Edward Ashburnham were «good people» from England, as John Dowell, the narrator of this tale, explains: and Dowell and his wife, Florence — leisured Americans of solid stock — were, like their English friends, a «model couple.»For a dozen years, the foursome cultivated and maintained a friendship reinforced with yearly meetings at a fashionable German health resort, which Dowell visited with his «ailing» wife and ...
Early in the nineteenth century, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm compiled a collection of stories to preserve the folklore of their native Germany. Forty-three of them—fairy tales, some deliciously dark, that have bewitched readers for generations—are gathered here. Translated into more than 150 languages, these well-loved narratives brim with fearless heroes, humble and hardworking heroines, and treacherous villains, exploring theme ...
This masterpiece of science (and mathematical) fiction is a delightfully unique and highly entertaining satire that has charmed readers for more than 100 years. The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square, a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any num ...
