Mark Twain's inimitable blend of humor, satire and masterly storytelling earned him a secure place in the front rank of American writers. This collection of eight stories and sketches, among them the celebrated classic «The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,» shows the great humorist at the top of his form.Also included here are «Journalism in Tennessee,» in which a novice newspaperman is shown the «correct way» to report a news st ...
Accused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife.As with a number of the author's other works, this profoundly influential novel brilliantly explores his characters' thoughts while ...
A bestseller when it was originally published nearly a century ago, Wharton's first literary success was set amid the previously unexplored territory of fashionable, turn-of-the-century New York society, an area with which she was intimately familiar.The tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart, a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her a ...
Regarded as the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) intended this masterpiece, as he once wrote Alexander Pope, to «vex the world rather than divert it.» Savagely ironic, it portrays man as foolish at best, and at worst, not much more than an ape.The direct and unadorned narrative describes four remarkable journies of ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver, among them, one to the land of Lilliput, ...
With Idylls of the King, one of the giants of Victorian literature turned his considerable talents to the chivalric lore surrounding a larger-than-life British ruler, King Arthur. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, cast his interpretation of Arthurian myth into the form of an epic poem, and his tales of Camelot soar to remarkable imaginative heights to trace the birth of a king; the founding, fellowship, and decline of the Round Table; and the king's i ...
At Baskerville Hall on the grim moors of Devonshire, a legendary curse has apparently claimed one more victim. Sir Charles Baskerville has been found dead. There are no signs of violence, but his face is hideously distorted with terror. Years earlier, a hound-like beast with blazing eyes and dripping jaws was reported to have torn out the throat of Hugo Baskerville. Has the spectral destroyer struck again? More important, is Sir Henry Baskervill ...
"TheArabian Nights is more generally loved than Shakespeare," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. «No human face or voice greets us among [this] crowd of kings and genies, sorcerers and beggar men. Adventure on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough.»The best-known versions of these ancient Middle Eastern tales are those translated by the Victorian English explorer and writer, Richard F. Burton. Arabic in orig ...
A ferryboat captain in search of a notorious ivory trader ventures into an African jungle, where he discovers a dark side of the human condition. In this burning indictment of colonialism, Joseph Conrad drew upon his own shipboard experiences in the region formerly known as the Belgian Congo. His novella explores the potential for evil that lurks behind the illusion of civilized restraint.No student of modern fiction can afford to neglect Heart ...
The melancholy Dane's grief for his dead father and suspicion of his ambitious uncle drive him to acts of insanity and violence — and to articulate some of the most quoted speeches in the English language. In addition to its gilded rhetoric, Shakespeare's revenge drama offers an enthralling plot, rich character studies, and other psychologically complex aspects that invite and reward closer examination. Shakespeare's mos ...
