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A memoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. The first half details a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541 and describes Twain's career as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The second half of Life on the Mississippi tells of Twain's return, many years after, to travel the river from St. Louis to New Orleans. By then the competition from...
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This beloved historical satire, played out in two very different socio-economic worlds of 16th-century England, centers around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day: Edward, Prince of Wales, and Tom Canty, a street beggar. During a chance encounter, they realize they are identical and, as a lark, decide to exchange garments and roles -- a situation that briefly, but drastically, alters the lives of both youngsters. Brimming with gentle...
4) Villette
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With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...
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"When penniless businessman Mr. Bedford retreats to the Kent coast to write a play, he meets by chance the brilliant Dr. Cavor, an absent-minded scientist on the brink of developing a material that blocks gravity. Cavor soon succeeds in his experiments, only to tell a stunned Bedford the invention makes possible one of the oldest dreams of humanity: a journey to the moon. With Bedford motivated by money and Cavor by the desire for knowledge, the two...
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"Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe for San Francisco and New York newspapers as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a caricature of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Mark Twain's fresh and humorous perspective on hallowed European landmarks lacked reverence for the past, and was as mocking about American manners (including his own) as it was about European attitudes. Twain...
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Tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Paul's hard-drinking father, devotes all her energies to her son. They develop a powerful and passionate relationship, but eventually tensions arise when Paul falls in love with a girl and seeks to escape his family ties. Torn between his desire for independence and his abiding...
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First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures...
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Nostromo, a Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad - Joseph Conrad, who knew the human nature inside out, telling the story of Nostromo and portraying his personages is ironic and even slightly derisive...⍾Every man, somewhere deep inside, has his own share of rascality... And every human doing has two sides...⍾⍾Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find...
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The classic story of a boy who makes his own rules and the small Missouri town where he and his friends experience the adventures of a lifetime. Filled with schoolyard pranks, buried treasures, spooky caves, secret gangs, and grave robbers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is entertainment of the highest order. The clever schemes of its eponymous hero--from tricking his friends into completing his chores to sneaking into his own funeral--are the stuff...
11) [Mansfield Park]
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At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzling and sophisticated Crawfords arrive, and amateur theatricals unleash rivalry and sexual jealousy, Fanny has to fight to retain her independence. This new edition places Mansfield Park in...
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From the Publisher: When David Copperfield's widowed mother remarries, David suffers from his stepfather's abuse. At age 8, David is sent away to a harsh school where the principal routinely beats the students. David's circumstances become even worse when he is removed from school and, at age 10, forced to labor from morning to night in a London warehouse. David then decides to take desperate action. He will run away to his great-aunt, who lives...
13) Northanger Abbey
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"A timeless classic, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is both a coming-of-age story and a parody of the Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. Catherine Morland is destined to be the heroine of her own life story as she navigates friendships and romantic relationships, and as she learns to let go of childish notions of fantasy regarding the lives of others. Held from publication for more than a decade, this story was an instant success when it was...
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"A deluxe hardcover edition of the world's greatest fantasy classic--part of Penguin Galaxy, a collectible series of six sci-fi/fantasy classics, featuring a series introduction by Neil Gaiman T. H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as the sword Excalibur and city of Camelot that are found within its pages. This magical epic takes Arthur from the glorious lyrical phase of his youth, through the...
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Alone--it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. The Original 1897 Classic. A curious man, wearing a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and whose face is entirely swathed in bandages save for an obvious fake pink nose, walks into an English inn to the shock and horror of many of the townspeople. Beakers and chemicals in tow, the man demands his solitude. It's strange enough as it is until his...
16) Waverley
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The first 'historical novel' in English, Waverley (1814) is set at the time of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Edward Waverley, a young English soldier in the Hanoverian army, is sent to Scotland. He visits a Jacobite laird in the Lowlands of Perthshire, and then makes his way into the Highlands, where he meets a chieftain and his clansmen. Before long Waverley is caught up in the Jacobite cause, offering his allegiance to Prince Charles Edward Stuart,...
17) Shirley
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Following the dramatic romance of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte intended Shirley to be a 'salutary' change. Set in Yorkshire during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the novel articulates the social realities of economic hardship, the Luddite riots, dissatisfaction with the government and an inadequate Church. In the foreground of these concerns, a mill-owner, Robert Moore, in pursuit of financial security, ignores the suffering of his workers to such...
19) Middlemarch
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"Instead of choosing to wed a wealthy landowner and settle for a comfortable life, Dorothea Brooke decides to marry Edward Casaubon -- a dull scholar who is her senior by a few decades. Dorothea hopes the union will afford her with the opportunity to share in her husband's intellectual pursuits, but even her best efforts can't save the disastrous marriage. Meanwhile, idealistic doctor Tertius Lydgate has progressive ideas about the medical field,...
20) Agnes Grey
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When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate....
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