First published in 1653, Izaak Walton's "The Compleat Angler" is a classic and much-loved treatise on the art of fishing. Immediately popular after its publication, "The Compleat Angler" was reprinted and updated numerous times by Walton. Written as a conversation between the fictional characters of the experienced angler Piscator and his student Viator, which was changed to a hunter named Venator in later editions, the treatise is part an instructional...

Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she attaches herself to a succession of rich men. Becky's fortunes are contrasted with those of her best friend Amelia, who has none of Becky's wit and vitality but whose gentle-heartedness attracts the devotion of the loyal Dobbin. Set during the Napoleonic wars, Vanity...

This 1851 classic about an ancient New England mansion, its inhabitants, and curses reflects Hawthorne's recurring theme of ancestral guilt because of his forebears' involvement in the 17th century Salem witch trials.

Reverend Septimus Harding is warden of the alms-house at Barchester providing charity for twelve of the town's neediest and an income for himself to the town's way of thinking. John Bold, even though he is in love with the Reverend's daughter, decides to look into this apparent misuse of church funds.

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...

Henry James' story of a pair of adulterous lovers who are married, respectively, to a rich American collector of European art and to his inexperienced daughter provides-beyond its expensive, burnished, beautifully appointed exteriors-an understanding of the rises and betrayals inherent in society that is unparalleled in literature.