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Classics
The classic American novel--winner of the 1958 Pulitzer Prize--now re-published for the 100th anniversary of James Agee's birth One of Time's All-Time 100 Best Novels A Penguin Classic
Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident--a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.
Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident--a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.
Roxanne says: Published posthumously and awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Agee's ode to family and Southern living is both graceful and deeply resonant.
With his journeys through Hell and Purgatory complete, Dante is at last led by his beloved Beatrice to Paradise. Where his experiences in the Inferno and Purgatorio were arduous and harrowing, this is a journey of comfort, revelation, and, above all, love-both romantic and divine. Robert Hollander is a Dante scholar of unmatched reputation and his wife, Jean, is an accomplished poet. Their verse translation with facing-page Italian combines maximum fidelity to Dante's text with the artistry necessary to reflect the original's virtuosity. They have produced the clearest, most accurate, and most readable translation of the three books of The Divine Comedy, with unsurpassable footnotes and introductions, likely to be a touchstone for generations to come.
Jean Hollander, an accomplished poet, and Robert Hollander, a renowned scholar and master teacher, whose joint translation of the Inferno was acclaimed as a new standard in English, bring their respective gifts to Purgatorio in an arresting and clear verse translation. Featuring the original Italian text opposite the translation, their edition offers an extensive and accessible introduction as well as generous historical and interpretive commentaries that draw on centuries of scholarship and Robert Hollander's own decades of teaching and reasearch. In the second book of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, Dante has left hell and begins the ascent of the mount of purgatory. Just as hell had its circles, purgatory, situated at the threshold of heaven, has its terraces, each representing one of the seven mortal sins. With Virgil again as his guide, Dante climbs the mountain; the poet shows us, on its slopes, those whose lives were variously governed by pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. As he witnesses the penance required on each successive terrace, Dante often feels the smart of his own sins. His reward will be a walk through the garden of Eden, perhaps the most remarkable invention in the history of literature.
The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years, and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance. Robert Hollander, a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante, and Jean Hollander, an accomplished poet, have written a beautifully accurate and clear verse translation of the first volume of Dante's epic poem, the Divine Comedy. Featuring the original Italian text opposite the translation, this edition also offers an extensive and accessible introduction and generous commentaries that draw on centuries of scholarship as well as Robert Hollander's own decades of teaching and research. The Hollander translation is the new standard in English of this essential work of world literature.
"Winesburg, Ohio" (1919) is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a cycle of short stories concerning life in a small Ohio town at the end of the nineteenth century.
At the centre is George Willard, a young reporter who becomes the confidant of the town's 'grotesques' -- solitary figures unable to communicate with others. George is their conduit for expression and solace from loneliness, but he has his own longings which eventually draw him away from home to seek a career in the city. He carries with him the dreams and unuttered words of remarkable characters such as Wing Biddlebaum, the disgraced former teacher, and the story-telling Doctor Parcival.
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin
Kate says: A book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself.
Aristotle's Politics is a key document in Western political thought. In these first two books Aristotle shows his complete mastery of political theory and practice, and raises many crucial issues still with us today. In Book I he argues vigorously for a political theory based on 'nature'. By nature, man is a 'political animal', one naturally fitted for life in a polis or state. Some people, however, are natural slaves; and women are by nature subordinate to men. Acquisition and exchange are natural, but not trading for profit. In Book II he launches a sharp attack on Plato's two 'utopias', the Republic and the Laws, and also criticizes three historical states reputed to be well governed: Sparta, Crete, and Carthage. This volume contains a close translation of these two books, together with a philosophical commentary. It is well suited to the requirements of readers who do not know Greek.
First appearing around 1400, The Death of King Arthur is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems penned in Middle English. While it is more than six centuries old, this magisterial new translation has finally given American readers the ability to experience the splendor and poignancy of the original. Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney s Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic translation of a timeless masterpiece, one that follows Arthur s bloody conquests across Europe, all the way to his spectacular and even bloodier downfall. This unparalleled presentation of the greatest Arthurian tale promises to become the definitive edition for generations to come."
Now in Penguin Classics Deluxe: a treasure trove of Jane Austen's novels
Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Here in one volume are her seven great novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan. Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their circle, Austen vividly portrays English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close and the nineteenth century began. Each of the novels is a love story and a story about marriage--marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not romances; ironic, comic, and wise, they are masterly evocations of the society Jane Austen observed. This beautiful volume covers the literary career of one of England's finest prose stylists of any century.
-A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps and luxurious packaging
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Features the definitive Penguin Classics texts recommended by the Jane Austen Society
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New introduction by bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club Karen Joy Fowler
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
An iconic novel dressed in a fierce design by acclaimed fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. This couture-inspired collection also features Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights.
Ruben Toledo's breathtaking drawings have appeared in such high-fashion magazines as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Visionaire. Now he's turning his talented hand to illustrating the gorgeous deluxe editions of three of the most beloved novels in literature. Here Elizabeth Bennet's rejection of Mr. Darcy, Hester Prynne's fateful letter "A", and Catherine Earnshaw's wanderings on the Yorkshire moors are transformed into witty and surreal landscapes to appeal to the novels' aficionados and the most discerning designer's eyes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Ruben Toledo's breathtaking drawings have appeared in such high-fashion magazines as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Visionaire. Now he's turning his talented hand to illustrating the gorgeous deluxe editions of three of the most beloved novels in literature. Here Elizabeth Bennet's rejection of Mr. Darcy, Hester Prynne's fateful letter "A", and Catherine Earnshaw's wanderings on the Yorkshire moors are transformed into witty and surreal landscapes to appeal to the novels' aficionados and the most discerning designer's eyes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
In time for the highly-awaited TV series, a new edition of Jane Austen's delightful final work, set in a newly established seaside resort with a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators In the final months of Jane Austen's life, she began work on a new novel about social drama in the small seaside town of Sanditon, once a small fishing village and now a bustling spa town. In the story of Charlotte Heywood, a new arrival, Austen she contemplated a changing society with a mixture of skepticism and amusement, and notably crafted her only character of color in the mixed-race heiress Miss Lambe. Though unfinished at the time of her death, it is a key work for readers of Jane Austen, and all the moreso with a major upcoming TV adaptation. This volume includes Sanditon, as well as two other lesser-known works, Lady Susan and The Watsons. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with several men. And The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine, Emma, finds her marriage opportunities restricted by poverty and pride. With three vital and less familiar works by one of the most important novelists in the English language, this book is a must-have for Austen fans.
Two sisters, very different in attitude but both in search of the perfect man, are the heart of "Sense and Sensibility." Sensible, restrained Elinor seems to have found a kindred spirit in Edward Ferrars, while the impetuous, romantic Marianne falls hard for the dashing Willoughby. But each man has a secret that may destroy the relationship. Will the sisters find happiness--or betrayal?
In this honest and stunning novel that inspired the award-winning major motion picture of the same name, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice.
"A major work of Black American fiction." -The New Republic Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
The coveted and award-winning Penguin Threads series continues with three more enchanting, beautifully sewn covers by a talented visual artist With paper and pen or needle and thread, storytelling has many traditions. Penguin's award-winning art director Paul Buckley presents Penguin Threads, a series of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions inspired by the aesthetic of handmade crafts with specially commissioned cover art. Jillian Tamaki's embroidered artwork appears on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Emma by Jane Austen, and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. This latest set features three beloved classics for both adults and children with cover art by painter and illustrator Rachell Sumpter. Sketched in a traditional illustrative manner, the final covers are sculpt embossed and present full front and reverse hand-stitched designs. Through story, style and texture, the Penguin Threads is an exciting chapter in Penguin's long history of excellence in book design, for true lovers of the book, design, and handcrafted beauty. This fully annotated volume collects three of Baum's fourteen Oz novels in which he developed his utopian vision and which garnered an immense and loyal following. The Wizard of Oz (1900) introduces Dorothy, who arrives from Kansas and meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and a host of other characters. The Emerald City of Oz (1910) finds Dorothy, Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry coming to Oz just as the wicked Nome King is plotting to conquer its people. In Baum's final novel, Glinda of Oz (1920), Dorothy and Princess Ozma try to prevent a battle between the Skeezers and the Flatheads. Tapping into a deeply rooted desire in himself and his loyal readers to live in a peaceful country which values the sharing of talents and gifts, Baum's imaginative creation, like all great utopian literature, holds out the possibility for change. Also included is a selection of the original illustrations by W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was, like his friend Oscar Wilde, such an acclaimed wit (and essayist, caricaturist, and parodist) that George Bernard Shaw dubbed him "the incomparable Max." But Beerbohm's comic masterpiece Zuleika Dobson--one of the Modern Library's top 100 English-language novels of the twentieth century--is the only novel he ever wrote. Strangely out of print in the United States for years, this crackling farce is nonetheless as piercing and fresh as when it first appeared in 1911: a hilarious dismantling of academia and privilege, and a swashbuckling lampooning of class systems and notions of masculine virtue. The all-male campus of Oxford--Beerbohm's alma mater--is a place where aesthetics holds sway above all else, and where witty intellectuals reign. Things haven't changed for its privileged student body for years . . . until the beguiling music-hall prestidigitator Zuleika Dobson shows up. The book's marvelous prose dances along the line between reality and the absurd as students and dons alike fall at Zuleika's feet, and she cuts a wide swath across the campus--until she encounters one young aristocrat for whom she is astonished to find she has feelings. As Zuleika, and her creator, zero in on their targets, the book takes some surprising and dark twists on its way to a truly startling ending--an ending so striking that readers will understand why Virginia Woolf said that "Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect."
Henderson has come to Africa on a spiritual safari, a quest for the truth. His feats of strength, his passion for life, and, most importantly, his inadvertant success in bringing rain have made him a god-like figure among the tribes.
In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the great expanse of this new American territory was a blank--not only on the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly understood that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward and that a national "Voyage of Discovery" must be mounted to determine the nature and accessibility of the frontier. He commissioned his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept a journal, a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.
The Portable Blake contains the hermetic genius's most important works: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in their entirety; selections from his "prophetic books"--including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Abion, America, The Book of Urizen, and The Four Zoas--and from other works of poetry and prose, as well as the complete drawings for The Book of Job.
A beautiful hardcover edition of the collected stories of "one of the best short story writers who ever lived"--with a new introduction by John Banville.
Widely known for her extraordinary novels, including The Heat of the Day, The House in Paris, and The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen established herself in the front rank of twentieth-century writers equally through her short fiction. This collection includes seventy-nine magnificent stories written over the course of four decades, including such beloved classics as "Mysterious Kôr," "The Demon Lover," "Summer Night," "Ivy Gripped the Steps," and "The Happy Autumn Fields." Whether placing her reader in a remote Irish castle or a seaside Italian villa or bomb-scarred London during the Blitz, Bowen was famous for scene setting of almost hallucinatory vividness, but her ability to evoke inner landscapes of spellbinding intensity was even more remarkable. Frustrated lovers, acutely observed children, and even vengeful ghosts inhabit her tales with an urgency and emotional complexity that make it clear that the drama of human consciousness was her central subject. These stories are enduring testimony to Bowen's reputation as a creator of finely chiseled narratives--rich in imagination, psychological insight, and craft--that transcend their time and place.
An improved, larger-format edition of the Cambridge School Shakespeare plays, extensively rewritten, expanded and produced in an attractive new design. An active approach to classroom Shakespeare enables students to inhabit Shakespeare's imaginative world in accessible and creative ways. Students are encouraged to share Shakespeare's love of language, interest in character and sense of theatre.Substantially revised and extended in full colour, classroom activities are thematically organised in distinctive 'Stagecraft', 'Write about it', 'Language in the play', 'Characters' and 'Themes' features. Extended glossaries are aligned with the play text for easy reference. Expanded endnotes include extensive essay-writing guidance for 'Macbeth' and Shakespeare.Includes rich, exciting colour photos of performances of 'Macbeth' from around the world.
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
'The Poetic Genius of my Country...bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my natal Soil, in my native tongue.' Many of the poems and songs of Robert Burns (1759-96) are familiar to readers the world over: lyrical, acerbic, comic, bawdy, democratic. They include 'To a Mouse', 'John Anderson my Jo', 'A red red Rose', 'Auld lang syne', 'Tam o 'Shanter' and many more, whose vernacular energy and simple beauty have ensured lasting popularity. This generous new selection offers Burns's work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers, presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It reproduces the whole of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock in 1786, the volume which made Burns famous; and it reunites a generous selection of songs from The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Scottish Airs with their full scores. Comprehensive notes describe the circumstances in which other poems and songs found their way into print, both before and after the poet's death. The edition also includes some important letters, and a full glossary to explain Scots words. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes's narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East. The poem's twin symbols are the Cross and the Astrolabe, and its celebration of a turning point in mankind's knowledge of the world unites the old map of the heavens with the newly discovered terrain on earth. Yet it speaks powerfully, too, of the precariousness of power, and of the rise and decline of nationhood, threatened not only from without by enemies, but from within by loss of integrity and vision. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
With text blocks hand-inked on the page by Anne Carson and her collaborator Robert Currie, Antigonick features translucent vellum pages with stunning drawings by Bianca Stone that overlay the text.
Anne Carson has published translations of the ancient Greek poets Sappho, Simonides, Aiskhylos, Sophokles and Euripides. Antigonick is her first attempt at making translation into a combined visual and textual experience. Sophokles luminous and disturbing tragedy is here given an entirely fresh language and presentation. Thoroughly delightful."
The masterpiece of travel writing that revolutionized the genre and made its author famous overnight An exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land, Bruce Chatwin's exquisite account of his journey through Patagonia teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes. Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through "the uttermost part of the earth"--that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome--in search of almost-forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
A romp for the ages (Vanity Fair)--now with a graphic cover and deluxe packaging Renowned novelist, historian, and biographer Peter Ackroyd takes on what is arguably the greatest poem in the English language and presents it in a prose vernacular that makes it accessible to readers while preserving the spirit of the original. A mirror for medieval society, The Canterbury Tales concerns a motley group of pilgrims who meet in a London inn on their way to Canterbury and agree to take part in a storytelling competition. Ackroyd's contemporary prose emphasizes the humanity of these characters-as well as explicitly rendering their bawdy humor-yet still masterfully evokes the euphonies and harmonies of Chaucer's verse. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Restless Classics edition of Chekhov: Stories for Our Time presents a must-have collection by the great Russian author who captured humanity in all its complexity, and reintroduces Chekhov as a funny, playful, deeply human, and thoroughly modern writer. The great 19th-century Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov wrote nearly one thousand stories, a body of work that is unmatched in its alchemy of sensitivity, wisdom, precision, verve, soulfulness, and economy. Chekhov's sensibility was radically human and thoroughly modern: write not how you think things should be, but rather as they are. Universally recognized as one of the greatest short story writers of all time, he revolutionized the form and had a profound influence on his successors from Flannery O'Connor to Alice Munro. As the celebrated Russian-immigrant author Boris Fishman writes in his bold, incisive, and delightfully counterintuitive introduction to this Restless Classics collection, Chekhov is funny, optimistic, ceaselessly curious, and undogmatic--a significant break from the bleak and morally rigid tradition of his contemporaries Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Unlike those peers born to privilege, Chekhov was raised in the peasantry and worked as a doctor. In his writing, he portrays the complexity of human beings as changeable and contingent, neither saints nor sinners--an approach intimately linked with his work as a clinician and humanitarian. Chekhov's humanity, just as much as his mastery of the writing craft, is potent medicine in times that seem so divided by ideology and antipathy for groups seen as "other." The first new selection of his work in over a decade, the Restless Classics edition of Chekhov: Stories for Our Time pairs beloved favorites with lesser known gems, all stunningly illustrated by Matt McCann: a perfect introduction for novices and a must-have for Chekhov devotees.
In the follow-up to his National Translation Award-winning collection The Undiscovered Chekhov, translator and scholar Peter Constantine brings us more little-known work from the Chekhov's early days as a magazine writer, pseudonymously turning out pieces for Russia's small middle class. These stories are fresh, yet mature, snapshots of the style with which Chekhov would come to be associated, both uproariously tragic and darkly comic, and lit from within by a deep feeling of fellowship for all of humanity. As his readers have come to expect, Constantine has translated this work with a masterly command of both languages' subtleties, capturing the shadings and intricacies of Chekhov's writing that flash and recede like sunlight on an orchard, offering Chekhov's tough and amused perspectives on love, aging, class, and work. With moments that seem to presage the most contemporary writing, Chekhov's Little Apples reveals one of the world's greatest writers as we have rarely seen him, an author both deeply of his times and far ahead of them.
Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. When The Awakening was first published in 1899, critical outcry proved so vociferous that the novel was banned for decades. Now praised as a classic of early feminist literature, Kate Chopin's final work rejects conventional female roles and celebrates a woman's journey towards self-awareness. As the heroine, Edna Pontellier, awakens to her own desires, she begins to question her ideas about marriage, motherhood, society, art, and the nature of love itself. A milestone in American fiction, The Awakening is an unforgettably poignant novel of self-discovery that has inspired generations of readers. Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author's personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research. Read with confidence.
Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in a deluxe edition with a gripping cover by Hellboy artist Mike Mignola. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Heart of Darkness is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery of how Kurtz has gained his position of power over the local people involves him in a radical questioning, not only of his own nature and values, but of those that underpin Western civilization itself.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Stephen Crane's immortal masterpiece about the nightmare of war was first published in 1895 and brought its young author immediate international fame. Set during the Civil War, it tells of the brutal disillusionment of a young recruit who had dreamed of the thrill and glory of war, only to find himself fleeing the horror of a battlefield. Shame over his cowardice drives him to seek to redeem himself by being wounded--earning what he calls the "red badge of courage." Praised for its psychological insight and its intense and unprecedented realism in portraying the experience of men under fire, The Red Badge of Courage has been a beloved bestseller for more than a century.
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Together they journey through sixteenth-century Spain in search of adventure, taking on spirits, evil enchanters and giants in a quest to perform acts of valour worthy of Dulcinea, his lady love. A masterpiece of world fiction and a brilliant satire on traditional romances, Don Quixote is not only the world's first modern novel - it is also an uproarious comedy that continues to delight readers today. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition is translated by the acclaimed J. M. Cohen and features an afterword by Ned Halley.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."
Her personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.
A new collection of John Donne's verse, from the witty conceit of "The Flea" to the intense spirituality of his Divine Poems
Regarded by many as the greatest of the metaphysical poets, John Donne was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan Age. A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. Reflecting this wide diversity, Collected Poetry includes his youthful songs and sonnets, epigrams, elegies, letters, satires, and the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed toward the end of his life. From joyful works such as "The Flea," which transforms the image of a louse into something marvelous, to the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, Donne breathed new vigor into poetry by drawing startling metaphors from the world in which he lived. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Regarded by many as the greatest of the metaphysical poets, John Donne was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan Age. A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in his youth, he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time. Reflecting this wide diversity, Collected Poetry includes his youthful songs and sonnets, epigrams, elegies, letters, satires, and the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed toward the end of his life. From joyful works such as "The Flea," which transforms the image of a louse into something marvelous, to the intimate and intense Holy Sonnets, Donne breathed new vigor into poetry by drawing startling metaphors from the world in which he lived. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
"A truly great translation . . . This English version . . . really is better." --A. N. Wilson, The Spectator Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read
This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's "psychological record of a crime" gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders alone through the slums of St. Petersburg, deliriously imagining himself above society's laws. But when he commits a random murder, only suffering ensues. Embarking on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
This acclaimed new translation of Dostoyevsky's "psychological record of a crime" gives his dark masterpiece of murder and pursuit a renewed vitality, expressing its jagged, staccato urgency and fevered atmosphere as never before. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders alone through the slums of St. Petersburg, deliriously imagining himself above society's laws. But when he commits a random murder, only suffering ensues. Embarking on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Its documentary detail---the convicts and their fascinating stories, the wooden plank bed that they sleep on, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches that they eat--is made all the more vivid by the controlled, oddly impersonal tone of the narrator. He, like the others, had stepped beyond himself to commit his crime. He found his strange family of convicts boastful, ugly, vain, cruel and ludicrously obsessed with outward appearances. But it is their vitality that overtakes "The House of the Dead," turning the crisis of its narrator into a slow miracle: the return and reawakening of his personality.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and has continued to hold its place in the popular imagination to this day. Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And, immersed in another case, he sends Dr Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects at close hand. With its atmospheric setting on the ancient, wild moorland and its savage apparition, The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. Rationalism is pitted against the supernatural and good against evil as Sherlock Holmes sets out to defeat a foe almost his equal. This edition contains a full chronology of Arthur Conan Doyle's life and works, an introduction by renowned horror scholar Professor Christopher Frayling discussing the background to the novel and the legends and events that inspired the story, with further reading and explanatory notes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The novel's fast-moving story is set in the royal court of Louis XIII, where the swaggering King's Musketeers square off against their rivals: the crimson-clad Guards of the dreaded Cardinal Richelieu. The Red Duke rules France with an iron hand in the name of King Louis--and of Queen Anne, who dares a secret love affair with France's enemy, England's Duke of Buckingham. Into this royal intrigue leaps the brash d'Artagnan, a young swordsman from the provinces determined to find fame and fortune in Paris. Bold and clever, in no time the youth finds himself up to his Gascon neck in adventure, while earning the enduring friendship of the greatest comrades in literature, the Three Musketeers: noble Athos, sly Aramis, and the giant, good-hearted Porthos.
Now from Lawrence Ellsworth, acclaimed translator of The Red Sphinx, comes a new rendition of The Three Musketeers for a new century, one that captures anew the excitement, humor, and spirit of Alexandre Dumas's greatest novel of historical adventure. Whether you're meeting the musketeers for the first time or discovering them all over again, it's all for one, one for all, in this timeless tale of honor and glory, the flash of dark eyes, and the clash of bright steel.
Now from Lawrence Ellsworth, acclaimed translator of The Red Sphinx, comes a new rendition of The Three Musketeers for a new century, one that captures anew the excitement, humor, and spirit of Alexandre Dumas's greatest novel of historical adventure. Whether you're meeting the musketeers for the first time or discovering them all over again, it's all for one, one for all, in this timeless tale of honor and glory, the flash of dark eyes, and the clash of bright steel.
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas's most famous and enduring novel, completed its serial publication in the summer of 1844, and by the time of its book publication at the end of that year readers were already demanding a sequel. They got it starting in January, 1845, when the first chapters of Twenty Years After began to appear--but it wasn't quite what they were expecting.
When Twenty Years After opens it is 1648: the Red Sphinx, Cardinal Richelieu, is dead, France is ruled by a regency in the grip of civil war, and across the English Channel the monarchy of King Charles I hangs by a thread. As d'Artagnan will find, these are problems that can't be solved with a sword thrust. In Twenty Years After, the musketeers confront maturity and face its greatest challenge: sometimes, you fail. It's in how the four comrades respond to failure, and rise above it, that we begin to see the true characters of Dumas's great heroes.
A true literary achievement, Twenty Years After is long overdue for a modern reassessment--and a new translation. As an added inducement to readers, Lawrence Ellsworth has discovered a "lost" chapter that was overlooked in the novel's original publication, and is included in none of the available English translations to date--until now.
With Twenty Years After Dumas's Musketeers Cycle becomes a real ongoing series, beginning a long story arc that will be continued in The Son of Milady, adventure following adventure until the final climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.
A major new translation of one of the most enduring works of literature, from the award- winning, bestselling co-translator of Anna Karenina-with a spectacular, specially illustrated cover The Three Musketeers is the most famous of Alexandre Dumas's historical novels and one of the most popular adventure stories ever written. Now in a bracing new translation, this swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of d'Artagnan, a brash young man from the countryside who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to become a musketeer and guard to King Louis XIII. Before long he finds treachery and court intrigue-and also three boon companions: the daring swordsmen Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Together they strive heroically to defend the honor of their queen against the powerful Cardinal Richelieu and the seductive spy Milady. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
George Eliot's beloved masterpiece in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a foreword by Rebecca Mead, author of the bestselling memoir My Life in Middlemarch A triumph of realist fiction, George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives is played out by the novel's complexly portrayed characters--until the arrival of two outsiders further disrupts the town's equilibrium. Every bit as powerful and perceptive in our time as it was in the Victorian era, Middlemarch displays George Eliot's clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge. In this elegant Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, Rebecca Mead introduces the novel that shaped her life and reflects on its joys and its timeless relevance. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Nora says: If you haven’t read Middlemarch, now is the time—thought by many to be the best novel written in English.
The Waste Land is arguably the most important poem of the twentieth century. First published in the United States by Boni & Liveright in 1922, this landmark reissue of the first edition, now back with its original publisher, includes a new introduction by Paul Muldoon, showcasing the poem's searing power and strange, jarring beauty. With a modernist design that matches the original, this edition allows contemporary readers to experience the poem the way readers would have seen it for the first time.
As Muldoon writes, "It's almost impossible to think of a world in which The Waste Land did not exist. So profound has its influence been not only on twentieth-century poetry but on how we've come to view the century as a whole, the poem itself risks being taken for granted." Famously elliptical, wildly allusive, at once transcendent and bleak, The Waste Land defined modernity after the First World War, forever transforming our understanding of ourselves, the broken world we live in, and the literature that was meant to make sense of it. In a voice that is arch, ironic, almost ebullient, and yet world-weary and tragic, T. S. Eliot mixes and remixes, drawing on a cast of ghosts to create a new literature for a new world. In the words of Edmund Wilson, "Eliot...is one of our only authentic poets...[The Waste Land is] one triumph after another."
Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. He is also remarkable for the prominence he gave to female characters, whether heroines of virtue or vice. This new translation does full justice to Euripides's range of tone and gift of narrative. A lucid introduction provides substantial analysis of each play, complete with vital explanations of the traditions and background to Euripides's world.
Contains: Medea; Hippolytus; Electra; Helen About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Contains: Medea; Hippolytus; Electra; Helen About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Four plays by the Greek dramatist who started to interpret human behavior without reference to the wisdom of gods.
One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba's bordello in Memphis. From there a series of wild misadventures ensues--involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs' deputies, and jail.
The classic tale behind MGM's blockbuster movie directed by George Sidney, starring Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, and Kathryn Grayson.
Bringing to life the adventurous world of Mississippi show boats, the grittiness of turn-of-the-century Chicago, and the majesty of 1920s Broadway, Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber's Show Boat is a classic. Magnolia Hawks spends her childhood aboard the Cotton Blossom, growing up amid simmering racial tension and struggling to survive life on the Mississippi. When she falls in love with the dashing Gaylord Ravenal and moves with him to Chicago, the joy of giving birth to their beautiful daughter, Kim, is offset by Gaylord's gambling addiction and distrustful ways. Only when Kim sets off on her own to pursue success on the New York stage does Magnolia return to the Cotton Blossom, reflecting on her own life and all who once called the show boat their home. Originally published in 1926, adapted for the stage as a musical a year later and filmed three times over three decades, Show Boat brilliantly explores a nation going pivotal change through the lens of its popular culture. With a new foreword by Foster Hirsch. Vintage Movie Classics spotlights classic films that have stood the test of time, now rediscovered through the publication of the novels on which they were based.