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Classics
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.
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women was a critically acclaimed bestseller upon its publication in 1868. It tells the story of sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March--each a young woman with a distinctive and relatable personality, a rare feature for a children's novel at the time. The novel continues to resonate with readers as a timeless tale of growing up.
This is the first modern edition of Little Women to feature the complete illustrations of Clara Miller Burd, originally executed in 1926. Burd's brilliant color plates and detailed drawings bring the world of the March family to life. An introduction by Alice A. Carter, an expert on Golden Age illustration, explores Burd's life and the work of early twentieth-century women illustrators. This new edition, handsomely bound in cloth, will be the perfect gift for all devotees of Little Women.
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 and Jean Hollander 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.
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.
Kate says: A book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself.
Conceived at the zenith of the Roman Empire, Apuleius's The Golden Ass--a bawdy, comic romp centered on a man-turned-animal--is the only ancient work of fiction in Latin that survives in its entirety. In playful, evocative prose, the novel recounts the travails of Lucius, a young man whose insatiable fascination with the occult results in his accidental transformation into an ass.
So entrapped, Lucius embarks on a hair-raising and at times outrageous adventure, encountering sadistic thieves who beat him mercilessly and plot to throw him over a cliff; a miller who works his human and animal slaves to death (until his wife, caught in an act of adultery, resorts to magic to bring him down); a noblewoman who fancies him; poverty-stricken merchants and a Roman soldier; and finally, the Egyptian goddess Isis.
Peter Singer, the world-renowned philosopher and author of Animal Liberation, was initially drawn to The Golden Ass by virtue of its historically significant early portrayal of the life of an abused animal. He was soon stunned to discover that what is arguably the first surviving novel is now little known and even less read. Realizing that Apuleius's tale in its original form is far too complex, Singer decided to streamline it. Assisted by Apuleius scholar Ellen Finkelpearl--who provides a fresh, modern translation, expertly mirroring the florid style of the original--Singer deftly prunes away the many digressions from the main narrative, and in so doing, uncovers the still-beating heart of the text: the highs and lows in the life of an ass, as seen and experienced by the irrepressible Lucius.
Featuring delightful new illustrations drawn by the prize-winning artists Anna and Varvara Kendel, this newly-rendered edition brilliantly reintroduces a forgotten classic. Whether interested in tales of animals, magic, or life in Roman times, readers will be charmed by the hilarious and risqué misadventures of Lucius--before, during, and after becoming a donkey.
The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed a freedom of speech as broad as our own. This freedom, parrhesia, the right to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom, had no more fervent champion than the brilliant fifth-century comic playwright Aristophanes. His plays, immensely popular with the Athenian public, were frequently crude, even obscene. He ridiculed the great and the good of the city, showing up their hypocrisy and arrogance in ways that went far beyond the standards of good taste, securing the ire (and sometimes the retaliation) of his powerful targets. He showed his contemporaries, and he teaches us now, that when those in power act obscenely, patriotic obscenity is a fitting response.
Aristophanes's satirical masterpieces were also surpassingly virtuosic works of poetry. The metrical variety of his plays has always thrilled readers who can access the original Greek, but until now, English translations have failed to capture their lyrical genius. Aaron Poochigian, the first poet-classicist to tackle these plays in a generation, brings back to life four of Aristophanes's most entertaining, wickedly crude, and frequently beautiful lyric comedies--the pinnacle of his comic art:
- Clouds, a play famous for its caricature of antiquity's greatest philosopher, Socrates;
- Lysistrata, in which a woman convinces her female compatriots to withhold sex from their warmongering lovers unless they negotiate peace;
- Birds, in which feathered creatures build a great city and become like gods;
- and Women of the Assembly, Aristophones's most revolutionary play, which inverts the norms of gender and power.
Poochigian's new rendering of these comic masterpieces finally gives contemporary readers a sense of the subversive pleasure Aristophones's original audiences felt when they were first performed on the Athenian stage.