Famously written in free verse and brimming with sensuous imagery and an unbridled love of nature and life in all its forms, and containing celebrated poems such as the ebullient Song of Myself - described by Jay Parini as the greatest American poem ever written - and the elegiac When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, Leaves of Grass is not only the finest achievement of a highly unique poet, but a founding text for American literature and modern poetry. First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman's lifetime ambition to ... |
|
|
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives it its force. First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person by Celine's fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as a young doctor in a working- ... |
|
|
First encountered in Lawrence's novel The Rainbow, sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are now grown-up women living in the English Midlands at the time of the First World War. Each becomes involved in a love affair: Ursula with the misanthropic intellectual Rupert Birkin, and Gudrun with Gerald Crich, a successful industrialist. The contrast between the two relationships - the former happy and fulfilling, the latter tempestuous and violent - facilitates an examination of both the regenerative and destructive aspects of human passion, while the novel's Alpine climax is revelatory of the intensity of close male ... |
|
|
Born into a poor family, Fanny Price is raised amid the daunting splendour of Mansfield Park by her rich uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Treated as an inferior by most of the family, Fanny forms a close attachment to her cousin Edmund, the only person to show her kindness. With the departure of her uncle to the West Indies and the arrival from London of the fashionable Henry and Mary Crawford, flirtation and romantic intrigue abound. As Fanny becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the conduct of her companions, she finds herself isolated and forced to face the conflict between her sense of integrity and social expectation. ... |
|
|
First published in 1922 and here presented in a fully annotated edition - the only currently available to English readers - this collection will offer the opportunity to discover a lesser-known side of this master storyteller’s ability to surprise and enthrall. A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories - concerned with ghosts, obscure ... |
|
|
The sequel to Little Women. ... Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for her wedding, Beth continues to struggle with her health, Jo is more than ever devoting herself to literature and Amy is about to go on a tour of Europe with her aunt. Their experiences, hopes and ambitions are set in counterpoint to each other, until the whole family is brought together by tragedy and misfortune. Following on the immediate commercial success of Little Women, Good Wives completes ... |
|
|
In this classic Victorian Bildungsroman, David Copperfield makes his way through life, from his happy Suffolk childhood and his subsequent adventures in London, where he is dispatched by his unsympathetic stepfather, through to his first steps as a writer and his search for love and happiness. Along the way he encounters a vast array of characters - among them, some of Dickens's most memorable ones - such as the eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood, the deluded optimist Wilkins Micawber and the obsequious villain Uriah Heep. Much admired by Freud and Dostoevsky, and cited by Dickens as the favourite among his own ... |
|
|
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer charts the escapades of a thirteen-year-old boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi. Testing the patience of his aunt Polly, the bold and sharp-witted Tom Sawyer frequently skips school in search of excitement, and the scrapes he gets into with his friend Huckleberry Finn range from innocent japes to more serious events such as the witnessing of a murder. One of the most popular and influential American novels, Mark Twain's masterpiece is at the same time a highly entertaining romp which celebrates youth and freedom and a more profound investigation of his times, touching on ... |
|
|
As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two characters unfold. One of Virginia Woolf's most famous novels, Mrs Dalloway is a triumph of experimentation, a cornerstone of Modernism and a subtle examination of love, freedom, mental ... |
|
|
"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series of helpers. While the struggle between God and Satan rages across the cosmos, the human tragedy of Adam and Eve - the temptation and fall - is movingly depicted in language unsurpassed in its musicality and beauty. A staggering and audacious undertaking - seeking, in Milton's words, to justify the ways of God to men - Paradise Lost has been revered since its initial publication, inspiring writers from Mary ... |
|
|
One of Stevenson's most famous and enduringly popular works, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde describes the mysterious relationship between a respectable and affable doctor and his brutal associate. Set in the grimy streets of Victorian London, this tale of murder, split personality and obscure science, with its chilling final revelation, became an instant horror classic when it was first published in 1886, and has enthralled and terrified generations of readers ever since. This volume also contains seven other Gothic stories by Stevenson - such as The Body Snatchers, Markheim and Olalla - showcasing the ... |
|
|
Dante's dramatic journey down the circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and through the spheres of Heaven in search of redemption - and his encounter with devils, monsters and the souls of sinners and saints - is one of the cornerstones of Western literature, the summit of medieval thinking and arguably the highest poetic achievement of all time. This 700th Anniversary Edition of The Divine Comedy is presented in a verse translation by acclaimed poet and prize-winning translator J. G. Nichols, together with extensive notes, illustrations by Gustave Dore and a critical apparatus focusing on the author's ... |
