Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, is drawn from his own life and experience. Subtitled The Decline of a Family, his story of a prosperous Hanseatic merchant family and their gradual disintegration is also an extraordinary portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the nineteenth century to a modern uncertainty.
'I shall do one thing in this life - one thing for certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.' Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart. Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to give the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. Set against the backdrop of the unchanging natural cycle of the year, the story both upholds and questions rural values with a startlingly modern sensibility. This new edition retains the critical text that restores previously deleted and revised passages. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Published in 1782, just years before the French Revolution, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. At its centre are two aristocrats, former lovers, who embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. But as their intrigues become more duplicitous and they find their human pawns responding in ways they could not have predicted, the consequences prove to be more serious, and deadly, than Merteuil and Valmont could have guessed.
Superbly distinctive and provocative.' - New York TimesAn unnamed writer arrives at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife: a couple he once admired, but has now come to detest. When the star actor finally arrives, he ushers in an explosive end to the evening that is impossible to see coming.
Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters--Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are re
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society.Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.
Agatha Christie's disturbing 1960s mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Agatha Christie's ingenious murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
To celebrate The Hobbit's 75th anniversary of publication, a pocket-sized hardback of J.R.R. Tolkien's timeless classic, perfect for little Hobbits everywhere. Bilbo Baggins enjoys a quiet and contented life, with no desire to travel far from the comforts of home; then one day the wizard Gandalf and a band of dwarves arrive unexpectedly and enlist his services - as a burglar - on a dangerous expedition to raid the treasure-hoard of Smaug the dragon. Bilbo's life is never to be the same again. The Hobbit became an instant success when it was first published in 1937, and 75 years later Tolkien's epic tale of elves, dwarves, trolls, goblins, myth, magic and adventure, with its reluctant hero Bilbo Baggins, has lost none of its appeal. Now, for the first time, the classic hardback edition is available in a one-off special pocket-sized edition. Featuring the distinctive cover illustration painted by Tolkien himself, plus his own drawings in the book, this edition will be the perfect gift for little Hobbits everywhere!
"Oh, good God," he kept saying with great relish. "Good God..." 'Gooseberries' is accompanied here by 'The Kiss' and 'The Two Volodyas' - three exquisite depictions of love and loss in nineteenth-century Russia by Chekhov, the great master of the short story form. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Chekhov's works available in Penguin Classics are The Steppe and Other Stories, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, The Shooting Party, Plays and A Life in Letters.
Harper Lees Pulitizer Prize-winning classic, voted by librarians across America as the best novel of the 20th-Century, To Kill a Mockingbird is repackaged as a Harper Perennial Deluxe Classic
A cult modern classic, Tropic of Capricorn is as daring, frank and influential as Henry Miller first novel, Tropic of Cancer. A story of sexual and spiritual awakening, Tropic of Capricorn shocked readers when it was published in 1939. A mixture of fiction and autobiography, it is the story of Henry V. Miller who works for the Cosmodemonic telegraph company in New York in the 1920s and tries to write the most important work of literature that was ever published. Tropic of Capricorn paints a dazzling picture of the life of the writer and of New York City between the wars: the skyscrapers and the sewers, the lust and the dejection, the smells and the sounds of a city that is perpetually in motion, threatening to swallow everyone and everything. "Literature begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done". (Lawrence Durrell). "The only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past". (George Orwell). 'The greatest American writer' Bob Dylan Henry Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.His best-known novels include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, 1949, Plexus, 1953, and Nexus, 1959), all published in France and banned in the US and the UK until 1964. He is widely recognised as an irreverent, risk-taking writer who redefined the novel and made the link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat generation.
'She decided she would teach him to speak and he was very soon able to say, 'Pretty boy!', 'Your servant, sir!' and 'Hail Mary!" With pathos and humour, Flaubert imagines the unexamined life of a servant girl. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). Flaubert's works available in Penguin Classics are Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Three Tales and Salammbo.
Agatha Christie's famous murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Athens and Sparta, the mighty city states of ancient Greece, locked together in a quarter century of conflict: the Peloponnesian War. Alexias the Athenian was born, passed through childhood and grew to manhood in those troubled years, that desperate and dangerous epoch when the golden age of Pericles was declining into uncertainty and fear for the future. Of good family, he and his friends are brought up and educated in the things of the intellect and in athletic and martial pursuits. They learn to hunt and to love, to wrestle and to question. And all the time his star of destiny is leading him towards the moment when he must stand alongside his greatest friend Lysis in the last great clash of arms between the cities.
In the summer of 1920 two men, both war survivors meet in the quiet English countryside. One is living in the church, intent upon uncovering and restoring an historical wall painting while the other camps in the next field in search of a lost grave. Out of their meeting, comes a deeper communion and a catching up of the old primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.
Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in a deluxe edition with a gripping cover by "Hellboy" artist Mike Mignola"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.
'Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant; and to undertake that which surpasseth his power!' The Caliph Vathek is dissolute and debauched, and hungry for knowledge. When the mysterious Giaour offers him boundless treasure and unrivalled power he is willing to sacrifice his god, the lives of innocent children, and his own soul to satisfy his obsession. Vathek's extraordinary journey to the subterranean palace of Eblis, and the terrifying fate that there awaits him, is a captivating tale of magic and oriental fantasy, sudden violence and corrupted love, whose mix of moral fable, grotesque comedy, and evocative beauty defies classification. Originally written by Beckford in French at the age of only 21, its dreamlike qualities have influenced writers from Byron to H. P. Lovecraft. This new edition reprints Beckford's authorized English text of 1816 with its elaborate and entertaining notes. In his new introduction Thomas Keymer examines the novel's relations to a range of literary genres and cultural contexts.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, ric
'The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.'The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author's unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest.The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY GARY YOUNGE'[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction' Ralph Ellison'The most important and celebrated novel of Negro life to have appeared in America' James BaldwinReckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause celebre in an ever-narrowing endgame.First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. It went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America.
Part of Alma Classics Evergreen series, The Canterbury Tales are here presented in their original Middle-English. This edition contains a wealth of material and a substantial number of notes
Language: English, Binding: Hardback, Number of pages: 64, Publishers: VERTICAL INC, Author: Honojirotowoji, ISBN-13: 9781647291808, Date of issue: 2023
The book that influenced writers from Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking, Flatland is set in a two-dimensional world where life exists only in lines and shapes - until one of its inhabitants, 'A. Square', has his perspective transformed forever. This bril
In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, "The Cossacks" describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.
Thirteen ingeniously crafted stories make up Vladimir Nabokov's baker's dozen. In some of these stories shadowy people pass through, cooped up by life, with nowhere to escape. In others, elusive glimpses of fleeting happiness, which flutter away befo
An innovative novel featuring an astonishingly wicked female villain, Wilkie Collins' "Armadale" was regarded by T.S. Eliot as 'the best of [his] romances'. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland. When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money - and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction'. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian 'sensation novels'.John Sutherland's introduction illustrated how Wilkie Collins drew on scandalous newspaper headlines and on new technology particularly the penny post and the telegraph - to lend extra pace and veracity to his tale. This edition also contains notes, further reading and an appendix on stage dramatisations of "Armadale". Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London in 1824, the eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. In 1846 he was entered to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he gained the knowledge that was to give him much of the material for his writing. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, "The Lighthouse" and "The Frozen Deep". Of his novels, Collins is best remembered for "The Woman in White" (1859), "No Name" (1862), "Armadale" (1866) and "The Moonstone" (1868). If you enjoyed "Armadale", you might like Collins' "No Name", also available in "Penguin Classics".
Agatha Christie's ingenious murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.Beautiful Caroline Crale was convicted of poisoning her husband, yet there were five other suspects: Philip Blake (the stockbroker) who went to market; Meredith Blake (the amateur herbalist) who stayed at home; Elsa Greer (the three-time divorcee) who had roast beef; Cecilia Williams (the devoted governess) who had none; and Angela Warren (the disfigured sister) who cried 'wee wee wee' all the way home.It is sixteen years later, but Hercule Poirot just can't get that nursery rhyme out of his mind...
In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life.
A new omnibus of over 50 short stories, presented for the first time in chronological order. The new TV adaptations start in the autumn, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple.
'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...'Wilde's supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Wilde's works available in Penguin Classics are De Profundis and Other Prison Writings, The Complete Short Fiction, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose.
This beautiful collectible edition includes Louisa May Alcott's most famous classic, `Little Women', as well as the sequels, `Little Men' and `Jo's Boys'.
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. With surgical precision, Tanizaki lays bare the sinews of pride, and brings a vanished era to vibrant life.
The violent murder of a mother and daughter in Paris leaves the police baffled - but the reclusive Dupin, an amateur detective, decides to investigate simply in his desire for truth and to prove a falsely imprisoned man innocent. Through his ground-breaking investigation, Dupin will reveal the incredible truth of this shocking misdeed.
Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a weary, put upon middle-aged man - is the hero of his own story. A man can dream, can't he? The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is just one of the brilliant humorous and witty stories written by James Thurber and collected here.
The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil’s onslaught.
"The Turn of the Screw" tells the story of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil in the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the idea that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care.
A fiendish classic murder mystery, from one of Japan's greatest crime writers, featuring the country's best-loved detectiveIn 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan's terrible secrets of forbidden liaisons, monstrous cruelty, and hidden identities to find the murderer, and lift the curse wreaking its bloody revenge on the Inugamis.The Inugami Curse is a fiendish, intricately plotted classic mystery from a giant of Japanese crime writing, starring the legendary detective Kosuke Kindaichi.
