The four March sisters--Meg, Amy, Beth, and feisty Jo--sharethe joys and sorrows of growing up while their father is away at war. Thefamily is poor in worldly goods, but rich in love and character.

Tolstoy's tumultuous tale of passion and self-discovery marks a turning point in the author's career. His compelling, emotional saga recounts the effects of nonconformist behavior — a society woman's adulterous affair and a landowner's unconventional quest for a meaningful existence — against a backdrop of late 19th-century Russia.

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Bartleby is a kind of clerk, a copyist,who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him; During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby can be seen to represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions Bartleby can also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.

One of the best loved animal stories ever written, the dramatic and heartwarming Black Beauty is told by the magnificent horse himself, from his idyllic days on a country squire's estate to his harsh fate as a London cab horse. No one can ever forget the gallant Black Beauty, a horse with a white star on his forehead and a heart of unyielding courage.

As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--to arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.

Leaving the secluded home of her guardian for the first time, beautiful Evelina Anville is captivated by her new surroundings in London's beau monde--and in particular by the handsome, chivalrous Lord Orville. But her enjoyment soon turns to mortification at the hands of her vulgar and capricious grandmother, and the rakish Sir Clement Willoughby, who torments the naive young woman with his unwanted advances. And while her aristocratic father refuses to acknowledge her legitimacy, Evelina can hold no hope of happiness with the man she loves. Published anonymously in 1778, Frances Burney's epistolary novel brought her instant fame when the secret of its authorship was revealed. With its ingenious combination of romance and satire, comedy and melodrama, Evelina is a sparkling depiction of the dangers and delights of fashionable society.

Moving, heart-felt prose poems by the beloved and much admired Bengali poet and mystic who first achieved international fame (and a Nobel Prize) in 1913 with his translation of these moving poems. Reminiscent of Blake and Gibran, they include many works that are almost biblical in their rhythms, phrasing and images. Introduction by William Butler Yeats.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original.Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks,notations,marginalia and flawed pages.Because we believe this work is culturally important,we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting,preserving,and promoting the world's literature in affordable,high quality,modern editions that are true to the original work.

This volume, first published in 2006, is a comprehensive scholarly edition of Jane Austen's innovative final novel.

Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. Using the first edition text, which Lawrence approved, this edition also offers a fresh and stimulating introduction - particularly in its treatment of Lawrence's language and imagery.

Once upon a time there lived a king who was deeply in love with a princess, but she could not marry anyone, because she was under an enchantment. So the King set out to seek a fairy, and asked what he could do to win the Princess's love .The Blue Fairy Book is the first in a series of fairy-tale anthologies beloved of children in the last century. Each fairy book is a veritable treasure trove of stories for children and adults alike, spellbinding and special. Hesperus is very proud to present the first anthology, The Blue Fairy Book, which includes wonderful renditions of the old favourites such as Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, as well as some intriguing fairy tales that modern audiences have yet to discover such as Why the Sea is Salt, Prince Hyacinth and The Dear Little Princess.

From its spectacular opening–the astonishing scene in whichdrunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passingsailor at a county fair–to the breathtaking series of discoveriesat its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique placeamong Thomas Hardy’s finest and most powerful novels. Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in earlynineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesomeSophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willfulHenchard rises to a position of wealth and power–only to suffer amost bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to hisown destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, “Hardy’sLord Jim…his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroesin all fiction.

Work from the German philosopher,one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of Thomas Sargent Perry's 1892 translation, indisputably the translation that has best served readers in English. Reprinted repeatedly over the last one hundred years, the Perry translation is a classic in its own right. After careful review, the editor has corrected minor infelicities of translation (necessary to remain true to Lafayette's text) and updated vocabulary. To experience the innovation of Lafayette's writing, it is necessary to understand the critical resistance it met with in seventeenth-century France. "Contemporary Reactions" includes five assessments of The Princess of Cleves by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette herself, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin and Marie de Sevigne, Jean-Baptiste-Henry du Trousset de Valincour, Jean-Antoine de Charnes, and Du Plaisir following its controversial publication. John Lyons's translations for this Norton Critical Edition make these reactions available in English for the first time. "Criticism" includes eleven modern studies of the novel, five of which appear here in English for the first time, by Jean Fabre, Michel Butor, Jean Rousset, Helen Karen Kaps, Gerard Genette, Roger Francillon, Kurt Weinberg, Peggy Kamuf, Erica Harth, Joan DeJean, and Laurence Gregario. A Glossary of Characters and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

The story of an unhappy little girl, her invalid cousin, andthe healing power of friendship and love.

Two classic science fiction novels in one handsome volume. Here are two masterpieces of irony and imaginative vision from the father of science fiction. The Time Machine propels the Time Traveller into a distant, dismal, Darwinian future. The Invisible Man tells of a brash young scientist who becomes invisible, then insane.

The story is written in the first person as a series of journal entries, the narrator a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. The windows of the room are barred, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, allowing her husband to control her access to the rest of the house.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, producing plays, such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights.