110 Classical Books to Read

A List of 110 Classical Books to Read

Books in list (111)


Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
Author(s): Oscar Wilde
ISBN 13: 9780007351053
Pages: 252

Title: The Bell Jar

<i>The Bell Jar</i> is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is rare in any novel. It points to the fact that <i>The Bell Jar</i> is a largely autobiographical work about Plath's own summer of 1953, when she was a guest editor at <i>Mademoiselle</i> and went through a breakdown. It reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath's own tragedy that its publication was considered a landmark in literature.
Author(s): Sylvia Plath
ISBN 13: 9780060837020
Pages: 288

Title: Brave New World

Huxley´s vision of the future in his astonishing 1931 novel Brave New World -- a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, where the people are genetically designed to be passive, consistently useful to the ruling class.
Author(s): Aldous Huxley
ISBN 13: 9780060850524
Pages: 288
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Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family.
Author(s): Gabriel Garcia Marquez
ISBN 13: 9780060883287
Pages: 448
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Title: The Chronicles of Narnia Movie Tie-in Edition: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

<p>Journeys to the end of the world, fantastic creatures and epic battles between good and evil—the book that has it all is the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, written in 1949 by C. S. Lewis. But Lewis did not stop there. Six more books followed, and together they became known as <b>The Chronicles of Narnia</b>.</p> <p>For over fifty years, <b>The Chronicles of Narnia</b> have transcended the fantasy genre to become part of the canon of classic literature. Each of the seven books is a masterpiece, drawing the reader into a land where magic meets reality, and the result is a fictional world whose scope has fascinated generations.</p> <p>This edition presents all seven books—unabridged—in one impressive volume.</p>
Author(s): C. S. Lewis
ISBN 13: 9780061969058
Pages: 766
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Title: The Odyssey

A new translation of the epic poem retells the story of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War
Author(s): Homer
ISBN 13: 9780140268867
Pages: 541

Title: The Iliad

The centuries-old epic about the wrath of Achilles is rendered into modern English verse by a renowned translator
Author(s): Homer
ISBN 13: 9780140275360
Pages: 683

Title: On the Road

Author(s): Jack Kerouac
ISBN 13: 9780140283297

Title: The Canterbury Tales

Author(s): Geoffrey Chaucer
ISBN 13: 9780140424386

Title: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbons six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature.
Author(s): Edward Gibbon
ISBN 13: 9780140433937
Pages: 1114
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Title: Lost Illusions

Lost Illusions is one of the greatest novels in the rich procession of the Comédie humaine, Balzac's panoramic social and moral history of his times.
Author(s): Herbert Hunt;Honore Balzac
ISBN 13: 9780140442519
Pages: 720

Title: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights

A selection of the tales told by Shahrazad in an attempt to save her life, including "The Young Woman and Her Five Lovers", "The Fisherman and the Jinnee", "The Historic Fart", and "The Tale of Kafur the Black Eunuch".
Author(s): N.J. Dawood
ISBN 13: 9780140442892
Pages: 406

Title: Gargantua and Pantagruel

And in Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and ...
Author(s): Francois Rabelais;Michael Andrew Screech
ISBN 13: 9780140445503
Pages: 1041

Title: Germinal

During the Second Empire, Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, experiences the miserable life of the coal miners in northern France and enters the struggle between capital and labor.
Author(s): Émile Zola
ISBN 13: 9780140447422
Pages: 546

Title: The Red and the Black

Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life.
Author(s): Stendhal
ISBN 13: 9780140447644
Pages: 576

Title: The Idiot

Author(s): Fyodor Dostoyevsky
ISBN 13: 9780140447927

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss
Author(s): Alexandre Dumas pere
ISBN 13: 9780140449266
Pages: 1276
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Title: The Decameron

Author(s): Giovanni Boccaccio
ISBN 13: 9780140449303

Title: Tess of the DUrbervilles

s#volumes
Author(s): Thomas Hardy
ISBN 13: 9780141439594
Pages: 517

Title: Sense and Sensibility

Spirited and impulsive, Marianne Dashwood is the complete opposite to her controlled and sensible sister, Elinor. When it comes to matters of the heart, Marianne is passionate and romantic and soon falls for the charming, but unreliable Mr Willoughby. Elinor, in contrast, copes stoically with the news that her love, Edward Ferrars is promised to another. It is through their shared experiences of love that both sisters come to learn that the key to a successful match comes from finding the perfect mixture of rationality and feeling.
Author(s): Jane Austen
ISBN 13: 9780141439662
Pages: 409
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Title: Northanger Abbey

New chronology and further reading. Edited with an introduction by Marilyn Butler.
Author(s): Jane Austen
ISBN 13: 9780141439792
Pages: 254

Title: Jane Eyre

Growing up in the home of a cruel aunt and a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre, an orphaned young woman, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her employer, the enigmatic Rochester.
Author(s): Charlotte Bronte
ISBN 13: 9780141441146
Pages: 578
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Title: The Portrait of a Lady

Part of a series of Penguin Classics editions of Henry James's works, this edition contains a chronology, further reading, notes and an introduction by Philip Horne, exploring the sources in life and fiction from which James determined to ...
Author(s): Henry James;Philip Horne
ISBN 13: 9780141441269
Pages: 718

Title: Don Quixote

Retells the adventures of an eccentric country gentleman and his companion who set out as knight and squire of old to right wrongs and punish evil.
Author(s): Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
ISBN 13: 9780142437230
Pages: 1023

Title: The Crucible

A play revealing the Salem witch trials of the late seventeenth century and the problem of guilt by association.
Author(s): Arthur Miller
ISBN 13: 9780142437339
Pages: 143

Title: Aleph and other stories

Twenty fictional pieces survey the depth and range of the distinguished Argentine writer's forty-year career as he journeys inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Maya priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a man awaiting ...
Author(s): Jorge Luis Borges;Andrew Hurley
ISBN 13: 9780142437889
Pages: 210

Title: The Grapes of Wrath

Winner of the 1990 Tony Award and Outer Critics Circle Award. A powerful and deeply affecting stage version of one of the masterpieces of American literature. Holding to the simplicity and directness of the original novel, the play uses the sparest of technical means to convey its timeless message of the persistence and strength of the human spirit as it battles against the adversities of nature and an uncaring society.
Author(s): John Steinbeck
ISBN 13: 9780143039433
Pages: 544
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Title: The Aeneid

Recounts the adventures of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who helped found Rome, after the fall of Troy.
Author(s): Virgil;Robert Fagles;Bernard Knox
ISBN 13: 9780143105138
Pages: 484

Title: Middlemarch

In nineteenth-century England, Dorothea Brooke's wishes to defy social conventions are inhibited by the strict nature of her surroundings.
Author(s): George Eliot;Jessica Hische
ISBN 13: 9780143123811
Pages: 912

Title: Little Women

Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.
Author(s): Louisa May Alcott
ISBN 13: 9780147514011
Pages: 777

Title: Baltasar and Blimunda

In eighteenth-century Portugal, fifty thousand laborers carry stones on their backs across mountains to build the king's convent, a heretical priest devises a magic flying machine--the Passarola--and two lovers' dream of flight sets them ...
Author(s): José Saramago;Giovanni Pontiero
ISBN 13: 9780156005203
Pages: 343

Title: Mrs. Dalloway

A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life
Author(s): Virginia Woolf
ISBN 13: 9780156628709
Pages: 194

Title: Orlando

Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores.
Author(s): Virginia Woolf
ISBN 13: 9780156701600
Pages: 333

Title: The Flowers of Evil

This bold new translation with facing French text restores once banned poems to their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of the collection.
Author(s): Charles Baudelaire
ISBN 13: 9780192835451
Pages: 399

Title: David Copperfield

Dickens' great coming-of-age novel, now in a beautiful new clothbound edition This is the novel Dickens regarded as his "favourite child" and is considered his most autobiographical.
Author(s): Charles Dickens
ISBN 13: 9780241240366
Pages: 1024

Title: The Second Sex

This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation.
Author(s): Simone de Beauvoir;Constance Borde;Sheila Malovany-Chevallier
ISBN 13: 9780307277787
Pages: 800
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Title: The Catcher in the Rye

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City
Author(s): J.D. Salinger
ISBN 13: 9780316769488
Pages: 224
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Title: Interview with the Vampire (Vampire Chronicles Series #1)

The time is now.

We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks—as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . .

He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir—young, romantic, cultivated—to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life . . . learning first to sustain himself on the blood of cocks and rats caught in the raffish streets of New Orleans, then on the blood of human beings . . . to the years when, moving away from his final human ties under the tutelage of the hated yet necessary Lestat, he gradually embraces the habits, hungers, feelings of vampirism: the detachment, the hardened will, the "superior" sensual pleasures.

He carries us back to the crucial moment in a dark New Orleans street when he finds the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her, struggling against the last residue of human feeling within him . . .

We see how Claudia in turn is made a vampire—all her passion and intelligence trapped forever in the body of a small child—and how they arrive at their passionate and dangerous alliance, their French Quarter life of opulence: delicate Grecian statues, Chinese vases, crystal chandeliers, a butler, a maid, a stone nymph in the hidden garden court . . . night curving into night with their vampire senses heightened to the beauty of the world, thirsting for the beauty of death—a constant stream of vulnerablestrangers awaiting them below . . .

We see them joined against the envious, dangerous Lestat, embarking on a perilous search across Europe for others like themselves, desperate to discover the world they belong to, the ways of survival, to know what they are and why, where they came from, what their future can be . . .

We follow them across Austria and Transylvania, encountering their kind in forms beyond their wildest imagining . . . to Paris, where footsteps behind them, in exact rhythm with their own, steer them to the doors of the Théâtre des Vampires—the beautiful, lewd, and febrile mime theatre whose posters of penny-dreadful vampires at once mask and reveal the horror within . . . to their meeting with the eerily magnetic Armand, who brings them, at last, into intimacy with a whole brilliant and decadent society of vampires, an intimacy that becomes sudden terror when they are compelled to confront what they have feared and fled . . .

In its unceasing flow of spellbinding storytelling, of danger and flight, of loyalty and treachery, Interview with the Vampire bears witness of a literary imagination of the first order.
Author(s): Anne Rice
ISBN 13: 9780345337665
Pages: 352
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Title: The Brothers Karamazov

The violent lives of three sons are exposed when their father is murdered and each one attempts to come to terms with his guilt.
Author(s): Fyodor Dostoevsky
ISBN 13: 9780374528379
Pages: 796
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Title: The Leopard

Confronting the social changes sweeping nineteenth-century Italy, including the forces of revolution and democracy, an elderly Sicilian aristocrat arranges a marriage between his daughter and a wealthy merchant.
Author(s): Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa;Archibald Colquhoun
ISBN 13: 9780375714795
Pages: 294

Title: In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (Modern Library Series)

<p>In <i>Swann’s Way</i>, the themes of Proust’s masterpiece are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.</p> <p>For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of <i>Á la recherché du temps perdu</i> (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).</p>
Author(s): Marcel Proust
ISBN 13: 9780375751547
Pages: 656

Title: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

Author(s): Edgar Allan Poe
ISBN 13: 9780385074070
Pages: 832

Title: Lord of the Flies

The classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island.
Author(s): William Golding
ISBN 13: 9780399501487
Pages: 208
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Title: To Kill a Mockingbird

Lawyer Atticus Finch defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic, Puliter Prize-winning novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white woman. Through the eyes of Atticus's children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unanswering honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930's.

Author Biography:

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, where she attended local schools and the University of Alabama. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, three honarary degrees, and many other literart awards.

Winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Fiction.

Author(s): Harper Lee
ISBN 13: 9780446310789
Pages: 384
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Title: The Divine Comedy

For the first time, John Ciardi's translations of Dante's three soaring canticles have been gathered together in a single volume.
Author(s): Dante Alighieri;John Ciardi
ISBN 13: 9780451208637
Pages: 895

Title: Les Miserables

Author(s): Victor Hugo
ISBN 13: 9780451419439

Title: The Secret Garden

The story of an unhappy little girl, her invalid cousin, and the healing power of friendship and love. Reading level: 4.8.
Author(s): Frances Hodgson Burnett
ISBN 13: 9780451528834
Pages: 288

Title: Walden and Civil Disobedience

Presents "Walden," in which Thoreau describes his two-year residence at Walden Pond in a small house of his own construction, and "Civil Disobedience," a protest against governmental interference with individual rights and liberty.
Author(s): Henry David Thoreau;W. S. Merwin
ISBN 13: 9780451532169
Pages: 318

Title: Atlas Shrugged

At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback. With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers. Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit. Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club
Author(s): Ayn Rand
ISBN 13: 9780452011878
Pages: 1192
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Title: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

In September of 1884, Robert Louis Stevenson, then in his mid-thirties, moved with his family to Bournemouth, a resort on the southern coast of England, where in the brief span of 23 months he revised A Child's Garden of Verses and wrote the novels Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. An intriguing combination of fantast thriller and moral allegory, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde depicts the gripping struggle of two opposing personalities — one essentially good, the other evil — for the soul of one man. Its tingling suspense and intelligent and sensitive portrayal of man's dual nature reveals Stevenson as a writer of great skill and originality, whose power to terrify and move us remains, over a century later, undiminished.
Author(s): Robert Louis Stevenson
ISBN 13: 9780486266886
Pages: 54
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Title: Candide

Tells the story of Candide, a naive youth, who is conscripted, shipwrecked, robbed, and tortured by the Inquisition without losing his will to live
Author(s): Voltaire
ISBN 13: 9780486266893
Pages: 94

Title: The Prince

That Machiavelli's name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince - the world's pre-eminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the ...
Author(s): Niccolò Machiavelli
ISBN 13: 9780486272740
Pages: 71
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Title: The Awakening

" Now available in this inexpensive edition, it offers a powerful and provocative reading experience to modern readers. Unabridged Dover (1993) republication of the work first published by Herbert S. Stone & Co., Chicago, 1899.
Author(s): Kate Chopin
ISBN 13: 9780486277868
Pages: 116

Title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

After a cyclone transports her to the land of Oz, Dorothy must seek out the great wizard in order to return to Kansas.
Author(s): L. Frank Baum
ISBN 13: 9780486291161
Pages: 140

Title: Gullivers Travels

Follows Lemuel Gulliver on his voyages through fantastical lands, including Lilliput--whose inhabitants are only inches tall--and Brobdingnag, populated with giants.
Author(s): Jonathan Swift
ISBN 13: 9780486292731
Pages: 226

Title: The Age of Innocence

Deeply moving study of the tyrannical and rigid requirements of New York high society in the late 19th century and the effect of those strictures on the lives of three people.
Author(s): Edith Wharton
ISBN 13: 9780486298030
Pages: 235

Title: Huckleberry Finn

Recounts the adventures of a young boy and an escaped slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
Author(s): Mark Twain;John Green
ISBN 13: 9780486403496
Pages: 60

Title: Dracula

Presents the classic gothic horror tale of the powerful, centuries-old vampire that follows his bloodthirsty trail from the mountains of Central Europe to England, until the savvy Dr. Van Helsing comes up with a way to end his reign of ...
Author(s): Bram Stoker
ISBN 13: 9780486411095
Pages: 326

Title: Crime and Punishment

In a timeless story of justice, morality, and redemption, an impoverished Russian student murders a miserly landlady, a crime that has severe repercussions on his life and his family as he battles his conscience.
Author(s): Fyodor Dostoyevsky;Constance Garnett
ISBN 13: 9780486415871
Pages: 430
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Title: Oliver Twist

Portrays the adventures of poor orphan Oliver Twist in the criminal underworld of mid-nineteenth-century London.
Author(s): Charles Dickens
ISBN 13: 9780486424538
Pages: 346
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Title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

A sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist, the tale addresses age-old questions — the meaning of love, of death, and the possibility of redemption — in the form of Werther's alternately joyful and despairing letters about ...
Author(s): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe;Nathan Haskell Dole
ISBN 13: 9780486424552
Pages: 88

Title: The Three Musketeers

Populated by famous characters in literary and actual history, Dumas's peerless adventure traces an aspiring Musketeer's path to 17th-century Paris, where he encounters intrigue, romance, and thrilling swordplay. With its rousing cry of "One for all, and all for one," Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure novel has captivated generations of readers since its initial publication in 1844. Action, intrigue, and romance abound in this swashbuckling epic, which traces a country lad's path to the French court of the early 1600s and the glorious fraternity of the king's men, the Musketeers. A son of impoverished nobility, D'Artagnan arrives in Paris to find the Musketeers disbanded by the cunning Cardinal Richelieu, who hopes to seize power from the weak-willed Louis XIII. The daring and ambitious youth proves his mettle in the company of the famous Musketeers — Porthos, Athos, and Aramis — and joins them in a heroic struggle to defend the king and his lovely queen, Anne of Austria. Dumas transformed the concept of the historical novel by writing in a modern, conversational style. His accessible, fast-paced narratives combine real and fictional characters to recapture the events, manners, and mood of seventeenth-century France. Emerging in the chaotic aftermath of the Revolution, Dumas's novels provided his contemporaries with a welcome sense of identity and national pride. His most popular work, The Three Musketeers, continues to charm modern readers with its timeless tales of romantic valor.
Author(s): Alexandre Dumas
ISBN 13: 9780486456812
Pages: 545
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Title: Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Introduction by A. S. Byatt Illustrations by John Tenniel Includes commissioned endnotes Conceived by a shy British don on a golden afternoon to entertain ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and ...
Author(s): Lewis Carroll
ISBN 13: 9780553213454
Pages: 272
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Title: Persuasion

Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish, spendthrift Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen, she fell in love with–and was engaged to–a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded, against her profoundest instinct, to give him up.Now, at twenty-seven, and believing that she has lost her bloom, Anne is startled to learn that Captain Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed
Author(s): Jane Austen
ISBN 13: 9780679409861
Pages: 260

Title: Madame Bovary

Author(s): Gustave Flaubert
ISBN 13: 9780679420316

Title: Ulysses

Considered the greatest 20th century novel written in English, in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text. It is a disillusioned study of estrangement, paralysis and the disintegration of society.
Author(s): James Joyce
ISBN 13: 9780679600114
Pages: 816
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Title: The Sound and the Fury

Depicts the troubled childhood of Jason, Quentin, Caddy, and Benjy Compson, members of a southern family.
Author(s): William Faulkner
ISBN 13: 9780679600176
Pages: 348

Title: Lolita

A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him
Author(s): Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
ISBN 13: 9780679723165
Pages: 317
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Title: The Sound and the Fury

“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. . . . I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —from The Sound and the Fury
Author(s): William Faulkner
ISBN 13: 9780679732242
Pages: 401
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Title: Invisible Man

<p><b>Invisible Man</b> is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952.&nbsp;&nbsp;A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century.&nbsp;&nbsp;The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.&nbsp;&nbsp;The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's <b>The Waste Land</b>, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.</p> <p><b>Winner of the 1953 National Book Award</b> </p>
Author(s): Ralph Ellison
ISBN 13: 9780679732761
Pages: 581
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Title: The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal — a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

An old Cuban fisherman triumphs over a giant marlin--only to have his prized catch literally eaten away by circling sharks.

Author(s): Ernest Hemingway
ISBN 13: 9780684801223
Pages: 128

Title: The Great Gatsby

The mysterious Jay Gatsby embodies the American notion that it is possible to redefine oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. Gatsby's youthful neighbor, Nick Carraway, fascinated with the display of enormous wealth in which Gatsby revels, finds himself swept up in the lavish lifestyle of Long Island society during the Jazz Age. Considered Fitzgerald's best work, The Great Gatsby is a mystical, timeless story of integrity and cruelty, vision and despair.

The timeless story of Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy Buchanan is widely acknowledged to be the closest thing to the Great American Novel ever written.

Author(s): F. Scott Fitzgerald
ISBN 13: 9780743273565
Pages: 192
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Title: The Sun Also Rises

A brilliant profile of the Lost Generation, Hemingway's first bestseller captures life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation. Reprint.

Hemingway's first bestselling novel, it is the story of a group of 'Lost Generation' Americans and Brits in the 1920s on a sojourn from Paris to Pamploma, Spain. The novel poignantly details their life as expatriates on Paris' Left Bank, and conveys the brutality of bullfighting in Spain. The novel established Hemingway as one of the great prose stylists of all time.

Author(s): Ernest Hemingway
ISBN 13: 9780743297332
Pages: 256
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Title: A Midsummer Nights Dream

Shakespeare's popular comedy of love and mistaken identity is accompanied by a section on reading Shakespeare's language, information on Shakespeare's life and theater, explanatory notes, annotated reading lists, and an essay
Author(s): William Shakespeare
ISBN 13: 9780743477543
Pages: 256

Title: The Maias

Carlos, heir to a great fortune, becomes a doctor and drifts along spending time at the theater, reading, and having affairs, until he falls deeply in love but has to hide a terrible secret.
Author(s): Eça de Queirós;Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 13: 9780811216494
Pages: 628

Title: Macbeth

Author(s): William Shakespeare
ISBN 13: 9780812416138

Title: The Jungle Books

Author(s): Rudyard Kipling
ISBN 13: 9780980060584

Title: 1984. Level 4

Classic / British English Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people's lives every second of the day.
Author(s): George Orwell
ISBN 13: 9781405862417
Pages: 88

Title: Julius Caesar (Annotated by Henry N. Hudson with an Introduction by Charles Harold Herford)

Believed to be written in 1599, William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is one of several plays that the bard would write that were based upon Roman history. Closely based on actual events as chronicled in Plutarch’s “Lives”, it is the story of the tragic downfall of Julius Caesar and of those who conspired against him. The play begins with the celebration of Caesar’s return from defeating Pompey’s sons at the battle of Munda. When it is learned that Julius Caesar has been offered the crown of Rome by Mark Antony three times, and that each time he has refused it, it is believed that it is only a matter of time before he is to become King and thus dictator of Rome. Roman Senator Cassius is concerned about what such a coronation might mean for the people of Rome and begins to persuade fellow politician Brutus, who is also Caesar’s close friend, that they must prevent Caesar from gaining such power by assassinating him. A gripping historical drama “Julius Caesar” contains some of Shakespeare’s most memorable lines and is ranked as one of the playwright’s finest works. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper, is annotated by Henry N. Hudson, and includes an introduction by Charles Harold Herford.
Author(s): William Shakespeare;Henry Norman Hudson
ISBN 13: 9781420952742
Pages: 110


Title: Catch-22

Catch-22 is like no other novel we have ever read. It has its own style, its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original.

It is set in the closing months of World War II, in an American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy. Its hero is a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever even if he has to die in the attempt.)

His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men have to fly.

The others range from Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur (he bombs his own airfield when the Germans make him a reasonable offer: cost plus 6%), to the dead man in Yossarian's tent; from Major Major Major, whose tragedy is that he resembles Henry Fonda, to Nately's whore's kid sister; from Lieutenant Scheisskopf (he loves a parade) to Major -- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has ever dared ask him his first name; from Clevinger, who is lost in the clouds, to the soldier in white, who lies encased in bandages from head to toe and may not even be there at all; from Dori Duz, who does, to the wounded gunner Snowden, who lies dying in the tail of Yossarian's plane and at last reveals his terrifying secret.

Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality. It is, we believe, one of the strongest creations of the mid-century.

As revealing today as when it was first published, this brilliant novel by the author of Picture This expresses the concerns of an entire generation in its black comedy. World War II flier John Yossarian decides that his only mission each time he goes up is to return—alive!

Author(s): Joseph Heller
ISBN 13: 9781451626650
Pages: 544
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Title: Fahrenheit 451

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, suddenly realizes their merit.
Author(s): Ray Bradbury
ISBN 13: 9781451673319
Pages: 159
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Title: A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition

The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime, featuring all of the alternate endings: “Fascinating…serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author’s process” (The New York Times). Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.
Author(s): Ernest Hemingway
ISBN 13: 9781476764528
Pages: 352

Title: Zorba the Greek

First published in 1946, "Zorba the Greek," is, on one hand, the story of a Greek working man named Zorba, a passionate lover of life, the unnamed narrator who he accompanies to Crete to work in a lignite mine, and the men and women of the ...
Author(s): Nikos Kazantzakis
ISBN 13: 9781476782812
Pages: 368

Title: The House of Mirth

"When it was first published in 1905, Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth", received rave reviews, selling over 140,000 copies in its first three months.
Author(s): Edith Wharton
ISBN 13: 9781491241813
Pages: 364

Title: Leaves of Grass

s#volumes
Author(s): Walt Whitman
ISBN 13: 9781503207332
Pages: 152

Title: Around the World in 80 Days

Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (roughly £1.6 million today) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works. The story starts in London on Tuesday, October 1, 1872. Fogg is a rich English gentleman living in solitude. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires a Frenchman by the name of Jean Passepartout as a replacement. At the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 (equal to about £1.6 million today) from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on Wednesday, October 2, 1872, and is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, Saturday, December 21, 1872.
Author(s): Jules Verne
ISBN 13: 9781503215153
Pages: 130
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Title: Emma

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815.
Author(s): Jane Austen
ISBN 13: 9781503261969
Pages: 263

Title: Faust

In Goethe's reworking of the story two hundred years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink" in his life.
Author(s): Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
ISBN 13: 9781503262140
Pages: 158

Title: Frankenstein

• This book publication is unique which includes exclusive Introduction, Historical Background and handcrafted additional content. • This edition also includes detailed Biography. • This edition has been corrected for spelling and ...
Author(s): Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
ISBN 13: 9781503262423
Pages: 148

Title: Great Expectations

The novel is collected and dense, with a conciseness unusual for Dickens. According to G. K. Chesterton, Dickens penned Great Expectations in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame.
Author(s): Charles Dickens
ISBN 13: 9781503275188
Pages: 284
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Title: Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.Page 2 of a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra (11 June 1799) in which she first mentions ...
Author(s): Jane Austen
ISBN 13: 9781503290563
Pages: 226
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Title: Robinson Crusoe

During one of his several adventurous voyages in the 1600s, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives on a deserted island for more than twenty-eight years.
Author(s): Daniel Defoe
ISBN 13: 9781503292383
Pages: 158

Title: The Beautiful and Damned

The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. It portrays the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York café society. As in Fitzgerald's other novels, the characters are complex, especially with respect to marriage and intimacy. The book is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1910s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, his relationship with his wife, Gloria, his service in the army, and his alcoholism.
Author(s): F. Scott Fitzgerald
ISBN 13: 9781503295353
Pages: 218
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Title: The Call of the Wild

The story was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903; a month later it was released in book form. The novel's great popularity and success made a reputation for London.
Author(s): Jack London
ISBN 13: 9781503302945
Pages: 66

Title: The Time Machine

The Time Machine is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. Wells is generally credited with the popularisation of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle. This work is an early example of the Dying Earth subgenre. The portion of the novel that sees the Time Traveller in a distant future where the sun is huge and red also places The Time Machine within the realm of Eschatology; that is the study of the end times, the end of the world, and the ultimate destiny of mankind. The Time Machine has since been adapted into two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It has also indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media.
Author(s): H. G. Wells
ISBN 13: 9781505255607
Pages: 58
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Title: A Tale of Two Cities

Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it tells the story of a family threatened by the terrible events of the past.
Author(s): Charles Dickens
ISBN 13: 9781509825387
Pages: 520

Title: The Scarlet Letter

Like all of Hawthorne's novels, "The Scarlet Letter" has but a slender plot and but few characters with an influence on the development of the story. Its great dramatic force depends entirely on the mental states of the actors and their relations to one another, —relations of conscience, — relations between wronged and wrongers. Its great burden is the weight of unacknowledged sin as seen in the remorse and cowardice and suffering of the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale. Contrasted with his concealed agony is the constant confession, conveyed by the letter, which is forced upon Hester, and has a double effect, — a healthful one, working beneficently, and making her helpful and benevolent, tolerant and thoughtful ; and an unhealthful one, which by the great emphasis placed on her transgression, the keeping her forever under its ban and isolating her from her fellows, prepares her to break away from the long repression and lapse again into sin when she plans her flight. Roger Chillingworth is an embodiment of subtle and refined revenge. The most striking situation is perhaps "The Minister's Vigil," in chapter xii. The book, though corresponding in its tone and burden to some of the shorter stories, had a more startling and dramatic character, and a strangeness, which at once took hold of a larger public than any of those had attracted. Though imperfectly comprehended, and even misunderstood in some quarters, it was seen to have a new and unique quality; and Hawthorne's reputation became national.
Author(s): Nathaniel Hawthorne
ISBN 13: 9781512090567
Pages: 148
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Title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Retells the adventures of a French professor and his two companions as they sail above and below the world's oceans as prisoners on the fabulous electric submarine of the deranged Captain Nemo.
Author(s): Jules Verne
ISBN 13: 9781512093599
Pages: 212
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Title: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Stephen Crane was an American author who was considered one of the most creative writers of his time despite living only 28 years. Crane’s most famous works include The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. This edition of Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets includes a table of contents.
Author(s): Stephen Crane
ISBN 13: 9781517158811
Pages: 38

Title: Hamlet: Premium Edition - Illustrated

One of the greatest plays of all time, the compelling tragedy of the tormented young prince of Denmark continues to capture the imaginations of modern audiences worldwide. Confronted with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, and with his mother’s infidelity, Hamlet must find a means of reconciling his longing for oblivion with his duty as avenger. The ghost, Hamlet’s feigned madness, Ophelia’s death and burial, the play within a play, the “closet scene” in which Hamlet accuses his mother of complicity in murder, and breathtaking swordplay are just some of the elements that make Hamlet an enduring masterpiece of the theater.
Author(s): William Shakespeare;Monty
ISBN 13: 9781530832484
Pages: ooks#volumes
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Title: The Metamorphosis

The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.
Author(s): Franz Kafka
ISBN 13: 9781557427663
Pages: 44
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Title: The Trial

The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself.
Author(s): Franz Kafka
ISBN 13: 9781612931036
Pages: 158

Title: War and Peace

The great writers of the last two centuries have competed with each other to heap praise on Leo Tolstoy and 'War and Peace'. "What an artist and what a psychologist!"-- Gustave Flaubert, Tolstoy's contemporary, on reading 'War and Peace'.
Author(s): Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy;Leo Tolstoy
ISBN 13: 9781781395936
Pages: 1002
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Title: Wuthering Heights

Introduction and Notes by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex. Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.
Author(s): Emily Bronte
ISBN 13: 9781853260018
Pages: 246

Title: Moby-Dick

With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd. Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury Moby-Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing.
Author(s): Herman Melville
ISBN 13: 9781853260087
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Title: To the Lighthouse

Inspired by her childhood summers in Cornwall, the author produced one of the masterworks of English literature, concerning the Ramsay family and their summer guests on the Isle of Skye before and after the First World War.
Author(s): Virginia Woolf
ISBN 13: 9781907523588
Pages: 122

Title: Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy is a classic story of love and tragedy against the backdrop of pre-revolutionary Russia. The extravagant and dramatic story of Anna Karenina who risks everything for passion is intertwined with the quiet story of Levin (an autobiographical character) and his own quest for true love and personal fulfillment. This psychological masterpiece is considered to be one of the greatest novels of world literature.
Author(s): Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
ISBN 13: 9781934648407
Pages: 828

Title: The Art of War

THE ART OF WAR is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician, and kindred to the Realpolitik of his time, termed in China as Legalism. The text is composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare. It is commonly thought of as a definitive work on military strategy and tactics. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and "for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name." It has had an influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.
Author(s): Sun Tzu
ISBN 13: 9789176371107
Pages: 108
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Title: Cousin Basilio

Author(s): Eca de Queiroz

 


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