Geoffrey Giuliano
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Of all Jane Austen's books, Pride and Prejudice has earned a special place in the hearts of the reading public as her best-loved and most intimately known novel. From its famous opening sentence the story of the Bennet family and of the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove 'rather too light and bright, and sparkling', delights its most familiar readers as thoroughly as it does those who...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.
In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. A consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer dreams of a bigger fate than simply being a "rich boy." Yet through the novel's humorous escapades-from the famous episode of the whitewashed fence to the trial of Injun Joe-Mark Twain explores the deeper themes of the adult world, one of dishonesty and superstition, murder and revenge,...
4) Emma
Author
Language
English
Description
"Emma, perhaps the most technically accomplished of all of Austen's novels, is also, after Pride and Prejudice, her most popular one. Its numerous film and television adaptations testify to the world's enduring affection for the headstrong, often misguided Emma Woodhouse and her many romantic schemes. Like the previous volumes in Harvard's celebrated annotated Austen series, Emma: An Annotated Edition is a beautiful and illuminating gift edition that...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
This novel about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. On the surface the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes and the promiscuous divorcee Lady Brett Ashley. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes...
Author
Language
English
Description
When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne. When Elinor forms an attachment for the wealthy Edward Ferrars, his family disapproves and separates them....
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless societý⁰₄and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs...
8) Middlemarch
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A novel 'with a double plot interest. The heroine, Dorothea Brooke, longs to devote herself to some great cause and, for a time, expects to find it in her marriage to Rev. Mr. Casaubon, an aging scholar. Mr. Casaubon lives only eighteen months after their marriage, a sufficient period to disillusion her completely. He leaves her his estate, with the ill-intentioned proviso that she will forfeit if she marries his young cousin Will Ladislaw, whom...
Author
Language
English
Description
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the...
10) Mrs. Dalloway
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
""Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." It's one of the most famous opening lines in literature, that of Virginia Woolf's beloved masterpiece of time, memory, and the city. In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell- shock and on the brink of madness....
Author
Language
English
Description
In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...
Author
Language
English
Description
David Copperfield is considered to be Charles Dickens's most autobiographical novel. He said of it: "Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield." It is a Bildungsroman, a tale which follows the development into maturity of its narrator, David Copperfield. The Russian greats Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky both greatly admired the novel, as did Kafka, Joyce and James. Freud called it his favourite...
13) Winnie-the-Pooh
Author
Language
English
Description
The adventures of Christopher Robin and his friends, in which Pooh Bear uses a balloon to get honey, Piglet meets a Heffalump, and Eeyore has a birthday.
Author
Language
English
Description
Forced by her parents' ambitions among her wealthy D'Urberville cousins, Tess Durbeyfield attracts the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded, she finds work as a milkmaid, and her steadfast integrity is finally rewarded by the love of Angle Clare. Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of...
Author
Language
English
Description
Considered to be one of the first mystery novels, "The Woman in White" was a huge commercial success when it was first published in 1860. The story is told from the point of view of multiple narrators, no doubt the influence of Collin's legal training. The plot also explores the disadvantageous position of married women in nineteenth century. The Observer listed "The Woman in White" in the top 100 novels of all time. A read not to be missed by mystery...
16) Hamlet
Author
Language
English
Description
"This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to offer students a comprehensive and current critical account of the play,...
18) Of human bondage
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
From a tormented orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But, even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love with a waitress, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever....
19) Jude the obscure
Author
Language
English
Description
Jude Fawley's aspirations to the dignity and rewards of life are continually thwarted by tragic obstacles of fate.
Author
Language
English
Description
"Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner, he finds his rough new companions unimpressed by his wealth and shocked by his ignorance. He will have to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous mastery of skills upon which their common survival depends."--Back cover....