In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only on the prison systems but on all aspects of American society and government. From these notes, Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America", an exhaustive analysis of the successes...

Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Annotation. Dickens set this tale of a selfish, hard-hearted man, the son he favored, and the daughter he slighted, in an England almost prostrate before the storms of change we now call the Industrial Revolution. This is a superb example of Dicken's ability to combine the disparate qualities of a social historian, a theatrical artist, and a poet of the utmost tenderness and insight.

Of the complex, richly rewarding masterworks he wrote in the last decade of his life, Little Dorrit is the book in which Charles Dickens most fully unleashed his indignation at the fallen state of mid-Victorian society. Crammed with persons and incidents in whose recreation nothing is accidental or spurious, containing, in its picture of the Circumlocution Office, the most witheringly exact satire of a bureaucracy we possess, Little Dorrit is a stunning...

The story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness"; the mannish lawyer...

When the starving French masses rise in hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause - La Guillotine - the new invention for efficiently chopping off heads. Charles Dickens' compelling portrait of the results of terror and treason, love and supreme sacrifice continues to captivate readers around...

Set against the backdrop of medieval Paris, Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.

"In his timeless story of two pairs of mismatched lovers, The Return of the Native sets romantic idealism as a destructive counterpoint to reality and disillusionment." "Against the lowering background of Egdon Heath, fiery Eustacia Vye passes her days, wishing only for passionate love. She believes that her escape from Egdon lies in marriage to Clym Yeobright, home from Paris and discontented with his work there. But Clym wishes to return to the...

Maggie Tulliver is always in trouble. Her spirited temperament brings her into conflict with her family and she finds her own nature divided between the claims of moral responsibility and her hunger for self-fulfillment.