Set in the Yukon, it tells the story of Frona Welse, a Stanford graduate and physical Valkyrie, who takes to the trail after upsetting her wealthy father's community by her forthright manner and befriending the town's prostitute. She is also torn between love for two suitors: Gregory St Vincent, a local man who... read more »
Dickens turns his satirical eye on America in "Martin Chuzzlewit", when young Martin embarks on a voyage that is destined to affect the fortunes of his family and his love. A story about the contrasting destinies of two descendants of the brothers Chuzzlewit, both born and bred to the same heritage of selfishness... read more »
One of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, Notes from Underground remains a cultural and literary watershed. In these pages Dostoevsky unflinchingly examines the dark, mysterious depths of the human heart. The Underground Man so chillingly depicted here has become an archetypal figure... read more »
Lush prose and penetrating psychological insight infuse Conrad's first novel with the qualities that have made him one of the most popular and most studied writers in English literature. The novel chronicles the tragic decline of a Dutch merchant isolated in 19th-century Borneo, the machinations of his bitter... read more »
At once endlessly facetious and highly serious, Sterne's great comic novel contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature--including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, and Dr. Slop--and boasts one of the most innovative and whimsical narrative styles in all literature. A... read more »
The Trail of the Hawk, by Sinclair Lewis, is the chronicle of an inveterate Rolling Stone. Carl Ericson, a born rebel against conventions, finds himself from boyhood up at war with the combined forces of family, school and society, all three of which unite in trying to mould him into the average colourless human... read more »
Three years before the civic-minded Carol Kennicott came to life in Main Street, Una Golden was confronting the male dinosaurs of business. Like Carol, the heroine of The Job is one of Sinclair Lewis's most fully realized creations and was his first controversial novel. A "working girl" in New York City, Una... read more »
In a London of the future, the drudgery of capitalism and bureaucracy have worn the human spirit down to the point where it can barely stand. When a pint-sized clerk named Auberon Quinn is randomly selected as head of state, he decides to turn London into a medieval carnival for his own amusement. One man, Adam... read more »
Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in... read more »
Conrad's autobiographical novella of a young man in his first command as a sea captain. A series of crises prove incredibly difficult for his new authority, for the sea is curiously becalmed and the crew is weakened by feverish malaria. When the first mate's fear convinces many that the ship is haunted and cursed by... read more »
This two part romance chronicles the rise to power of Odo Valsecca during the intellectual and political tumult which preceded the French Revolution. During his childhood and early manhood, Odo comes in close contact with all the major factions the peasantry, the clergy, the liberal freethinkers, and the nobility... read more »
Thérèse Lafirme, a beautiful and resourceful Creole woman, is widowed at age thirty-two and left alone to run her Louisiana plantation. When Thérèse falls in love with David Hosmer, a divorced businessman, her strong moral and religious convictions make it impossible for her to accept his marriage proposal. Her... read more »
If this were a ponderous work of realism, such as the author has attempted to write, and will doubtless essay again, it would be perilous to dedicate it to the splendid assembly of young British writers, lest the critics search for Influences and Imitations. But since this is a flagrant excursion, a tale for people... read more »
The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home—Howards End—to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two... read more »
Here Upton Sinclair offers us a novel about the Wall Street panic of 1907. He tells of a financial disaster brought on deliberately by powerful capitalists intent upon the ruin of their rivals -- fundamentally evil people who live to out-maneuver one another. We are a nation, said Sinclair, fundamentally corrupt... read more »
The daughter of well-to-do tradespeople in the fictional mining town of Woodhouse, Alvina Houghton struggles to find excitement in her provincial surroundings and worries that she is condemned to become an old maid. After plans to elope with her lover to Australia and train as a nurse in London lead to nothing, she... read more »
Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century appeared in 1913; it both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers, and established her as a major novelist. The Saturday Review wrote that she had 'assembled as many detestable people as it is possible to pack... read more »
Lawrence's satirical work in which he presents a bitter view of humanity and of the relationship between men and women. Aaron Sisson, a union official in an English mining town, leaves for Italy, deserting his wife and children to pursue politics and his original interest in music. Lawrence seems to foretell the... read more »
Of the three late masterpieces that crown the extraordinary literary achievement of Henry James, The Wings of the Dove is at once the most personal and the most elemental. James drew on the memory of a beloved cousin who died young to create one of the three central characters, Milly Theale, an heiress with a short... read more »
Woolf portrays the fascinations of self-discovery through relationships with other people, and she also looks into the intricacies of love--are we aware of love? Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William, and... read more »
When attractive, impulsive English widow Lidia takes a holiday in Italy, she causes a scandal by marrying Gino, a dashing and highly unsuitable Italian twelve years her junior. Her prim, snobbish in-laws make no attempts to hide their disapproval, and when Lidia’s decision eventually brings disaster, her English... read more »
Set in and around London, The Reef is a story of complex morality and its intricately woven place in society. This narrative primarily follows George Darrow and Anna Leath, a young gentleman and a widowed lady who plan to marry. Both of them experience doubts about their union, with surprising outcomes. Darrow has a... read more »
A story of the proud Allertons whose fortune has been squandered, and whose three-hundred-year estate Hamlyn's Purlieu stands to be lost to the family. Lucy and George Allerton, brother and sister, are resolved to overcome the mistakes of their father, Fred Allerton. A powerful exploration of relationships and... read more »
Bel-Ami is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened "Bel-Ami" by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-sihcle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics... read more »
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate--not by any means to exhaust--the subject of postal work, communication, and... read more »
Nowhere do Flaubert's explorations of the relation of signs to the objects they signify reach a more thorough study than in this work. Bouvard and Pécuchet systematically confuse signs and symbols with reality, an assumption that causes them much suffering, as it does for Emma Bovary and Frédéric Moreau. Yet... read more »
Henry James's admiration for "this masterly little novel" has been echoed throughout the twentieth century by readers of Pierre et Jean. It marked a turning point in the development of French fiction, situated as it is between traditional social realism and the psychological novel. It isrecognized as a classic study... read more »
A potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a... read more »
Henry James' celebrated novel about a passionate New England suffragette, her displaced southern gentleman cousin, and a charismatic young woman whose loyalty they both wished to possess goes so directly to the heart of sexual politics that it speaks to us with a voice as fresh and as vital as when the book was... read more »
Washington Square follows the coming-of-age of its plain-faced, kindhearted heroine, Catherine Sloper. Much to her father’s vexation, a handsome opportunist named Morris Townsend woos the long-suffering heiress, intent on claiming her fortune. When Catherine stubbornly refuses to call off her engagement, Dr... read more »