Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

The Penguin English Library Edition of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth GaskellEh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ...Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Mollys life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. Soon the girls b...

One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our WorldRhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century Michele RobertsJean Rhyss masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyres madwoman in the attic, Bertha Rochester.Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, how...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Villette by Charlotte BronteThat evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol - blind, bloodless, and of granite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they wereWith neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls boarding school in the small ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace ThackerayVanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way thr...

One of the twentieth centurys great undisputed masterpieces, Malcolm Lowrys Under the Volcano includes an introduction by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Modern Classics.It is the fiesta Day of the Dead in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his life. Drowning himself in ...

A modernist novel of supreme stylistic innovation, James Joyces Ulysses is the towering achievement of twentieth century literature. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Declan Kiberd. For Joyce, literature is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man. Written between 1914 and 1921, Ulysses has survived bowdlerization, legal action and bitter controversy. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, hi...

How can the bird that is born for joy / Sit in a cage and sing?A selection of Blakes most haunting verse, including The Songs of Innocence and Experience.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Two on a Tower by Thomas HardyThen they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars...Hardys atmospheric, moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces far beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion and conflict against a background of vast stellar space and scientific discovery. Two on a Tower tells the story of Lady Constantine, w...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Treasure Island and The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis StevensonOne more step, Mr Hands, said I, and Ill blow your brains outIn Treasure Island, a weathered old sailor known as Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkinss parents - and it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. For when Bones dies mysteriously, Jim stumbles across a map of a mysterious island in his sea chest - where X marks the spot of a stash of buried pirat...

When young Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map in a pirates chest in his parents inn, he is drawn into a world of danger and adventure. He joins the crew setting sail to the Caribbean to seek out the booty and over the course of the voyage confronts mutiny, murder and the charismatic and devious Long John Silver.

It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her headOne of Conrads most powerful, gripping storiesIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguins 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century Ca...

A pioneering work of modernist fiction, using her unique stream-of-consciousness technique to explore the inner lives of her characters, Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse is widely regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol, with an introduction and notes by Hermione Lee.To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and ...

One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our WorldA worldwide bestseller and the first part of Achebes African Trilogy, Things Fall Apart is the compelling story of one mans battle to protect his community against the forces of changeOkonkwo is the greatest wrestler and warrior alive, and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire in the harmattan. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Woman in White by Wilkie CollinsIn one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop ... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth ... stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in whiteThe Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartrights eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Gl...

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethans ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course, where all scruples are put aside. Steinbecks sea...

Those husbands that I had,Three of them were good and two were bad.The three that I call good were rich and old... One of the most bawdy, entertaining and popular stories from The Canterbury Tales.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguins 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, f...

A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolfs The Waves is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in Penguin Modern Classics.More than any of Virginia Woolfs other novels, The Waves conveys the full complexity and richness of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, The Waves follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. While social events, individual achievements and disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Warden by Anthony TrollopeIt was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be disturbed and muddied ... that his quiet paths should be made a battlefield: that the unobtrusive corner of the world which been allotted to him ... made miserable and unsoundTrollopes witty, satirical story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal - as the traditional values of Septimus Harding are attacked by zealous reformers and ruthless newspapers - ...

There sat the dog with eyes as big as mill wheelsThough criticised for their anarchic immorality when first published, Hans Christian Andersens tales made him an international star, taken to the hearts of children and adults for their beauty, sorrow and strangeness. Included here are The Steadfast Tin Soldier and Big Klaus and Little Klaus.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguins 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Time Machine by H. G. WellsGreat shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glareChilling, prophetic and hugely influential, The Time Machine sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, where he is delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty and contentment in the form of the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man. But h...