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1) Bleak House
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Summary
Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience....
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A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
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Harcourt library of English and American classics
Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
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Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
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Summary
Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...
4) Black Beauty
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One of the best loved animal stories ever written, the dramatic and heartwarming Black Beauty is told by the magnificent horse himself, from his idyllic days on a country squire's estate to his harsh fate as a London cab horse. No one can ever forget the gallant Black Beauty, a horse with a white star on his forehead and a heart of unyielding courage.
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A young man's quest for eternal youth and beauty ends in scandal, depravity and death. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The picture of Dorian Gray was a...
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World's best reading
Everyman's library volume no. 531
American Authors in Prose and Poetry volume 4
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Everyman's library volume no. 531
American Authors in Prose and Poetry volume 4
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Summary
Collects brief fictional works and legends by the nineteenth-century New England literary master.
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Jane Austen's first published novel, sparkling with wit and artistry, captures the inequities of birth, class, and marriage faced by the sisters Dashwood. Published in 1811, Sense and Sensibility has delighted generations of readers with its masterfully crafted portrait of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Forced to leave their home after their father's death, Elinor and Marianne must rely on making good marriages as their means of support....
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The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide. The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned...
12) Madame Bovary
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This new translation by Francis Steegmuller was published as a part of the centenary celebration of the original publishing of Madame Bovary. Perhaps no book in the history of the novel has been more enjoyed and praised by critics, fellow craftsmen and general readers of all sorts than this tale of a provincial woman who could not bear the discrepancy between her romantic dreams and the dull routine of her daily life. There is a special poignancy...
13) The Republic
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"The Republic is Plato's masterwork. It was written 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely read books in the world, famous for both the richness of its ideas and the virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to study philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices we must make if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex,...
14) Treasure Island
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When a mysterious seafarer puts up at the Admiral Benbow, young Jim Hawkins is haunted by his frightening tales; the sailor's sudden death is the beginning of one of the most exciting adventure stories in literature. The discovery of a treasure map sets Jim and his companions in search of buried gold, and they are soon on board the Hispaniola with a crew of buccaneers recruited by the one-legged sea cook, Long John Silver. As they near their destination,...
15) Robinson Crusoe
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"Shipwrecked off the coast of Trinidad, Robinson Crusoe - a young man with a thirst for adventure - finds himself washed up on a remote tropical island with nothing but a few tools and animals for company. Castaway for thirty years, he must battle cannibals, mutineers and the elements in a tale so convincing that many readers at the time believed it to be non-fiction. A true page-turner, Robinson Crusoe is one of the most enduring novels in the English...
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A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...
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Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in the mid-nineteenth century, these philosophical essays were written by one of America's most celebrated thinkers. Poet and essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes drew upon his youthful experiences at a Boston boarding house to add color and humor to his reflections. As the autocrat, or ruler, of the communal table, Holmes converses with his fellow boarders, including the Landlady, the Professor, the Divinity...
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"A swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, it is set in France during the 1620s and richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms major and minor historical figures into larger-than-life characters: the brave d'Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the...
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David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.