Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Summary
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...
Author
Series
Harcourt library of English and American classics
Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
More Series...
Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
More Series...
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,...
Author
Summary
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...
Author
Summary
Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and demonic money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant...
Author
Summary
An enduring tale of love, desire, and the universal longing both to leave one's home and to return to it, this novel is one of Hardy's greatest and most affecting works. Hardy's passionately drawn characters and his vivid rendering of their valiant but ultimately ineffective struggle in destiny's web result in a masterpiece of melancholy brilliance.
11) Kim
Author
Series
Summary
Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
13) Robinson Crusoe
Author
Summary
"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...
Author
Summary
In this classic adventure novel, first published in 1873, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a 20,000 pound wager set by his friends at the Reform Club - and he is determined not to lose. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, the reserved Englishman and his manservant immediately set off.
15) White Fang
Author
Series
Summary
In the desolate, frozen wilds of north-west Canada, a wolf-cub soon finds himself the sole survivor of the litter. Son of Kiche - half-wolf, half-dog - and the ageing wolf One Eye, he is thrust into a savage world where each day becomes a fight to stay alive.
Author
Summary
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.
18) Dombey and Son
Author
Series
Summary
Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...
Author
Series
Summary
"Nicholas Nickleby is the son of a poor country gentleman, and has to make his own way in the world. He first goes as usher to Mr. Squeers, schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall, in Yorkshire, but leaves in disgust with the tyranny of Squeers and his wife, especially to a poor boy named Smike. Smike runs away from his school to follow Nicholas, and remains his humble follower till death. At Portsmouth, Nicholas joins the theatrical company of Mr. Crummies,...