"Jane Austen's final novel is her most mature and wickedly satirical. It follows the story of Anne Elliott, a teenager engaged to a seemingly ideal man, Frederick Wentworth. But after being persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that he is too poor to be a suitable match, Anne ends their engagement. When they are reacquainted eight years later, their circumstances are transformed: Frederick is returning triumphantly from the Napoleonic War, while Anne's...

Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. The Original 1897 Classic. A curious man, wearing a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and whose face is entirely swathed in bandages save for an obvious fake pink nose, walks into an English inn to the shock and horror of many of the townspeople. Beakers and chemicals in tow, the man demands his solitude. It’s strange enough as it is until...

In the depressed mill town of Coketown, schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind lives to impose his version of education: feeding the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity, and logic over sentiment, only to have his philosophy warp and destroy the lives of his own family. 'Hard Times' is Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.

FROM THE PUBLISHER : On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassidy, "a side burned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty, " the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac's...

When young Fanny Price comes to live with her aunt and uncle Bertram at Mansfield Park, it is because of the outcast state of her own parents. Her dreadful aunt and three cousins become her enemies, making her life miserable and causing Fanny to grow up quiet and shy. When the arrival of the Crawfords upsets the Bertram household, the young people become involved in dangerous plots to marry to better their station. Fanny has fallen in love with her...

Presents seventeenth-century British poet John Milton's classic epic poems "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained, " along with a scholarly introduction, a Milton chronology, and a selected bibliography.