In the most seminal slave narrative ever written, Frederick Douglass writes, "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom." Reading this narrative is to witness...

"'As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.'" "So begins one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature. An acknowledged classic of the heroic Puritan tradition, and a founding text in the development of the English novel, The Pilgrim's Progress has inspired readers for over three centuries. The...

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.

In seventeenth-century Boston, Hester Prynne shoulders the scorn of her fellow Puritan townsfolk for bearing a child out of wedlock. For her refusal to name the father of her daughter Pearl, Hester is made to wear a scarlet 'A' stitched conspicuously upon her dress. But though she bears the stigma of the shame her peers would confer upon her, others feel the guilt for her transgression more acutely--notably the pious Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the...

Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep farm. He falls in love with a newcomer six years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs Hurst. Bathsheba comes to like Gabriel well enough, and even saves his life once, but when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much and him too little....