Modern Library classics | Park County Library System

1) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court

Author

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Earliest Publication Date

1901

Summary

"The book relates the tale of Hank Morgan, an engineer from 19th century Hartford Connecticut, who is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur. While there he uses his knowledge of modern technology to appear as though he is a magician. Despite his best intentions, Hank?s attempts to modernize the past bring about a tragic end. A bittersweet depiction of the Arthurian legend through the eyes of a 19th century American..."...

2) A study in scarlet

Author

Doyle, Arthur Conan, 1859-1930

Earliest Publication Date

1900

Summary

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When a Scotland Yard detective asks for assistance, Sherlock Holmes uses his powers of rational, reasoned observation and deduction to solve a murder case.

3) A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects

Author

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797

Earliest Publication Date

1967

Summary

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Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in...

4) Basic teachings of the Buddha: a new translation and compilation, with a guide to reading the texts

Author

Wallis, Glenn

Earliest Publication Date

2007

5) Basic writings of existentialism

Earliest Publication Date

2004

6) Basic writings of Kant

Author

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804

Earliest Publication Date

2001

Summary

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Presents the essential works of the philosopher, including "Critique of Pure Reason" and "Eternal Peace."

7) Complete poems and selected letters of John Keats

Author

Keats, John, 1795-1821

Earliest Publication Date

2001

8) Crossing to safety

Author

Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993

Earliest Publication Date

1987

Summary

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One of the finest American authors of the 20th century, Wallace Stegner compiled an impressive collection of accolades during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a National Book Award, and three O. Henry Awards. His final novel, Crossing to Safety is the quiet yet stirring tale of two couples that meet during the Great Depression and form a lifelong bond. "This is a wonderfully rich, warm, and affecting book."-Library Journal

9) Daisy Miller

Author

James, Henry, 1843-1916

Earliest Publication Date

1879

Summary

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A Timeless Classic of Societal Customs, Cultural Disputes, and The Cost of Non-Conformity Henry James' novella Daisy Miller, features one of his greatest heroines. At first glance it seems to be a simple story of a lovely young, independent American girl traveling through Europe. But her flouting of social conventions has the potential to lead to catastrophe as she disrupts the rigid social rules of the Old World, attracting and scandalizing all...

10) Dombey and Son

Author

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Earliest Publication Date

1907

Summary

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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...

11) Ethics: the essential writings

Earliest Publication Date

2010

12) Father Brown: the essential tales

Author

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936

Earliest Publication Date

2005

Summary

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Presents a collection of fifteen short stories that feature the exploits of Father Brown, a seemingly doddering priest with a keen ability to solve crimes.

13) Leaves of grass: the "death-bed" edition

Author

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

Earliest Publication Date

2000

14) Le morte d'Arthur

Author

Malory, Thomas, Sir, 15th century

Earliest Publication Date

1906

Summary

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The standard account of King Arthur and his knights, the story of the dream of the Round Table, knightly honor, and a just earthly government, all dissolved through human frailty.

15) Little Dorrit

Author

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Earliest Publication Date

1860

Summary

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The daughter of an imprisoned debtor suffers injustices of nineteenth-century English society.

16) Mansfield Park

Author

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817

Earliest Publication Date

1964

Summary

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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...

17) Middlemarch

Author

Eliot, George, 1819-1880

Earliest Publication Date

1956

Summary

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Set in a provincial Victorian neighborhood, the author explores the complex social relationship and the struggle to hold fast to personal tragedy in a materialistic environment.

18) Moby Dick, or, The whale

Author

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891

Earliest Publication Date

1922

Summary

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"Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew...

19) My bondage and my freedom

Author

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Earliest Publication Date

1968

Summary

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Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation's enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. My Bondage and My Freedom is Douglass's masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race...

20) Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave

Author

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Earliest Publication Date

1845

Summary

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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...