The first of Cather’s renowned prairie novels, O Pioneers! established a new voice in American literature—turning the stories of ordinary Midwesterners and immigrants into authentic literary character
‘O Jem, her father won’t listen to me, and it’s you must save Mary! You’re like a brother to her’ Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilso
In the course of his forty-year career John Milton evolved from a prodigy to a blind prophet, from a philosophical aesthete to a Puritan rebel, and from a Latinist poet who proclaimed the triumph of r
Lady Audley’s Secret epitomized the scandalous and irresistible "sensation" fiction of the period and established Braddon as the doyenne of the genre. Lady Audley, a beautiful woman with a mysterious
In seventeenth-century New England, Hope fights for fairness for the Indians and affirms the independence of women, while Magawisca risks her Pequot father's wrath to reunite Hope with her sister, tak
R.U.R.—written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922—garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient labore
George Willard is a young reporter on the Winesburg Eagle to whom, one by one, the inhabitants of Winesburg, Ohio, confide their hopes, their dreams, and their fears. This town of friendly but solita
In these two chilling stories, Henry James shows himself to be a master of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension. The Turn of the Screw tells of a young governess sent to a country home to take c
While walking in the Swiss Alps, two English travellers fall into a space-warp, and suddenly find themselves in another world. In many ways the same as our own - even down to the characters that inhab
Roxana (1724) was Defoe's last novel. It is a fascinating work, simultaneously strange and tragic, which dramatizes the moral deterioration and degradation of its complex heroine. Mlle Beleau, or Roxa
Written in the middle of his career, Idylls of the King is Tennyson's longest and most ambitious work. Reflecting his lifelong interest in Arthurian themes, his primary sources were Malory's Morte D'A
When Kenneth Grahame first entertained his son with letters about a petulant character named Toad, he had no way of knowing that his creation—together with his friends Mole, Rat, and Badger—would deli
Set on the gritty Brooklyn waterfront, A View from the Bridge follows the cataclysmic downfall of Eddie Carbone, who spends his days as a hardworking longshoreman and his nights at home with his wife,
Four plays by the Greek dramatist who started to interpret human behavior without reference to the wisdom of gods. @GoldenFarce Good, the gals stand outside my house all the time. The constant
Anton Chekhov wrote that "narrative is my legal wife and drama a flamboyant, rowdy, impudent, exhausting mistress." At a time when the Russian stage was dominated by farces, formulaic melodramas, and
Newly updated by D. C. H. Rieu, son of E. V. Rieu One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War. At its center is Achi
Poems include elegies to Ovid's mistress, advice on courtship, suggestions on how to break off a relationship, and a discussion of the art of cosmetics
Fantastic adventures abound in these courtly romances: Erec and Enide, Cliges, The Knight of the Cart, The Knight with the Lion, and The Story of the Grail.
"The Fagles translation is destined to be the English Aeneid of the new century." -The Wall Street Journal Robert Fagles's award-winning translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey have sold more than a
