In 1966, Edward Hoagland made a three-month excursion into the wild country of British Columbia and encountered a way of life that was disappearing even as he chronicled it. Showcasing Hoagland’s extr
'Villette ! Villette ! Have you read it?' exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Bronte's final novel appeared in 1853. 'It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost pret
A rediscovered classic of science fiction, set in a dystopian twenty-second-century society where the winner takes all, a precursor to The Hunger Games by one of the genre’s first major female writers
Oscar Wilde created his final and most lasting play, comic masterpieces of all time, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, in 1895. Considered one of the greatest THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST is a farce
With an Introduction by Jane SmileyFirst published in America in 1794, Charlotte Temple took the country by storm—in fact, it was this nation’s first bona fide “bestseller.” Susanna Rowson’s most famo
A momentous bestseller when it was first published in 1949, John O’Hara’s sprawling novel A Rage to Live offers up a gorgeous pageant of idealists and libertines, tradesmen and crusaders, men of viole
On a mild midwestern night in the early 1940s, Johnny Marr leans against a drugstore wall. He's waiting for Dorothy, his fiancee, and tonight is the last night they'll be meeting here, for it's May 3
The intrepid Professor Lindenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earth's very core. In his quest to penetrate the
Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering t
Dombey and Son, Charles Dicken's story of a powerful man whose callous neglect of his family triggers his professional and personal downfall, showcases the author's gift for vivid characterization and
Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naive, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and M
The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land. In it, the collision of the American “New Barbarians” and the European “Old
In the spring of 1869, John Muir was looking for means of support to fund his explorations of California’s Central Valley region. A ranch owner offered him a job herding sheep in the Sierra Nevada. As
New Grub Street portrays the intrigues and hardships of the publishing world in late Victorian England. In a materialistic, class-conscious society that rewards commercial savvy over artistic achieve
Hailed as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs recounts the story of an illiterate but charismatic Indian peasant farmer's part in the rebellion against Porfirio Diaz, and his s
Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid con
George Eliot's final novel and her most ambitious work, Daniel Deronda contrasts the moral laxity of the British aristocracy with the dedicated fervor of Jewish nationalists. Crushed by a loveless ma
Written in a time when criminal biographies enjoyed great success, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles through poverty and sin in search of propert
In the late 1800s, John Muir made several trips to the pristine, relatively unexplored territory of Alaska, irresistibly drawn to its awe-inspiring glaciers and its wild menagerie of bears, bald eagle
First published to critical acclaim in 1929, Passing firmly established Nella Larsen's prominence among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The Modern Library is proud to present Passing—an elect
Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens’s previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, A
A classic in the literature of the garden, Green Thoughts is a beautifully written and highly original collection of seventy-two essays, alphabetically arranged, on topics ranging from “Annuals” and “
In the fall of 1920, Sinclair Lewis began a novel set in a fast-growing city with the heart and mind of a small town. For the center of his cutting satire of American business he created the bustling
Originally published in The Cornhill Magazine in 1878 and in book form in 1879, Daisy Miller brought Henry James his first widespread commercial and critical success. The young Daisy Miller, an Ameri
Generally considered the first English sensation novel, The Woman in White features the remarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing master Walter Hartright, pitted against th
Jane Austen's first novel, Northanger Abbey - published posthumously in 1818 - tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Aus
One of George Eliot's best-loved works, The Mill on the Floss is a brilliant portrait of the bonds of provincial life as seen through the eyes of the free-spirited Maggie Tulliver, who is torn between
Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665 remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Year walk
Through Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, Jane Austen views the social mores of her day and contemplates human nature itself. A shy and sweet-tempered girl adopted by wealthy relations, Fan
Highly acclaimed at its publication in 1913, The Custom of the Country is a cutting commentary on America's nouveaux riches, their upward-yearning aspirations and their eventual downfalls. Through he
When John Muir traveled to California in 1868, he found the pristine mountain ranges that would inspire his life’s work. The Mountains of California is the culmination of the ten years Muir spent in t
Fanny Hill , shrouded in controversy for most of its more than 250-year life, and banned from publication in the United States until 1966, was once considered immoral and without literary merit, even
?Introduction by George Saunders Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx ?“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain ca
Widely acknowledged as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's adventure story of a shipwrecked sailor became an instant classic upon its publication in 1719 and the yardstick for countless castaway
This edition presents Wharton's two most controversial stories, which she considered inseperable, in one volume for the first time. Set in frigid New England, both deal with sexual awakening and appet
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition brings together one of literature's most famous ghost stories and one of Henry James's most unusual novellas. In The Turn of the Screw , a governess is h
Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stoker’s Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author's mother, who wrote her son: 'It is splendid. No book since Mrs.
'I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,' John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic geniu
Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not have much in the way of great expectations between his terrifying experience in a graveyard with a convict named Magwitch and his humiliatin
