The Rise of Silas Lapham was the first important novel to center on the American businessman and the first to treat its theme with a realism that foreshadowed the work of modern writers. In his story
As Moll Flanders struggles for survival amid the harsh social realities of seventeenth-century England, there is but one thing she is determined to avoid: the deadly snare of poverty. On the twisting
One of the first great British novels, Samuel Richardson’s classic tale became a legend to his own age and remains so today. Defying her parents’ desire for her to marry a loathsome man for his wealth
A republication of the author's most autobiographical novel tells the story of a young opera singer who, leaving behind the dull values of her small hometown, is determined to shape her own destiny, d
The life and times of Everyone's favorite thief Filled with action, villains, and surprises, the legend lives on. Days of old bursting with pageantry, knights, and beautiful maidens return in a superb
Named a ""national institution"" by George Orwell, Dickens offers his most popular tale, of the orphan who is reared in a workhouse and runs away to London-a novel of social protest, a morality tale
Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's "Summer" created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awak
