Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

The Penguin English Library Edition of Mansfield Park by Jane AustenWe have all been more or less to blame ... every one of us, excepting FannyTaken from the poverty of her parents home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncles absence in Antigua, the Crawfords arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for fli...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Lady Audleys Secret by Mary Elizabeth BraddonLady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despairIn this outlandish, outrageous triumph of scandal fiction, a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young, beautiful - and very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What, exactly, is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her? A huge success in the nineteenth century, the books an...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Kim by Rudyard KiplingHe knew the wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian Nights ...Kiplings epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a q...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte BronteThe more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myselfPassionate, poetic and revolutionary, Jane Eyre is a novel of naked emotional power. Its story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who refuses to accept her appointed place in society - and instead finds love on her own terms - has become famous as one of the greatest romances ever written, but it is also a brooding Gothic myste...

One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our WorldThe Penguin English Library Edition of Ivanhoe by Walter ScottFight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!Banished from England for seeking to marry against his fathers wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his passionate desire is to be reunited with the beautiful but forbidden lady Rowena, but he soon finds himself playing a more dangerous game as he is drawn into a bitter power struggle...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Howards End by E. M. ForsterThe poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich canOnly connect. is the idea at the heart of this book, a heartbreaking and provocative tale of three families at the beginning of the twentieth century: the rich Wilcoxes, the gentle, idealistic Schlegels and the lower-middle class Basts. As the Schlegel sisters try desperately to help the Basts...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Hard Times by Charles DickensNow, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything elseCoketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessma...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Gullivers Travels by Jonathan SwiftFifteen hundred of the Emperors largest horses, each about four inches and an half high, were employed to draw me towards the Metropolis, which, as I said, was half a Mile distantA savage and hilarious satire, Gullivers Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with, among others, quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophizing horses and the brutish Yahoo tribe, that change ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Great Expectations by Charles DickensWhat do you think that is? she asked me, again pointing with her stick; that, where those cobwebs are?I cant guess what it is, maam.Its a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!Great Expectations, Dickenss funny, frightening and tender portrayal of the orphan Pips journey of self-discovery, is one of his best-loved works. Showing how a young mans life is transformed by a mysterious series of events - an encounter with an escaped...

One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our WorldThe Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary ShelleyNever did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousnessA twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelleys chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature cau...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Framley Parsonage by Anthony TrollopeHe was sickened also with all these lies. His very soul was dismayed by the dirt through which he was forced to wade. He had become unconsciously connected with the lowest dregs of mankind, and would have to see his name mingled with theirs in the daily newspapersMark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas HardyI cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct! she exclaimed. Nor will I for a minuteHardys powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men - respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy and devoted Gabriel - making her the object of scandal and betrayal. Vividly portraying the ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Evelina by Frances BurneyO Sir, how much uneasiness must I suffer, to counterbalance one short morning of happiness!In this comic and sharply incisive satire of excess and affectations, beautiful young Evelina falls victim to the rakish advances of Sir Clement Willoughby on her entrance to the world of fashionable London. Colliding with the manners and customs of a society she doesnt understand, she finds herself without hope that she should ever deserve th...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Ethan Frome by Edith WhartonHe seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surfaceEthan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeenas vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the poss...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Emma by Jane AustenI never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shallBeautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Dubliners by James JoyceEvery night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly workFrom a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young womans dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to ...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Dracula by Bram StokerAlone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken windowA chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; stra...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis StevensonAll human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evilPublished as a shilling shocker, Robert Louis Stevensons dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekylls strange association with damnable young man Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the...

Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben WhishawDickenss epic, exuberant novel is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories in literature. It chronicles David Copperfields extraordinary journey through life, as he encounters villains, saviours, eccentrics and grotesques, including the wicked Mr Murdstone, stout-hearted Peggotty, formidable Betsey Trotwood, impecunious Micawber and odious Uriah Heep.Dickenss great Bildung...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw by Henry JamesIm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?This edition contains two of Henry Jamess most popular short works. Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts...