Emma Bovary yearns for a life of luxury and passion of the kind she reads about in romantic novels. But life with her country doctor husband in the provinces is unutterably boring, and she embarks on love affairs to realize her fantasies. This new translation by Margaret Mauldon perfectly captures Flaubert's distinctive style.
Hamlet is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists (including websites) and classroom notes.
This story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, Flush, enchants right from the opening pages. Although Flush has adventures of his own with bullying dogs, horrid maids, and robbers, he also provides the reader with a glimpse into Browning's life. Introduction by Trekkie Ritchie.
Jim, first mate on board the Patna, is a simple and sensitive young man who dreams of becoming a hero. But when the Patna threatens to sink, Jim takes the cowardly way out and jumps clear. His unbearable guilt and shame at having violated the unwritten moral code of the sea lead him to become an exile in a remote Malay state.
Dans le Paris du XVe siècle, la belle Esméralda fait battre le coeur de tous. Mais la jeune bohémienne n'a d'yeux que pour le capitaine Phoebus. Enlevée par l'archidiacre Frollo qui la convoite, sauvée par Quasimodo, le sonneur de cloches difforme, elle sera finalement accusée de sorcellerie, puis pendue.
Robinson Crusoe runs away from home to join the navy. After a series of adventures at sea, he is shipwrecked in a devastating storm, and finds himself alone on a remote desert island. He remains there many years, building a life for himself in solitude, until the day he discovers another man's footprint in the sand...
Chronicles David Copperfield's 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.
How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? In Flatland, A Square's linear world is invaded by a Sphere bringing the gospel of the third dimension. Part geometry lesson, part social satire, the novel enlarges readers' imaginations beyond the limits of our 'respective dimensional prejudices'.
Everybody who is anybody is seen at Gatsby's glittering parties. None of the socialites understand Gatsby. He seems to always be watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. But as the tragic story unfolds, Gatsby's destructive dreams and passions are revealed.
Fanny Price is taken to live at Mansfield Park, the home of her wealthy uncle. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzling and sophisticated Crawfords arrive, and amateur theatricals unleash rivalry and sexual jealousy, Fanny has to fight to retain her independence. This new edition places Mansfield Park in its Regency context and elucidates the theatrical background that pervades the novel.
Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. Kim is white, although born in India. While he wants to play the Great Game of imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands.
'She will do as I have bidden her.' Catherine Sloper is heiress to a fortune and the social eminence associated with Washington Square. She attracts the attention of a good-looking but penniless young man, Morris Townsend. His suit is encouraged by Catherine's romantically-minded aunt, Mrs Penniman, but her father, a clever physician, is convinced that his motives are merely mercenary. He will not consent to the marriage, regardless of the cost to his daughter. Out of this classic confrontation Henry James fashioned one of his most deftly searching shorter fictions. First published in 1880 but set some forty years earlier in a pre-Civil War New York, the novel reflects ironically on the restricted world in which its heroine is marooned, seating herself at its close 'for life, as it were'. In his introduction Adrian Poole reflects on the book's gestation and influences, the significance of place, and the insight with which the four prinicipal players are drawn. The edition includes an account of the real-life tale that sparked James's imaginative genius.
