Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

Here is a book no Christmas stocking should be without, a book that positively distils the spirit of the season. The title poem, familiar to children and adults the world over, introduces a collection of stories and verse with a Christmas theme, guaranteed to engage and amuse readers young and old.Likely to provoke laughter and sometimes to bring a sentimental tear to the driest eye, this festive treasure trove is ideal for reading aloud or curling up with in a comfy corner. Scrooge himself woul...

When Princess Irene and her nursemaid stay out too late one night and are chased home by goblins, a young miner boy called Curdie comes to their rescue. So begins a fantastic adventure in which Irene and Curdie must try to stop a goblin invasion, helped by Irene's mysterious great-great-grandmother. This much-loved tale was a personal favourite of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. This edition includes the sequel, The Princess and Curdie.An aparitie: 2013Format: 19,6 X 12,6Numar pagini: 336...

In The Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendyll's close resemblance to the King of Ruritania leads him into intrigue, romance and perilous escapades. Enmeshed in a plot by the villainous Duke of Strelsau to depose the King, Rudolf is entranced by the beautiful Princess Flavia, and finds that both his life and his honour are imperilled.The sequel, Rupert of Hentzau, tells how Rupert'who feared neither man nor devil') seeks to ruin Flavia's reputation and wreak vengeance on Rudolf. Events accelerate t...

The Red and the Black has been hailed as the first great `realist' novel of the nineteenth century, offering a lively and detailed picture of social and political life in the provinces and in Paris towards the end of the 1820s, the close of the stifling reactionary period of the Bourbon Restoration. Stendhal himself claimed that no-one before him had ventured to portray with such verisimilitude the `moral and morose' France of 1830. However `moral and morose' his novel is definitely not. Ironic,...

The Sea-Wolf belongs in the honorific tradition of American sea fiction where the voyage motif became a means of exploring the meaning of life, as in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851).The dominant subject is an intellectual conflict between a ship-wrecked literary figure, Humphrey Van Weyden, and the brutal captain of a seal-hunting schooner, Wolf Larsen, who rescues Van Weyde...

This selection of Lawrence's work underlines the intensity and innovation that made him one of the most distinctive and important of twentieth-century writers.Sons and Lovers - semi-autobiographical, is a powerful exploration of family, class, sexuality and the suffocating relationships of a man with a demanding mother and two very different lovers.Women in Love - perhaps Lawrence's most mature novel, was met with disgust by the critics, seeing only a sorry tale of sexual depravity in the love o...

The author of dozens of adventure novels and fantastical tales, Robert Louis Stevenson was also an enthusiast of travel, whether wandering on foot through France in the company of a donkey, crossing the plains of North America in a train crammed with emigrants, or cruising under sail with his wife in the waters of the Pacific. A lively curiosity stimulated his observations of distant places and unknown people: and this selection from his travel writings bears the imprint of a generous and plucky...

This endearing edition proudly includes the original telling of the beloved tale, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Together, we travel alongside the Velveteen Rabbit on his magical journey towards becoming real and discover how he and other toys are brought to life once they are truly loved by their little owners.Also in this edition are modern, infant-friendly retellings of: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, The Frog Prince and The Tale of the City Mouse and the Count...

Tom, a poor orphan, is employed by the villainous chimney-sweep, Grimes, to climb up inside flues to clear away the soot. While engaged in this dreadful task, he loses his way and emerges in the bedroom of Ellie, the young daughter of the house who mistakes him for a thief. He runs away, and, hot and bothered, he slips into a cooling stream, falls asleep, and becomes a Water Baby.In his new life, he meets all sorts of aquatic creatures, including an engaging old lobster, other water babies, and ...

Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents - a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It ha...

Poignant, wry, chilling, challenging, amusing, thought-provoking and always intriguing, these accomplished tales from the pens of great writers are object-lessons in the art of creating a literary masterpiece on a small canvas. From the straightforwardly anecdotal to the more analytical of human behaviour, all are guaranteed to capture the imagination, stir the emotions, linger in the memory and whet the reader's appetite for more. In this book, Wordsworth Editions presents the modern reader wit...

With a word of warning to those of nervous a disposition, Wordsworth presents this spellbinding collection of chilling Celtic tales of the macabre, all drawn from the rich and varied literary tradition of a culture long enchanted by things supernatural, 'a land where ghosts and ghost-seers are so common'.Featuring the imaginative writing of such towering masters of the genre as Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Patrick Kennedy, Thomas Crofton Croker and George Moore, this volume of ghoulish masterp...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators.The Thirty-Nine Steps is a seminal `chase' thriller, rapid and vivid. It has been widely influential and frequently dramatised: the film directed by Alfred Hitchcock became...

Editedand with an Introduction by Dr Keith Carabine, Chairperson of the Joseph Conrad Society of Great Britain.As these three specially commissioned stories amply demonstrate, Conrad is our greatest writer of the sea. His characters are tested by dramatic events 'that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret stuff of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself'.In Typh...

Lively and mischievous, idle and brave, Tom Brown is both the typical boy of his time and the perennial hero celebrated by authors as diverse as Henry Fielding (in Tom Jones) and Alec Waugh (in The Loom of Youth).The book describes Tom's time at Rugby School from his first football match, through his troubled adolescence when he is savagely bullied by the unspeakable Flashman, to his departure for a wider world as a confident young man. This classic tale of a boy's schooldays under the benevolen...

Following on from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884-5) Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) became one of Mark Twain's most popular books. Again we meet his world famous characters: Tom Sawyer, 'Nigger Jim', and Huck Finn - together now on a fantastical balloon journey across the Atlantic to meet lions and Bedouins in the Sahara and retrace something of Twain's own expedition to the Holy Land in his best-selling The Innocents Abroad (1869).Later, in Tom Sawyer Dete...

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' Treasure Island is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck, and is perhaps the best adventure story ever written.When young Jim Hawkins finds a packet in Captain Flint's sea chest, he could not know that the map inside it would lead him to unimaginable treasure. Shipping as cabin boy on the Hispaniola, he sails with Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, Dr Livesey, the sinister Long John Silver and a frightenin...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiousl...

With an Introduction and Notes by Charles P.C. Pettit.Thomas Hardy's only historical novel, The Trumpet Major is set in Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars. Hardy skilfully immerses us in the life of the day, making us feel the impact of historical events on the immemorial local way of life - the glamour of the coming of George III and his soldiery, fears of the press-gang and invasion, and the effect of distant but momentous events like the Battle of Trafalgar.He interweaves a compelling, bitter-...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury.The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural told by a master of the genre.The Aspern Papers is a tale of Americans in Europe, a theme in which Henry James is at his most assured and accomplished. The author cleverly evokes the drama of comedie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace.An aparitie: ...