Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

With an Introduction by A. M. de Medeiros, University of Kent at Canterbury.A year after the publication of The Three Musketeers,em, Alexandre Dumas produced a sequel worthy in every respect of the original. In Twenty Years After the much beloved D'Artaganan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis reunite to fight the forces of evil. In the original novel they defeated Milady, a formidable foe; now they need to face her vengeful son Mordaunt, as well as countering the machinations of the sinister Cardinal Ma...

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe's rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes that only 'repentance, justice and mercy' will prevent the onset of 'the wrath of Almighty God!'.An aparitie: 1999Format: 19,8 X 12,9Numar pagini: 480

Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer.Although subtitled A Novel without a Hero, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative m...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Department of English, Canterbury Christ Church University College.Based on Charlotte Bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette is a moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection to cruel circumstance and position, borne with heroic fortitude.Rising above the frustrations of confinement within a rigid social order, it is also the story of a woman's right to love and be loved.An aparitie: 1998Format: 19,6 X 12,8Numar pag...

With an Introduction and Notes by Jeff Wallace, University of Glamorgan.These stories of myth and resurrection, of uncanny events and violent impulse, were with one exception written and published in the latter half of the 1920s, coinciding with the composition of Lawrence's controversial masterpiece Lady Chatterley's Lover.At this time Lawrence declared himself to be 'really awful sick of writing'; yet here we find some of his most beautiful, hauntingly melancholy fictions. In struggling to esc...

War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy's view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters.Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy's philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy's approva...

Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele.Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a...

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College.The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is one of the Victorian novel's greatest and strangest creations, and is an achi...

Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy.In insisting on the unusual nature of any story wor...

With an Introduction by Pat Righelato, University of Reading.The child of parents who divorce, remarry and then embark on adulterous affairs, Maisie Farange survives by her intelligence and spirit. For all its sombre theme of childhood innocence exposed to a corrupted adult world, this novel is one of James's comic masterpieces. The outrageous behaviour of the characters on the seedy fringes of the English upper class is conveyed with wit and relish. The dual perspective of a sophisticated narra...

Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad (with his `Poop-poop-poop' road-hogging new motor-car), have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall.Grahame's book was later dramatised by A. A. Milne, and became a perennial Christmas favourite, as Toad of Toad Hall. It continues to ench...

The Wings of the Dove is a tale of desire and possession, of love and death. It is in essence a simple story, but one that opens up the great subject of art: life itself. To tackle this, James moves between fairytale storylines and the startlingly modern techniques of his testing late style. An unspeakable subtext lies beneath the silence. Distinct points of view and different centres of consciousness betray the dislocation of the social facade from the desolation beneath. For all the familiar s...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leo...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster. Gaskell s last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family relationships father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue. Despite its underlying seriousness, the prevailing tone is one of comedy. Gaskell vividly portrays the world of th...

Introduction and Notes by Dr Jeff Wallace, University of Glamorgan.Lawrence's finest, most mature novel initially met with disgust and incomprehension. In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. Women in Love is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The 'progress' of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War.What, then, ...

With an Introduction and Notes by Phillip Mallett, Senior Lecturer in English, University of St Andrews.Educated beyond her station, Grace Melbury returns to the woodland village of little Hintock and cannot marry her intended, Giles Winterborne. Her alternative choice proves disastrous, and in a moving tale that has vibrant characters, many humorous moments and genuine pathos coupled with tragic irony, Hardy eschews a happy ending.With characteristic derision, he exposes the cruel indifference ...