Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

From a Modernist/Postmodernist perspective, this addresses questions of literary and cultural nationalism. The authors reveal that since the seventeenth century, American writing has reflected the political and historical climate of its time and helped define Americas cultural and social parameters.Aboe all they argue that American literature has always been essentially modern, illustrating this with a broad range of texts: from Poe and Melville to fitzgerald and Proud, to Wallace and Stevens, G...

What you create can destroy you. One freezing morning, a lone man wandering across the Acrtic ice caps is rescued from starvation by a ships captain. Victor Frankensteins story is one of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist he pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final frontier and create life. But his creation is a monster stitched together from grave-robbed body parts who has no place in the world, and his life can only lead to tragedy.Written when she was only nineteen,...

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 ...

A daring work of experimental, Modernist genius, James Joyces Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century, and the crowning glory of Joyces life. The Penguin Modern Classics edition of includes an introduction by Seamus Deaneriverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and EnvironsJoyces final work, Finnegans Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the...

The most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borgess short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and influential collection of fantastic tales, translated from the Spanish with an afterword by Andrew Hurley in Penguin Modern Classics.Jorge Luis Borgess Fictions introduced an entirely new voice into world literature. It is here that we find the astonishing accounts of Funes the Memorious, the man who can forget nothing; Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, who recreates Miguel de Cervantess epic wo...

A selection of Maupassants brilliant, glittering stories set in the Parisian beau monde and Normandy countryside.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguins 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are sto...

Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the day to day realities of fatherhood in the ultimate literary gift for dads.How to be a good father? Childrens birthday parties, unsuccessful family holidays, humiliating antenatal music classes: the trials of parenthood are all found in Knausgaards compelling and honest account of family life. Contrasting moments of enormous love and tenderness towards his children with the boring struggles of domesticity, this is one fathers personal experience, and somehow, ever...

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...

These essays, reviews and articles illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and who elevated political writing to an art.

Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new friend Harriet, however, lead her into complications that ultimately test her own detachment from the world of romance.

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 ...

Whats the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheevers writing, your next drink may have you reaching for a l...

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...

Dr Jekyll has been experimenting with his identity. He has developed a drug which separates the two sides of his nature and allows him occasionally to abandon himself to his most corrupt inclinations as the monstrous Mr Hyde. But gradually he begins to find that the journey back to goodness becomes more and more difficult, and the risk that Mr Hyde will break free entirely from Dr Jekylls control puts all of London in grave peril.

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...

Collecting five stories of suspense, mystery and slow, creeping horror, Daphne Du Mauriers Dont Look Now and Other Stories includes an introduction by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, in Penguin Modern Classics.John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughters death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and v...