Classic fiction: literary and general

6752 products


  • University of Massachusetts Press Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis is a new edition of a classic work of the American Renaissance. Praised at the time as the most emphatically 'American' book ever written, ""Margaret"" is a breathtaking combination of female bildungsroman, utopian novel, and historical romance. First published in 1845, Sylvester Judd's novel centers on the fictional New England village of Livingston, where the young Margaret Hart strives to escape the poverty and vice of her surroundings by learning from a mysterious teacher, the 'Master', and by entwining herself with the powers of nature. But when Margaret's brother is tried and hanged for murder, this rural community collapses, forcing Margaret to face the temptations of an urban underworld and to confront the intrigue of her family history. ""Margaret"" is the story of a young woman's attempt to create a new social order, founded on beauty and truth, in a land plagued by violence, debauchery, and political instability. As Gavin Jones points out in his new introduction, ""Margaret"" perhaps stands alone in its creation of a female character who grows in social rather than domestic power. The novel also remains unique in its exploration of transcendental philosophy in novelistic form. Part eco-criticism, part seduction novel, part temperance tract, and part social history, ""Margaret"" is a virtual handbook for understanding the literary culture of mid-nineteenth-century America, the missing piece in puzzling out connections between writers such as hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Thoreau. ""Margaret"" was widely read and deeply influential on both British and American writers throughout the nineteenth century but controversial for its representations of alcoholism and capital punishment. Judd's novel remains resonant for today's readers as it overturns conventional views of the literary representation of women and the origins of the American Renaissance.Trade ReviewMargaret is an important novel, interesting on its own terms and also for its relevance to our understanding of nineteenth-century American literature. I could imagine teaching it in courses on the Transcendentalists, on sentimental literature, on nature writing, on the literature of social protest, on the nineteenth-century American novel, and in relation to such authors as Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, Stowe, Hawthorne, Alcott, Melville, and James. - Samuel Otter, author of Melville's Anatomies

    10 in stock

    £36.31

  • A Month in the Country

    Theatre Communications Group Inc.,U.S. A Month in the Country

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £18.69

  • Lamb in His Bosom

    Peachtree Publishers,U.S. Lamb in His Bosom

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisThis 1934 Pulitzer Prize winner tells the story of a pair of young newlyweds in antebellum rural Georgia.The Pulitzer Prize-winner Lamb in His Bosom tells the story of Cean and Lonzo, a young couple who begin their married lives two decades before the Civil War in a land where nature is hostile, the seasons dictate the law, and the days are punctuated by the hard work of the land. Cean and Lonzo?s only wealth is their hands, their obstinacy, and their love. By the time Cean is forty-three, she has borne fourteen children, buried five of them and her husband, and survived civil war, a venomous snakebite, a ferocious panther attack, and a deadly house fire. Neither life, nor the din of history has spared her. More than just a war history, author Caroline Miller?s quietly lyrical prose style pays poignant tribute to a woman?s life lived close to nature.

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • 1 in stock

    £14.15

  • Morning and Evening Classic Kjv Edition

    Hendrickson Publishers Inc Morning and Evening Classic Kjv Edition

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £20.39

  • Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History

    Hendrickson Publishers Inc Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £29.71

  • Ivan R Dee, Inc The Bourgeois Gentleman

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisMolière's beloved comedy features a rising member of the middle class who lusts for social status and higher learning. The strength of the play lies in its rich comic invention and its sure delineation of character. Its underlying themes of social striving, financial greed, and love's ingenuity still resonate. Bernard Sahlins's new adaptation is wonderfully playable.

    15 in stock

    £11.64

  • Shambhala Publications Inc Siddhartha: A New Translation

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisBlends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat''s efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover spiritual truths.

    10 in stock

    £13.85

  • Nolten the Painter: A Novella in Two Parts

    Boydell & Brewer Ltd Nolten the Painter: A Novella in Two Parts

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisFirst English translation of Mörike's strikingly modern artist-novel of 1832. When one thinks of German artist-novels and Bildungsromane, works long available in translation come to mind--by Goethe, Novalis, Hoffmann, Stifter, Keller, or more recently by Mann, Kafka, Musil, or Grass. Yet Eduard Mörike's provocatively subtitled Maler Nolten: Novelle in zwei Teilen (Nolten the Painter: A Novella in Two Parts, 1832) has remained neglected and misunderstood, and until now has never been translated into English, despite itsobvious ties to other artist-novels and its striking modernity in playing with conventions of narrative authority and heroic identity. Witness the subtle irony of the opening sequence, in which the narrator is subverted by hintsat his own clumsiness and intimations about the dire truths that lurk behind the protagonist Nolten's relationships to his male friends and to the seductive yet somehow frightening women in his life. Or the interplay between the narrator's attempts to make sense of Nolten's complex inner motivations in his loves and art and the ludicrously pompous pathos with which Nolten persists in speaking and thinking, as he concocts a heroic persona caught up in passion, intrigue, and tragedy. Fascinating too is the mysterious trail of the "Grenzgänger," or border-line characters, with their hints at the dimension of "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" that seems to threaten and at the same time tofoster the complex unfolding of the realities of life and art that defy Nolten's all-too-artful "mastery." Raleigh Whitinger is Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of Alberta.Table of ContentsIntroduction Notes on the Translation Part One Part Two Notes

    1 in stock

    £89.25

  • Lord of the Flies

    Penguin Putnam Inc Lord of the Flies

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisBefore The Hunger Games there was Lord of the FliesLord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature.William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible.Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books. That was a big influence on me as a teenager, I still read it every couple of years. —Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger GamesAs exciting, relevant, and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954.—Stephen King

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • Seven Stories Press,U.S. A Woman's Story

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £10.02

  • First Loves

    Seven Stories Press,U.S. First Loves

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £17.09

  • My Times: A Memoir of Dissent

    Seven Stories Press,U.S. My Times: A Memoir of Dissent

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £12.34

  • 15 in stock

    £13.62

  • iUniverse El Buscon

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £12.63

  • Aeneid: A Prose Translation

    Focus Publishing/R Pullins & Co Aeneid: A Prose Translation

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisIllustrated prose translation of the epic poem with pedagogical apparatus for make reading this important work a joy. The text is complete with an introductory essay, glossary, and an appendix detailing the tabulation of the gods. Notes throughout the text provide help in following the narrative framework of the epic. Features include - Mythology and mythological references are noted throughout the book and an extensive glossary of names helps the reader follow the complicated genealogies. - A comprehensive introduction provides comparison of the poem with the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as a general framework for the epic to help the student follow the narrative flow of the work. - Unlike a poetic translation, Caldwell''s work focuses on the story, the myth and the literary context, making this modern new translation on that is easy for the average student to follow and maximum help in understanding.

    4 in stock

    £13.29

  • Metamorphoses

    Focus Publishing/R Pullins & Co Metamorphoses

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis complete verse translation of Ovid''s classical work is illustrated with extensive notes and an index and glossary. To help the reader contend with Ovid''s frequent leaps both ahead and back in time, the principle episodes are listed at the beginning of each book and the subsections and digressions marked with indentations. Some footnotes also refer to mythological material Ovid has derived from Greek epic or drama or, occasionally, from later sources. Specific authors referred to in these notes are briefly identified in the index and glossary

    2 in stock

    £17.99

  • Golden Prose in the Age of Augustus

    Focus Publishing/R Pullins & Co Golden Prose in the Age of Augustus

    5 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    5 in stock

    £19.79

  • Theogony & Works and Days

    Focus Publishing/R Pullins & Co Theogony & Works and Days

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisGreek poet Hesiod took many lines of thought and knowledge - myth, fable, personal experience, practical understanding - and wove them into one great whole. He did as much with the origins of the Greek gods in the Theogony, and then did the same in creating his manual of moral and practical advice, Works and Days. Here, Stephanie Nelson's translation of Works and Days is paired with Richard S. Caldwell's take on the Theogony. Along with introductory essays, these comprehensible versions of Hesiod's two best-known poems make it easy for readers to see why Hesiod's writings continue to resound through the ages.

    4 in stock

    £15.19

  • Dante: Purgatorio

    Focus Publishing/R Pullins & Co Dante: Purgatorio

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis translation by Tom Simone provides a text that is close to Dante's meter and style as is possible using modern English. In such a way a student gets a feel for the structure and impact of the original, and it could also provide an easy segue to the original Italian. Simone provides an extensive introduction, ample footnotes for references that may not be clear to the reader, and each Canto provides a prose overview of the poetry to follow, all designed to provide the modern student with access to this important work.

    1 in stock

    £17.09

  • Ignatius Press The Man Who Was Thursday

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • Ignatius Press Gulliver's Travels

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £12.02

  • Ignatius Press A Tale of Two Cities

    4 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    4 in stock

    £13.93

  • Ignatius Press Dracula

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £11.95

  • Ignatius Press Jane Eyre

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £11.95

  • 15 in stock

    £21.80

  • Persian Letters

    St Augustine's Press Persian Letters

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis translation of Montesquieu’s unsurpassed epistolary novel, the first to appear in over thirty years, is completely new and aims at being as literal as possible, including pulling no punches with the erotic elements. This means that the translators have attempted to render the same word throughout the work as consistently as good sense allows. Nevertheless, due attention has been paid to the beauty of the literary character of the work.This will be the standard translation for years to come. Persian Letters journeys across the unending landscape of things human, providing readers the opportunity to think through an astonishing number of themes – mastery and slavery, jealousy, philosophy and tyranny, self-deception, commerce, nature and convention, the best life for a human being, vanity, glory, and human sexuality. Given its fascination with the relationship between Islam and the West, and the power of religion in the world generally, the book is especially timely. The volume includes a brilliant introduction by Stuart D. Warner on the philosophical meaning of Persian Letters; a translation of the French index from the 1758 edition, which was the first-ever index of the book, as this edition will be the first-ever index in English; editorial footnotes to help with historical and literary allusions; and a chart detailing the chronological order of the composition of the letters.

    10 in stock

    £27.56

  • International Law and Taxation Publishers The Lighthouse at the End of the World

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £18.95

  • International Law and Taxation Publishers Hans of Iceland

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £12.99

  • International Law and Taxation Publishers Debits and Credits

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £18.99

  • Fredonia Books (NL) Tales of Italy

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £19.95

  • Fredonia Books (NL) A Dream of Red Mansions

    15 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    15 in stock

    £28.98

  • Fredonia Books (NL) The Virgin and the Gipsy

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £23.70

  • Fredonia Books (NL) The Sea Lions: The Lost Sealers

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £23.70

  • A Christmas Carol

    Tyndale House Publishers A Christmas Carol

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £11.66

  • The Outcry

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Outcry

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £13.49

  • The Ivory Tower

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Ivory Tower

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £15.19

  • The Gallery

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Gallery

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis"The first book of real magnitude to come out of the last war." —John Dos Passos John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War II, and on publication in 1947 it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller. However, Burns''s early death at the age of 36 led to the subsequent neglect of this searching book, which captures the shock the war dealt to the preconceptions and ideals of the victorious Americans. Set in occupied Naples in 1944, The Gallery takes its name from the Galleria Umberto, a bombed-out arcade where everybody in town comes together in pursuit of food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion. A daring and enduring novel—one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military—The Gallery poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower.

    10 in stock

    £18.90

  • Apartment In Athens

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Apartment In Athens

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisLike Wescott''s extraordinary novella The Pilgrim Hawk (which Susan Sontag described in The New Yorker as belonging "among the treasures of 20th-century American literature"), Apartment in Athens concerns an unusual triangular relationship. In this story about a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, Wescott stages an intense and unsettling drama of accommodation and rejection, resistance and compulsion—an account of political oppression and spiritual struggle that is also a parable about the costs of closeted identity.

    10 in stock

    £15.29

  • The Moro Affair

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Moro Affair

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • Beware of Pity

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Beware of Pity

    15 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    15 in stock

    £16.11

  • The Slaves of Solitude

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Slaves of Solitude

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £15.26

  • The Dud Avocado

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Dud Avocado

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • Rock Crystal

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Rock Crystal

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisSeemingly the simplest of stories—a passing anecdote of village life— Rock Crystal opens up into a tale of almost unendurable suspense. This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised as 'one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature' is among the most unusual, moving, and memorable of Christmas stories. Two children—Conrad and his little sister, Sanna—set out from their village high up in the Alps to visit their grandparents in the neighboring valley. It is the day before Christmas but the weather is mild, though of course night falls early in December and the children are warned not to linger. The grandparents welcome the children with presents and pack them off with kisses. Then snow begins to fall, ever more thickly and steadily. Undaunted, the children press on, only to take a wrong turn. The snow rises higher and higher, time passes: it is deep night when the sky clears and Conrad and Sanna discover themselves out on a glacier, terrifying and beautiful, the heart of the void. Adalbert Stifter''s rapt and enigmatic tale, beautifully translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore, explores what can be found between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—or on any night of the year.

    1 in stock

    £13.99

  • Pinocchio

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Pinocchio

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisThough one of the best-known books in the world, Pinocchio at the same time remains unknown—linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi’s splendid original. That story is of course about a puppet who, after many trials, succeeds in becoming a “real boy.” Yet it is hardly a sentimental or morally improving tale. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page, a madcap genius hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires, a renegade who in many ways resembles his near contemporary Huck Finn. Pinocchio the novel, no less than Pinocchio the character, is one of the great inventions of modern literature. A sublime anomaly, the book merges the traditions of the picaresque, of street theater, and of folk and fairy tales into a work that is at once adventure, satire, and a powerful enchantment that anticipates surrealism and magical realism. Thronged with memorable characters and composed with the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream, Pinocchio is an endlessly fascinating work that is essential equipment for life.

    10 in stock

    £12.34

  • The Rider On The White Horse

    The New York Review of Books, Inc The Rider On The White Horse

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £14.44

  • Chaos And Night

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Chaos And Night

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisDon Celestino is old and bitter and afraid, an impossible man. An anarchist who has been in exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War. He fulminates against the daily papers; he brags about his past exploits. He has become bigoted, self-important, and obsessed; a bully to his fellow exiles and a tyrant to his daughter, Pascualita. Then a family member dies in Madrid and there is an inheritance to sort out. Pascualita wants to go to Spain, which is supposedly opening up in response to the 1960s, and Don Celestino feels he has no choice but to follow. He is full of dread and desire, foreseeing a heroic last confrontation with his enemies, but what he encounters instead is a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems. Because the last act of Don Celestino’s dizzying personal drama will prove that though “there is nothing serious . . . , there is tragedy.” An astonishing modern take on Don Quixote, Chaos and Night untangles the ties between politics and paranoia, self-loathing and self-pity, rage and remorse. It is the darkly funny final flowering of the art of Henry de Montherlant, a solitary and scarifying modern master whose work, admired by Graham Greene and Albert Camus, is sure to appeal to contemporary readers of Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolaño.

    10 in stock

    £14.24

  • The New York Review of Books, Inc No Tomorrow

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £999.99

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