Download or read book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie The Girls of Slender Means The Driver s Seat The Only Problem written by Muriel Spark and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2004-04-06 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brevity of Muriel Spark’s novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Spark’s most celebrated novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, tells the story of a charismatic schoolteacher’s catastrophic effect on her pupils. The Girls of Slender Means is a beautifully drawn portrait of young women living in a hostel in London in the giddy postwar days of 1945. The Driver’s Seat follows the final haunted hours of a woman descending into madness. And The Only Problem is a witty fable about suffering that brings the Book of Job to bear on contemporary terrorism. All four novels give evidence of one of the most original and unmistakable voices in contemporary fiction. Characters are vividly etched in a few words; earth-shaking events are lightly touched on. Yet underneath the glittering surface there is an obsessive probing of metaphysical questions: the meaning of good and evil, the need for salvation, the search for significance.
Download or read book Dubliners written by James Joyce and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1991-11-26 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though James Joyce began these stories of Dublin life in 1904 when he was twenty-two and completed them in 1907, their unconventional themes and language led to repeated rejections by publishers and delayed publication until 1914. In the century since, his story “The Dead” has come to be seen as one of the most powerful evocations of human loss and longing that the English language possesses; all the other stories in Dubliners are as beautifully turned and as greatly admired. They remind us once again that James Joyce was not only modernism’s chief innovator but also one of its most intimate and poetic writers. In this edition the text has been revised in keeping with Joyce’s wishes, and the original versions of “The Sisters,” “Eveline,” and “After the Race” have been made available in an appendix, along with Joyce’s suppressed preface to the 1914 edition of Dubliners.
Download or read book The Age of Innocence written by Edith Wharton and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Wharton’s most renowned novels—and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize—exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibility through the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York. • With an introduction by Peter Washington The novel follows Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyer engaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. When May’s disgraced cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her marriage to a Polish Count, her worldly, independent nature intrigues Archer, who soon falls in love with her. Trapped by his passionless relationship with May and the social conventions that forbid a relationship with Ellen, Archer finds himself torn between possibility and duty. Wharton’s profound understanding of her characters’ lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen come to life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at the ways in which love and emotion must negotiate the complex rules of high society, The Age of Innocence is one of Wharton's finest, most illuminative works.
Download or read book The Princess Casamassima written by Henry James and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1991-11-26 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Henry James chose to, as he did in The Princess Casamassima, he could write about the political turbulence of his era with astonishing excitement and directness. The London underworld of terrorist conspiracies that entangles his hero comes alive under his pen with a violence that seems, more than a century later, only too familiar. Young bookbinder Hyacinth Robinson, the illegitimate son of a nobleman and a woman who died in prison after murdering him, has been raised by an impoverished seamstress. Hyacinth has grown up sensitive both to the beauty of the world and to the human suffering caused by social injustice, and when he is drawn into a circle of radicals he promises to commit an act of terror—a vow he comes to regret when the lovely and bored Princess Casamassima takes him under her wing. As Hyacinth travels across Europe and encounters a richly varied cast of characters from all levels of society, he is increasingly racked by his agonizing dilemma—until he resolves it in a shocking action that carries the emotional force of classical tragedy.
Download or read book The Mystery of Edwin Drood written by Charles Dickens and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2004-11-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final, unfinished novel of Charles Dickens that is in many ways his most intriguing—a gripping, haunting masterpiece that foreshadows the detective stories of Conan Doyle and the nightmarish novels of Kafka. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a highly atmospheric tale of murder. Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict. And while seeming to smile on the engagement of his nephew, Edwin Drood, he is, in fact, consumed by jealousy, driven to terrify the boy’s fiancée and to plot the murder of Edwin himself. As in many of Dickens’s greatest novels, the gulf between appearance and reality drives the action. Set in the seemingly innocuous cathedral town of Cloisterham, the story rapidly darkens with a sense of impending evil. Though The Mystery of Edwin Drood is one of its author’s darkest books, it also bustles with a vast roster of memorable–and delightfully named–minor characters: Mrs. Billikins, the landlady; the foolish Mr. Sapsea; the domineering philanthropist, Mr. Honeythunder; and the mysterious Datchery. Several attempts have been made over the years to complete the novel and solve the mystery, but even in its unfinished state it is a masterpiece.
Download or read book Adam Bede written by George Eliot and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1992-04-28 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkably vivid depiction of village life provides the backdrop to George Eliot’s first novel, a story of love and betrayal invested with social realism of unprecedented sensitivity. Adam Bede is an upstanding young carpenter whose greatest weakness is his infatuation with the self-absorbed village beauty, Hetty Sorrel. Hetty has secretly set her sights on Captain Arthur Donnithorne, heir to the local squire’s estate; his abandonment of her and her engagement to Adam set in motion a tragedy that will touch many people’s lives. When Hetty lands in prison, accused of murder and facing a sentence of execution by hanging, it is her fervent young cousin Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher, whose intervention offers both Hetty and Adam comfort and the hope of peace. The evocations of a lost rural world for which Adam Bede was so resoundingly praised on its publication in 1859 are charged in Eliot’s hands with a personal compassion that intensifies the novel’s outer dramas of seduction and betrayal and inner dramas of moral growth and redemption. With an introduction by Leonee Ormond
Download or read book Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen written by Elizabeth Bowen and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful hardcover edition of the collected short stories of "one of the best short story writers who ever lived" (Newsweek)—with an introduction by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea. Widely known for her extraordinary novels, including The Heat of the Day, The House in Paris, and The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen established herself in the front rank of twentieth-century writers equally through her short fiction. This collection includes seventy-nine magnificent stories written over the course of four decades, including such beloved classics as “Mysterious Kôr,” “The Demon Lover,” “Summer Night,” “Ivy Gripped the Steps,” and “The Happy Autumn Fields.” Whether placing her reader in a remote Irish castle or a seaside Italian villa or bomb-scarred London during the Blitz, Bowen was famous for scene setting of almost hallucinatory vividness, but her ability to evoke inner landscapes of spellbinding intensity was even more remarkable. Frustrated lovers, acutely observed children, and even vengeful ghosts inhabit her tales with an urgency and emotional complexity that make it clear that the drama of human consciousness was her central subject. These stories are enduring testimony to Bowen’s reputation as a creator of finely chiseled narratives—rich in imagination, psychological insight, and craft—that transcend their time and place.
Download or read book The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle written by Charles Darwin and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 1034 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easily the most influential book published in the nineteenth century, Darwin’s The Origin of Species is also that most unusual phenomenon, an altogether readable discussion of a scientific subject. On its appearance in 1859 it was immediately recognized by enthusiasts and detractors alike as a work of the greatest importance: its revolutionary theory of evolution by means of natural selection provoked a furious reaction that continues to this day. The Origin of Species is here published together with Darwin’s earlier Voyage of the ‘Beagle.’ This 1839 account of the journeys to South America and the Pacific islands that first put Darwin on the track of his remarkable theories derives an added charm from his vivid description of his travels in exotic places and his eye for the piquant detail.
Download or read book Romances written by William Shakespeare and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1997-04-07 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Shakespeare’s last four plays carry us across space and time—from classical antiquity to Roman Britain to pagan Sicily to a remote island—and they move as well into a wilder geography of the imagination, one dominated by the wondrous and fantastical, and by reconciliation and renewal. Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest are famously fraught with shipwrecks and adventures, magic and disguise, speaking statues and ethereal spirits, tragic deceptions and moving reunions, and they number among the most enduringly delightful of Shakespeare’s works. The texts of the plays, authoritatively edited by Sylvan Barnet, are supplemented here with textual notes, a bibliography, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times, and a substantial introduction in which acclaimed scholar Tony Tanner discusses each play individually and in the context of Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
Download or read book Rabbit Angstrom written by John Updike and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1995-10-17 with total page 1562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we first met him in Rabbit, Run (1960), the book that established John Updike as a major novelist, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom is playing basketball with some boys in an alley in Pennsylvania during the tail end of the Eisenhower era, reliving for a moment his past as a star high school athlete. Athleticism of a different sort is on display throughout these four magnificent novels—the athleticism of an imagination possessed of the ability to lay bare, with a seemingly effortless animal grace, the enchantments and disenchantments of life. Updike revisited his hero toward the end of each of the following decades in the second half of this American century; and in each of the subsequent novels, as Rabbit, his wife, Janice, his son, Nelson, and the people around them grow, these characters take on the lineaments of our common existence. In prose that is one of the glories of contemporary literature, Updike has chronicled the frustrations and ambiguous triumphs, the longuers, the loves and frenzies, the betrayals and reconciliations of our era. He has given us our representative American story. This Rabbit Angstrom volume is composed of the following novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.
Download or read book Mansfield Park written by Jane Austen and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1992-06-02 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, the classic “poor cousin” who has been brought to live with the rich Sir Thomas Bertram and his wife as an act of charity. Over time, Fanny comes to demonstrate forcibly those virtues Austen most admired: modesty, firm principles, and a loving heart. As Fanny watches her cousins Maria and Julia cast aside their scruples in dangerous flirtations (and worse), and as she herself resolutely resists the advantages of marriage to the fascinating but morally unsteady Henry Crawford, her seeming austerity grows in appeal and makes clear why she was Austen’s own favorite among her heroines. Mansfield Park encompasses not only Austen’s great comedic gifts and her genius as a historian of the human animal, but her personal credo as well—her faith in a social order that combats chaos through civil grace, decency, and wit. With an introduction by Peter Conrad.
Download or read book Meditations written by Marcus Aurelius and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121—180) embodied in his person that deeply cherished, ideal figure of antiquity, the philosopher-king. His Meditations are not only one of the most important expressions of the Stoic philosophy of his time but also an enduringly inspiring guide to living a good and just life. Written in moments snatched from military campaigns and the rigors of politics, these ethical and spiritual reflections reveal a mind of exceptional clarity and originality, and a spirit attuned to both the particulars of human destiny and the vast patterns that underlie it.
Download or read book Collected Stories of Franz Kafka written by Franz Kafka and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial—a collection of stories that represent the art of a modern master who had the gift of making our problematic spiritual life palpable and real. Franz Kafka’s imagination so far outstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition he inherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out in order to tell his splendid, mysterious tales that are scrupulously naturalistic on the surface and uncanny in their depths. This edition of his stories includes all his available shorter fiction in a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by Gabriel Josipovici in ways that bring out the writer’s extraordinary range and intensity of vision. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
Download or read book Confessions of a Justified Sinner written by James Hogg and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comic and terrifying novel about a man haunted by the Devil in the form of his own evil double. James Hogg (1770–1835) was a Scottish poet, novelist, and farmer whose work was discovered by Sir Walter Scott and admired by writers as different as Wordsworth and Byron. His most famous book, Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824 and set in seventeenth-century Scotland, is a vivid exploration of fanaticism and the power of evil. The novel’s anti-hero, a young man named Robert Wringhim, falls under the influence of an enigmatic, shape-shifting companion, Gil-Martin, who convinces him that he is one of God’s chosen few and thus justified even in committing murder. Robert begins by focusing his murderous intentions on his more worldly and popular half-brother, the son of the Laird of Dalcastle, but before long he is besieged by doubts about his beliefs and even his own identity. Anticipating Dostoevsky’s great dramas of sin, self-accusation, and damnation by half a century, Hogg’s masterpiece employs a comparable combination of black comedy, bitter realism, and colorful narrative sweep. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, and European-style half-round spines. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times. Introduction by Roger Lewis
Download or read book Rob Roy written by Sir Walter Scott and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1995-05-23 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Walter Scott—who invented the historical novel—is still the writer to whom we turn when we seek the undiluted pleasures of narrative romance. His Rob Roy (1817) is a rousing tale of skulduggery and highway robbery, villainy and nobility, treasonous plots and dramatic escapes—and young love. From London to the North of England to the Scottish Highlands, it follows the unjustly banished young merchant's son Francis as he strives to out-maneuver the unscrupulous adventurer plotting to destroy him—and allies himself with the cunning, dangerous, and dashing outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor in a heroic effort to regain his rightful place and win the hand of the girl he loves. (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Download or read book Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings written by Edmund Burke and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 1162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important works of Edmund Burke, the greatest political thinker of the past three centuries, are gathered here in one comprehensive volume. Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays. Philosopher, statesman, and founder of conservatism, Burke was a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting abuses of power. He wrote at a time of great change, against the backdrop of the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British Empire, the collapse of Ireland, and the French Revolution. Burke argued passionately in support of the American revolutionaries and in equally impassioned opposition to the horrors of the unfolding French Revolution. Making a case for upholding established rights and customs, and advocating incremental reform rather than radical revolutionary change, Burke’s writings have profoundly influenced modern democracies up to the present day. Edited and Introduced by Jesse Norman.
Download or read book The Autobiography and Other Writings written by Benjamin Franklin and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benjamin Franklin’s account of his rise from poverty and obscurity to affluence and fame has charmed every generation of readers since it first appeared. Begun as a collection of anecdotes for his son, the memoir grew into a history of his remarkable achievements in the literary, scientific, and political realms. A printer, inventor, scientist, diplomat, and statesman, Franklin was also a brilliant writer whose wit and wisdom shine on every page. His Autobiography has deservedly become the most widely read American autobiography of all time—the self-portrait of a quintessential American. Franklin was a remarkably prolific writer, and is equally beloved for his humorous, philosophical, parodic, and satirical writings, parables, and maxims, which he published under an astonishing number of pen names, including Poor Richard, the Busy-Body, and Silence Dogood. This hardcover edition of The Autobiography and Other Writings contains a varied selection of these, including “The Kite Experiment,” “A Parable Against Persecution,” “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” “Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion,” and “The Way to Wealth.”
