'Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's ... was more striking' As the title of Jane Austen's first published novel suggests, the difference between two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, lies not only in their appearance but also in their temperament. Yet Sense and Sensibility not only contrasts Elinor's good sense,...

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt...

Landmark 19th century novel in which a woman defies the standards of conventional French society.

The first volume of Decline and Fall was published in 1776, and by the time the final volume appeared in 1787, Gibbon had produced an exhaustive, million-and-a-half-word account of a 'revolution, which shall ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth'. This panoramic work, covering 13 centuries from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, has been described as 'a bridge that carries one from the ancient world to the...

"In his timeless story of two pairs of mismatched lovers, The Return of the Native sets romantic idealism as a destructive counterpoint to reality and disillusionment." "Against the lowering background of Egdon Heath, fiery Eustacia Vye passes her days, wishing only for passionate love. She believes that her escape from Egdon lies in marriage to Clym Yeobright, home from Paris and discontented with his work there. But Clym wishes to return to the...

A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother.
As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama. Narrated in turn by each of the family members, including Addie herself as well as others,...

A retelling of the tale, set in medieval Paris, of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, and his struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.

"To the Lighthouse features the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests who are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflicts within a marriage."--BOOK JACKET

This account of several lower class citizens of Dublin describes their activities and tells what some of them were thinking one day in 1904 Publisher Marketing: Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Considered the greatest 20th century novel written in English, in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text. It is a disillusioned study of estrangement, paralysis and the disintegration of society.

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from...