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Wordsworth
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W. B. Yeats was Romantic and Modernist, mystical dreamer and leader of the Irish Literary Revival, Nobel prizewinner, dramatist and, above all, poet. He began writing with the intention of putting his ‘very self’ into his poems. T. S. Eliot, one of many who proclaimed the Irishman’s greatness, described him as ‘one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them’. For anyone interested in the literature of the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, Yeats’s work is essential. This volume gathers the full range of his published poetry, from the hauntingly beautiful early lyrics (by which he is still fondly remembered) to the magnificent later poems which put beyond question his status as major poet of modern times. Paradoxical, proud and passionate, Yeats speaks today as eloquently as ever. |
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Although Tennyson (1809-1892) has often been characterized as an austere, bearded patriarch and laureate of the Victorian age, his poems speak clearly to the imagination of the late 20th century. His mastery of rhyme, metre, imagery and mood communicate their dark, sensuous and sometimes morbid messages. Much given to melancholy and feelings of aching desolation, Tennyson's verse also carries clear messages of hope: 'Ring out the old, ring in the new', and 'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all'. |
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«Saki (H.H. Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried. This collection includes «Sredni Vastor» and «The Unrest Cure».» |
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Edgar Poe was born the son of itinerant actors on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusets. Abandoned by his father and the later death of his mother, he was taken into the foster care of John Allan, a Virginia tobacco farmer. Now styled as Edgar Allan Poe, he distinguished himself at the University of Virginia but was equally adept at collecting debts from his assiduous gambling. His stepfather's disapproval shattered their fragile relationship and Poe left home to seek his fortune. In 1836 he married his cousin Virginia but despite his prolific activities — journalism, poetry, lecturing, short stories, publishing, criticism and experimentation with fictional genres, including the detective novel which he virtually invented with the publication of 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) — he received scant recognition for his efforts until the publication of 'The Raven' in 1845. The poem's instant popularity gave him a new visibility in literary circles, but his personal situation remained desperate: poverty, illness, drink, and the physical decline and ultimate death of Virginia in 1847 led to his untimely and premature decline. In 1849 he was found sick, injured and semi-conscious in a Baltimore tavern. Taken to hospital, he lingered on for four days, but never recovered and on October 7th Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of 40. He was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters — a genius who, thanks to his dire reputation, was tragically misunderstood during his lifetime. It was not until Baudelaire enthusiastically translated his work that he found a wider audience in Europe, and became not only an enormous influence on modern French literature but also on the acclaimed work of writers such as Dostoevsky, Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. |
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«Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is «The Happy Prince». Counterpoints to this were his novel «The Picture of Dorian Gray», which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece «The Importance of Being Earnest». His essays — in particular «De Profundis» — and his «Ballad of Reading Gaol», both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century.» |
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«A spectre is haunting Europe (and the world). Not, in the twenty-first century, the spectre of communism, but the spectre of capitalism. Marx's prediction that the state would wither away of its own accord has proved inaccurate, and he did not foresee the tyrannies which have ruled large parts of the globe in his name. Indeed, he would have been appalled if he had witnessed them. But his analysis of the evils and dangers of raw capitalism is as correct now as when it was written, and some of his suggestions (progressive income tax, abolition of child labour, free education for all children) are now accepted with little question. In a world where capitalism is no longer held in check by fear of a communist alternative, «The Communist Manifesto» (with «Socialism Utopian and Scientific», Engels's brief and clear exposition of Marxist thought) is essential reading. «The Condition of the Working Class» in England is Engels's first, and probably best-known, book. With Henry Mayhew's «London Labour and the London Poor», it was and is the outstanding study of the working class in Victorian England.» |
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«The Jungle Book» introduces Mowgli, the boy foundling adopted by a family of wolves, Shere Khan the tiger, Bagheera the black panther and Baloo the sleepy brown bear. How did the Leopard get his spots? How did the Elephant get his trunk? In Just So Stories Kipling wittily supplies the answers to these and other questions. «Puck of Pook's Hill» relates how Dan and Una's magical meeting with Puck, the last of the People of the Hills, leads to their adventures with Romans and Crusaders, Saxons and Vikings... And later, in «Rewards and Fairies», the three meet an array of characters ranging from Iron Age warriors to 'Good Queen Bess' and Sir Francis Drake. In Kipling's rattling school yarn «Stalky & Co», Stalky, M'Turk and the Beetle are a trio of scallywags with a keen desire to break the rules, their unruly activities give the stories an enduring appeal to all children — especially those who have ever wilted beneath the stern glance of a peevish schoolmaster. Kipling's wry, sometimes tongue-in-cheek style will delight and entertain young readers while adults throughout the world will remember his stories with affection.» |
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Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and his brother Wilhelm (1786-1859) were philologists and folklorists. The brothers rediscovered a host of fairy tales, telling of princes and princesses in their castles, witches in their towers and forests, of giants and dwarfs, of fabulous animals and dark deeds. Together with the well-known tales of 'Rapunzel', 'The Goose Girl', Sleeping Beauty', 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Snow White', there are the darker tales such as 'Death's Messengers' which deserve to be better known, and which will appeal not only to all who are interested in the history of folklore, but also to all those who simply love good story-telling. |
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Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is famed for his magical stories, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, here illustrated throughout the inner pages by Sir John Tenniel's much loved drawings. However, inspired by the insatiable Victorian appetite for party games, tricks and conundrums, this eccentric and polymathical Englishman also wrote many other works of a humorous, witty, whimsical and nonsensical nature such as the mock-heroic nonsense verse The Hunting of the Snark, as well as dozens of other verses, stories, acrostics and puzzles, all of which are included in this volume. Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses. |
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Jane Austen is without question, one of England's most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature's most charismatic and believable heroines, she mesmerises her readers as much today as when her novels were first published. Whether it is her sharp, ironic gaze at the Gothic genre invoked by the adventures of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey; the diffident and much put-upon Fanny Price struggling to cope with her emotions in Mansfield Park; her delightfully paced comedy of manners and the machinations of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility; the quiet strength of Anne Elliot in Persuasion succeeding in a world designed to subjugate her very existence; and Emma — 'a heroine whom no one but myself will like' teased Austen — yet another irresistible character on fire with imagination and foresight. Indeed not unlike her renowned creator. Jane Austen is as sure-footed in her steps through society's whirlpools of convention and prosaic mores as she is in her sometimes restrained but ever precise and enduring prose. |
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Lawrence's reputation as a novelist has often meant that his achievements in poetry have failed to receive the recognition they deserve. This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctioned, his Collected Poems of 1928, the unexpurgated version of Pansies, and Nettles, adding to these volumes the contents of the two notebooks in which he was still writing poetry when he died in 1930. It therefore allows the reader to trace the development of Lawrence as a poet and appreciate the remarkable originality and distinctiveness of his achievement. Not all the poems reprinted here are masterpieces but there is more than enough quality to confirm Lawrence's status as one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century. |
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«Who was Nostradamus, and what faith should we place in his predictions? This book gives objective answers. It reveals that Michel de Nostredame, a 16th-century French doctor, was more Renaissance man than arcane magician — and that his prognostications can be compellingly astute. In this edition all of the cryptic short verses of Nostradamus's «Centuries» appear in the original French, with new translations. Uncanny prophecies such as those of the French Revolution and the rise of Hitler are examined in detail. Here too are interpretations of the many verses believed to augur future events. Editor Ned Halley works in fields of journalism as diverse as medicine, wine and business. He takes a Plain English approach to 'a subject far too often wreathed in language that seems calculated to obscure, rather than to demonstrate, the truth'.» |
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«William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of «Hamlet», «King Lear», «Othello» and «Macbeth» as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as «A Midsummer Night's Dream», «The Taming of the Shrew» and «As You Like It» with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness. This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems «Venus and Adonis» and «The Rape of Lucrece».» |
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«William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of «Hamlet», «King Lear», «Othello», and «Macbeth» as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as «A Midsummer Night's Dream», «The Taming of the Shrew» and «As You Like It» with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness. This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems «Venus and Adonis» and «The Rape of Lucrece».» |
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The story opens with the shipwreck on a Pacific Island of the young friends Ralph Rover and Jack Martin and Peterkin Gray. Despite the pleasurable presence of delicious breadfruit, coconuts, and succulent oysters, the intrepid trio are not alone and they soon witness a battle between rival bands of cannibals led by 'Bloody Bill'. Their lives are placed in serious peril from which only courage and determined pluck can save them. |
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The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions. |
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«The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing.This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, and to trace the development of her art. As diverse in setting as in subject matter, these tales move from the gentle comedy of life in a small English country town in «Dr Harrison's Confessions», to atmospheric horror in far north-west Wales with «The Doom of the Griffiths». The story of «Cousin Phillis», her masterly tale of love and loss, is a subtle, complex and perceptive analysis of changes in English national life during an industrial age, while the gripping «Lois the Witch» recreates the terrors of the Salem witchcraft trials in seventeenth-century New England, as «Gaskell» shrewdly shows the numerous roots of this furious outbreak of delusion. Whimsically modified fairy tales are set in a French chateau, while an engaging love story poetically evokes peasant life in wine-growing Germany.» |
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«Crime Scenes» is a sparkling collection of short stories written by modern masters and mistresses of the crime fiction genre. Within these pages you will find tales of murder, mystery and mayhem in a great variety of styles and tones from the time-honoured whodunnit to the psychological chiller to the history mystery to the crime procedural to the noir thriller to the gangster epic and the darkly humorous narrative. This volume demonstrates clearly how the crime story has developed and matured over the last two hundred years or so into the exciting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining form of fiction it is today. The impressive cast of contributors includes well-respected and well-established names such as Peter Lovesey, Edward Marston, Natasha Cooper, Judith Cutler and Russell James as well as those currently making their reputation as fine exponents of their craft and a few young lions whose work is bristling with promise. Crime Scenes is a treasure chest of delights for the fans of crime fiction.» |
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«Mrs H.D. Everett was the last in a long line of gifted Victorian novelists who knew how to grip the reader through the invasion of everyday life by the abnormal and dramatic, leaving the facts to produce their special thrills without piling on the agony. 'I always know', says one of her characters, 'how to distinguish a true ghost story from a faked one. The true ghost story never has any point and the faked one dare not leave it out.' From the chilling horror of «The Death Mask» to the shocking violence of «The Crimson Blind», from the creeping menace of Parson Clench to the mounting suspense of «The Pipers of Mallory», these thrilling stories were enthusiastically received by readers and critics when they first appeared, and are sure to delight and terrify the modern reader in equal measure.» |
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«Daisy Miller» is one of Henry James's most attractive heroines: she represents youth and frivolity. As a tourist in Italy, her American freedom and freshness of spirit come up against the corruption and hypocrisy of European manners. From its first publication, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have quarrelled about her, defending or attacking the liberties that Daisy takes and the conventions that she ignores. All three tales in this collection, «Daisy Miller», «An International Episode» and «Lady Barbarina», express James's most notable subject, 'the international theme', the encounters, romantic and cultural, between Americans and Europeans. His heroes and heroines approach each other on unfamiliar ground with new freedoms, yet find themselves unexpectedly hampered by old constraints. In «An International Episode», an English lord visiting Newport, Rhode Island, falls in love with an American girl, but their relationship becomes more complicated when she travels to London. In the light-hearted comedy «Lady Barbarina», a rich young American seeks an English aristocratic bride. The unusual outcomes of these three tales pose a number of social questions about marriage and the traditional roles of men and women. Is an international marriage symbolic of the highest cultural fusion of values or is it an old style raid and capture? Is marriage to remain the feminine destination?» |
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