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Wordsworth
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«Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is, for Russians, their greatest writer; «Eugene Onegin» is his greatest work. Yet it remains little known outside Russia. Attempts to render Pushkin's Russian stanzas into verse have tried in vain to imitate the most inimitable feature of the original, while masking many of its glories. This prose version, for the first time, gives us a «Eugene Onegin» that is easy and enjoyable to read.» |
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Whenever struck by campaigns, fads, cults and fashions, the reader may take some comfort that Charles Mackay can demonstrate historical parallels for almost every neurosis of our times. The South Sea Bubble, Witch Mania, Alchemy, the Crusades, Fortune-telling, Haunted Houses, and even 'Tulipomania' are only some of the subjects covered in this book, which is given a contemporary perspective through Professor Norman Stone's lively new Introduction. |
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«Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure», better known as «Fanny Hill», is one of the most notorious texts in English literature. As recently as 1963 an unexpurgated edition was the subject of a trial, yet in the eighteenth century John Cleland's open celebration of sexual enjoyment was a best selling novel. Fanny's story, as she falls into prostitution and then rises to respectability, takes the form of a confession that is vividly coloured by copious and explicit physiological details of her carnal adventures. The moral outrage that this has always provoked has only recently been countered by serious critical appraisal.» |
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«Far from the Madding Crowd» is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was '...the past was yesterday; never, the day after'. And lastly, of the introverted and reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr Boldwood, whose love fills him with '...a fearful sense of exposure', when he first sets eyes on Bathsheba. The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods.» |
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Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has long been acclaimed as Turgenev's finest work. It is a political novel set in a domestic context, with a universal theme, the generational divide between fathers and sons. Set in 1859 at the moment when the Russian autocratic state began to move hesitantly towards social and political reform, the novel explores the conflict between the liberal-minded fathers of Russian reformist sympathies and their free-thinking intellectual sons whose revolutionary ideology threatened the stability of the state. At its centre is Evgeny Bazorov, a strong-willed antagonist of all forms of social orthodoxy who proclaims himself a nihilist and believes in the need to overthrow all the institutions of the state. As the novel develops Bazarov's political ambitions become fatally meshed with emotional and private concerns, and his end is a tragic failure. The novel caused a bitter furore on its publication in 1862, and this, a year later, drove Turgenev from Russia. |
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Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, it became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. Beginning with an intriguing wager between God and Satan, it charts the life of a deeply flawed individual, his struggle against the nihilism of his diabolical companion Mephistopheles. Part One presents Faust's pact with the Devil and the harrowing tragedy of his love affair with the young Gretchen. Part Two shows Faust's experience in the world of public affairs, including his encounter with Helen of Troy, the emblem of classical beauty and culture. The whole is a symbolic and panoramic commentary on the human condition and on modern European history and civilisation. This new translation of both parts of Faust preserves the poetic character of the original, its tragic pathos and hilarious comedy. In addition, John Williams has translated the Urfaust, a fascinating glimpse into the young Goethe's imagination, and a selection from the draft scenarios for the Walpurgis Night witches' sabbath — material so ribald and blasphemous that Goethe did not dare publish it. |
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'It' was the Psammead, the grumpy sand-fairy that could, if in the mood, grant a wish a day. When the five children befriend him they find that each wish granted often has a sting in its tail. Golden guineas are too difficult to spend, wings let them down in a most inconvenient way, and when they wish for Red Indians, the children forget that they can sometimes be a little warlike. |
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When The Forsyte Saga was shown on television in 1967 it was hugely successful. The nation was gripped by the masterful visual telling of the Forsyte family's troubled story and adapted its activities to suit the next transmission. The Forsyte Saga comprising The Man of Property, In Chancery and To Let, is here produced by Wordsworth for the first time in a single volume. Initially, the narrative centres on Soames Forsyte — a successful solicitor living in London with his beautiful wife Irene. A pillar of the late Victorian upper middle class, materially wealthy, his appears to be a golden existence endowed with all the necessary possessions for a 'Man of Property', but beneath this very proper exterior lies a core of unhappiness and brutal relationships. The marriage of Soames and Irene disintegrates in bitter recrimination, creating a feud within the family that will have far-reaching consequences. |
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«The Shakespeare comedies collected in this text are frequently known as «the romances». It is argued that they conclude in a spirit of hope as the main characters are reunited in an aura of reconciliation, wrongs are righted, and exiles returned to their homes.» |
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«Begun when the author was only eighteen and conceived from a nightmare, «Frankenstein», is the deeply disturbing story of a monstrous creation which has terrified and chilled readers since its first publication in 1818. The novel has thus seared its way into the popular imagination while establishing itself as one of the pioneering works of modern science fiction.» |
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Henry James's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl, is the story of two flawed marriages. The lives and relationships of Maggie Verver and her widowed American millionaire father, Adam, are changed and challenged by the beautiful and charming Charlotte Stant, who is the former lover of Maggie's husband, the impoverished Italian, Prince Amerigo. The narrative is underpinned by complex symbolism. The gilded crystal bowl with its almost invisible flaw is the vehicle which James uses to reveal past misdemeanours and make his characters face their own defects in this classic tale of redemption. |
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This superb new collection brings together stories from the earliest decades of Gothic writing with later 19th and early 20th century tales from the period in which Gothic diversified into the familiar forms of the ghost-and horror-story. Some of these stories, like the haunting ‘The Lame Priest’ are ‘lost masterpieces’ and several have never been anthologised before. |
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These Comedies are among the best loved of Shakespeare's plays. In each a problem emerges, is then intensified to a point of maximum confusion and potential upset, before the chaos is resolved, however improbably, into general goodwill and a spate of marriages. The triumph of these plays lies in the way they mingle humorous stage business and dexterous word play with a more serious study of identity, gender, dreaming, the meaning of love, even of the theatre itself. They reassure us that with all its faults, the world will always in the end be redeemable. 'Not for an age but for all time.' So Ben Jonson established what we now take for granted: Shakespeare's unique place among the world's great authors. Romeo and Juliet shows us the archetypal story of fated young love; Hamlet, the tortured psyche of the young prince of Denmark; Othello, a strikingly modern representation of racial difference; King Lear, a man stripped of all material and psychological comforts; and Macbeth, a dark investigation of the origins and effects of, evil. The plays throw a fascinating light on the concerns of Shakespeare's day, yet offer perennial insights into the nature of human emotion. |
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«Considered by many to be Dicken's finest novel, «Great Expectations» traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dicken's most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expectations' in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all — the truth about himself.» |
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«Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the «roaring twenties», and a devastating expose of the «Jazz Age». Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick's cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him.» |
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The Brothers Grimm 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. This selection of their folk tales was made and translated by Lucy Crane, and includes firm favourites such as Rapunzel, The Goose Girl, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel and Snow White. It is illustrated throughout by Walter Crane's charming line drawings. |
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This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale. The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness. |
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Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social and political exploitation of European and African societies and the cataclysmic behaviour this induced in some individuals. |
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Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry himself, astute and charismatic, who led his 'band of brothers' to victory in the Battle of Agincourt, could indeed seem to be 'this star of England'. In recent decades the play has attracted increasing critical attention and is now highly controversial. Kenneth Branagh's film-production reflected the changing valuation. Does this play have a sceptical sub-text which subverts its patriotism? Is Henry's achievement beset by irony? Has current scepticism distorted a predominantly and proudly nationalistic drama? |
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Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining. Why did Pheidippides run the 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.195 kilometres) from Marathon to Athens? And what did he do when he got there? Was the Battle of Salamis fought between sausage-sellers? Which is the oldest language in the world? Why did Leonidas and his 300 Spartans spend the morning before the battle of Thermopylae combing their hair? Why did every Babylonian woman have to sit in the Temple of Aphrodite until a man threw a coin into her lap, and how long was she likely to sit there? And what is the best way to kill a crocodile? This wide-ranging history provides the answers to all these fascinating questions as well as providing many fascinating insights into the Ancient World. |
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