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Wordsworth
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The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits — her clothes, her charities and her gambling. Unwilling to marry without both love and money, Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip and slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long. Wharton charts the course of Lily’s life, providing, along the way, a wider picture of a society in transition, a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners, morals and family have disappeared and the individual has become an expendable commodity. |
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«Human, All Too Human» (1878) marks the point where Nietzsche abandons German romanticism for the French Enlightenment. At a moment of crisis in his life (no longer a friend of Richard Wagner, forced to leave academic life through ill health), he sets out his views in a scintillating and bewildering series of aphorisms which contain the seeds of his later philosophy (e.g. the will to power, the need to transcend conventional Christian morality). The result is one of the cornerstones of his life's work. It well deserves its subtitle 'A Book for Free Spirits', and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here finds a new champion. «Beyond Good and Evil» (1886) is a scathing and powerful critique of philosophy, religion and science. Here Nietzsche presents us with problems and challenges that are as troubling as they are inspiring, while at the same time outlining the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterise the philosophy of the future. Relentless, energetic, tirelessly probing, he both determines that philosophy's agenda and is himself the embodiment of the type of thought he wants to foster.» |
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Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners. His serene selflessness is contrasted with the worldly qualities of every other character in the novel. Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indictment of the Russian ruling class of his day who have created a world which cannot accomodate the goodness of this idiot. |
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The product of more than a decade's continuous work (1598-1611), Chapman's translation of Homer's great poem of war is a magnificent testimony to the power of the Iliad. In muscular, onward-rolling verse Chapman retells the story of Achilles, the great warrior, and his terrible wrath before the walls of besieged Troy, and the destruction it wreaks on both Greeks and Trojans. Chapman regarded the translation of this epic, and of Homer's Odyssey (also available in Wordsworth Editions) as his life's work, and dedicated himself to capturing the 'soul' of the poem. |
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Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, Achilles dragging Hector's body round the walls of Troy — scenes from Homer have been reportrayed in every generation. The questions about mortality and identity that Homer's heroes ask, the bonds of love, respect and fellowship that motivate them, have gripped audiences for three millennia. Chapman's Iliad and Odyssey are great English epic poems, but they are also two of the liveliest and readable translations of Homer. Chapman's freshness makes the everyday world of nature and the craftsman as vivid as the battlefield and Mount Olympus. His poetry is driven by the excitement of the Renaissance discovery of classical civilisation as at once vital and distant, and is enriched by the perspectives of humanist thought. |
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Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the most important and innovative figures of the European Middle Ages. Writing his Comedy (the epithet 'Divine' was added by later admirers) in exile from his native Florence, he aimed to address a world gone astray both morally and politically. At the same time, he sought to push back the restrictive rules which traditionally governed writing in the Italian vernacular, to produce a radically new and all-encompassing work. The Comedy tells the story of the journey of a character who is at one and the same time both Dante himself and Everyman. In The Inferno, Dante's protagonist — and his reader — is presented with a graphic vision of the dreadful consequences of sin, and encounters an all-too-human array of noble, grotesque, beguiling, ridiculous and horrific characters. |
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Sigmund Freud's audacious masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has never ceased to stimulate controversy since its publication in 1900. Freud is acknowledged as the founder of psychoanalysis, the key to unlocking the human mind, a task which has become essential to man's survival in the twentieth century, as science and technology have rushed ahead of our ability to cope with their consequences. Freud saw that man is at war with himself and often unable to tolerate too much reality. He propounded the theory that dreams are the contraband representations of the beast within man, smuggled into awareness during sleep. In Freudian interpretation, the analysis of dreams is the key to unlocking the secrets of the unconscious mind. |
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The captivating Irish stories collected in this new edition include both comic tales such as 'Paddy O'Kelly and the Weasel', and tales of heroes from ancient literature such as 'How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery'. By turns funny, fantastical and mysterious, the stories are matched in liveliness by the original illustrations of John D. Batten. It would be hard to find a better introduction for children to the special magic of Celtic storytelling. The stories in this book are taken from Joseph Jacob's classic two-volume collection Celtic Fairy Tales (1891-2) and More Celtic Fairy Tales (1894) |
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In this, his final adventure, Buchan's hero Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in one of the most hazardous escapades of his life. Two men are honour bound to help the tormented Valdemar Haraldsen, and a third decides to mastermind the whole affair out of a sheer love of adventure and a dislike of villains. |
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Horrific, horrendous, unspeakable, The Whitechapel Murderer, Jack the Ripper, stalked the streets of East London in 1888, slaughtering prostitutes and bewildering the police who were hunting him. They never succeeded in apprehending him, and to this day the mystery of his identity remains an enigma. But he did leave clues to his identity, and numerous theories have been entertained throughout the one hundred and twenty years since he held London’s East End in his grip of terror. This book looks at the evidence left by the murderer and the reports and investigative papers which recorded the atrocities that the ripper performed. It takes time to analyse the existing information and evaluate the letters sent to the police. It is the strongest and most powerful book ever written on the murders. It dispels a lot of myths attached to the Ripper, and eliminates a lot of the previously conjectured perpetrators, leaving only those who realistically could have been… Jack the Ripper. |
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Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester. However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors. |
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The works of the Jewish writer Flavius Josephus represent one of the most important records of Judaism and the Jews that survive from the ancient world. The Jewish Antiquities, his largest historical enterprise, is an account in twenty books of Jewish history from the creation to the outbreak of the Jewish revolt against Rome in AD 66. Here is all the drama of the Old Testament transformed into a historical narrative of Greco-Roman character; and more important, our only continuous account of Middle Eastern affairs in the two hundred years that led up to the revolt. William Whiston, successor to Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, published his famous translation of Josephus' works in 1737. The modern system of chapter divisions has been added. |
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Jules Verne's third science fiction novel describes the discovery and exploration of a secret tunnel which leads through a volcano to the centre of the Earth. The leader of the expedition, together with his ward and joined by his nephew and an Icelandic guide commence the journey. |
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Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulfilment seems to lie in his relationship with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead. But life as social outcasts proves undermining, and when tragedy occurs, Sue has no resilience and Jude is left in despair. |
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«Julius Caesar» is among the best of Shakespeare's historical and political plays. Dealing with events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the drama vividly illustrates the ways in which power and corruption are linked. The cry 'Peace, freedom and liberty!' is used to exculpate brutal realities, while personal ambitions taint public actions. Rich in characterization and replete with eloquent rhetoric, «Julius Caesar» remains engrossing and topical: a play for today.» |
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«The «Jungle Book» introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents, and of the friendship between the man-cub and Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the sleepy brown bear, who instructs Mowgli in the Laws of the Jungle. «The Second Jungle Book» contains some of the most thrilling of the Mowgli stories. It includes «Red Dog», in which Mowgli forms an unlikely alliance with the python Kaa, «How Fear Came» and «Letting in the Jungle» as well as «The Spring Running», which brings Mowgli to manhood and the realisation that he must leave Bagheera, Baloo and his other friends for the world of man.» |
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These witty stories were originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his own children. In them he gives fanciful accounts of how and why things came to be as they are. Generations of children have delighted to learn how the Leopard got his spots, how the Elephant's Child on the banks of the great grey-green Limpopo acquired his trunk with the help of the Crocodile, and the beginning of the Armadillos. |
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Rene Descartes (1569-1650), the 'father' of modern philosophy, is without doubt one of the greatest thinkers in history: his genius lies at the core of our contemporary intellectual identity. Breaking with the conventions of his own time and suffering persecution by the Church as a consequence, Descartes in his writings — most of which are philosophical classics — attempted to answer the central questions surrounding the self, God, free-will and knowledge, using the science of thought as opposed to received wisdom based on the tenets of faith. This edition, the most comprehensive one-volume selection of Descartes' works available in English, includes his great essay, Discourse on Method. |
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This novel tells the story of Kimball O'Hara (Kim), who is the orphaned son of a soldier in the Irish regiment stationed in India during the British Raj. It describes Kim's life and adventures from street vagabond, to his adoption by his father's regiment and recruitment into espionage. |
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«King Lear» has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare's most powerful tragedy. Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature.» |
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