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Wordsworth
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Initially a vivacious, outgoing person, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) progressively withdrew into a reclusive existence. An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,775 poems were published prior to her death. She had an immense breadth of vision and a passionate intensity and awe for life, love, nature, time and eternity. Originally branded an eccentric, Emily Dickinson is now recognised as a major poet of great depth. |
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Murderous ghosts, horrific curses and monstrous beings haunt an unforgiving landscape into which travellers stray at their peril. Journey through the dark byways of Australia's Gothic past in the rare stories gathered in this memorable new collection. Work by acclaimed Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and Edward Dyson appears alongside many lesser-known authors such as Beatrice Grimshaw, Mary Fortune and Ernest Favenc. Many of the stories collected here have never been reprinted since their first publication in 19th and early 20th century periodicals, and showcase the richness and variety of the Australian ghost and horror story. James Doig provides an authoritative introduction full of fresh insights into Australian Gothic fiction with detailed biographical notes on the authors represented. |
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«The Castle of Otranto» tells the story of Manfred, lord of the castle and his family. «Nightmare Abbey» follows the fortunes of Christopher Glowry, a morose widower who lives with his only son Scythrop in his semi-dilapidated family mansion Nightmare Abbey. «Vathek» tells the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek's journey to damnation.» |
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«'He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby's, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.' A family secret leads to murder in a house without locks... Someone is prepared to kill to procure a valuable set of pearls, and a parrot fluent in Chinese knows too much... A Scotland Yard Inspector is about to close his final case, but someone is prepared to kill to keep the mystery unsolved... Three very different crimes, with one thing in common... He's Honolulu's greatest detective — prepare to savour the wisdom of Charlie Chan. From Hawaii to San Francisco, no crime is too baffling, no clue too insignificant for Charlie. Long out of print, Charlie Chan's first three cases, «The House Without a Key», «The Chinese Parrot», and «Behind That Curtain», have been collected in one volume for your entertainment and bafflement.» |
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«This title comes with an introduction and notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University. Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellinton, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen's College and returned permanently in 1908. Her first book of stories, «In a German Pension», appeared in 1911, and she went on to write and publish an extraordinary body of work. This edition of «The Collected Stories» brings together all of the stories that Mansfield had written up until her death in January of 1923. With an introduction and head-notes, this volume allows the reader to become familiar with the complete range of Mansfield's work from the early, satirical stories set in Bavaria, through the luminous recollections of her childhood in New Zealand, and through the mature, deeply felt stories of her last years. Admired by Virginia Woolf in her lifetime and by many writers since her death, Katherine Mansfield is one of the great literary artists of the twentieth century.» |
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For 150 years, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen have been delighting both adults and children. This edition contains all of Andersen's 168 tales, and among the favourites are The Red Shoes, The Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Ugly Duckling. |
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«For 150 years, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen have been delighting both adults and children. This edition contains all of Andersen's 168 tales, and among the favourites are «The Red Shoes», «The Mermaid», «The Emperor's New Clothes», and «The Ugly Duckling».» |
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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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This collection comprises the works of John Keats, one of the greatest English poets and contemporary of Byron and Shelley. The collection includes Endymion, Lamia, Isabella and Hyperion. |
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This collection contains the poetic works of Walt Whitman. These poems reflect the vitality of a new nation and the vastness of its lands. They combine autobiographical, sociological and religious themes but did not conform to previous genres. |
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«This title includes an introduction by A.D.P. Briggs and translated by Constance Garnett. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of «Devils», a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time. The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated — until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the novel, however, is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin, another product of rationalism run wild, exercises his charisma with ruthless authority and total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he confesses to a ghastly sexual crime — in a chapter long suppressed by the censor. This prophetic account of modern morals and politics, with its fifty-odd characters, amazing events and challenging ideas, is seen by some critics as Dostoevsky's masterpiece.» |
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This novel comes with an introduction and notes by Karl Ashley Smith, University of St Andrews and illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite his visionary eccentricity and declining health. But Dombey also has a daughter, whose unfailing love for her father goes unreturned. 'Girls' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son'. When Walter Gay, a young clerk in her father's office, rescues her from a bewildering experience in the streets of London, his unforgettable friends believe he is well on his way to receiving her hand in marriage and inheriting the company. It is to be a very different type of story. |
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«Dracula Introduction and Notes» by Dr David Rogers, Kingston University — 'There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and mustache were changed to dark iron-grey, the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst the swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion'. Thus Bram Stoker, one of the greatest exponents of the supernatural narrative, describes the demonic subject of his chilling masterpiece «Dracula» — a truly iconic and unsettling tale of vampirism. «Dracula's Guest & Other Stories» is edited and introduced by David Stuart Davies. The above is followed with a rich collection of Stoker's macabre tales including «Dracula's Guest» (which was omitted from the final version of Dracula); a devilishly dangerous haunted room in The Judge's House; a fatalistic tragedy in The Burial of the Rats; a terror of revenge from beyond the grave in The Secret of Growing Gold, and a surprising twist in the tail in The Gypsy's Prophecy. Other strange and frightening episodes provide a feast of terror for those readers who like to be unnerved as well as entertained.» |
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«This is translated by Constance Garnett, with an introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships. At the same time he shows — from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil — that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. «The Karamazov Brothers», completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise. It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.» |
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Set in Scotland in 1751, Kidnapped tells of how young David Balfour, orphaned, and betrayed by his uncle Ebenezer who should have been his guardian, falls in with Alan Breck, the unscrupulous but heroic champion of the Jacobite cause. |
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«The two American classics here together in one volume, «Little Men» and «Jo's Boys», are worthy sequels to «Little Women», one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, and its continuation, «Good Wives». In «Little Men», Louisa May Alcott takes up the story of the everyday dramas and exploits of the naughty but easy-going boys at Plumfield, now a boarding-school run by Professor Bhaer and his lovable madcap wife Jo, the most fiery and free-spirited of the four March sisters. «Jo's Boys» revisits the one-time members of that 'wilderness of boys' ten years later when they are making their ways in the world with varying degrees of triumph and disaster.» |
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This is the second volume of a novel rich in both character portrayal and historical description. Characters include the absurdly criminalized Valjean and the implacable detective Javert. It includes scenes such as the Battle of Waterloo and Valjean's flight through the Paris sewers. |
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«Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, «The Monk» is a violent tale of ambition, murder and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads to its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder to conceal his guilt.» |
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«With an Introduction by Alex Dolby Jules Verne (1828-1905) is internationally famous as the author of a distinctive series of adventure stories describing new travel technologies which opened up the world and provided means to escape from it. The collective enthusiasm of generations of readers of his 'extraordinary voyages' was a key factor in the rise of modern science fiction. In «The Mysterious Island» a group of men escape imprisonment during the American Civil War by stealing a balloon. Blown across the world, they are air-wrecked on a remote desert island. In a manner reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe, the men apply their scientific knowledge and technical skill to exploit the island's bountiful resources, eventually constructing a sophisticated society in miniature. The book is also an intriguing mystery story, for the island has a secret.» |
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