To relieve the pressure on her impoverished, overburdened family, shy young Fanny Price is sent to live with Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, wealthy relatives who reside at Mansfield Park. Of the Bertrams' own four children, only the younger son, Edmund, shows her any real kindness, and over time Fanny falls in love with her cousin. With Sir Thomas away on overseas business, Mansfield's social circle gains two superficially attractive new members: handsome,...

One of the English language's most popular and frequently quoted books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was the creation of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), a distinguished scholar and mathematician who wrote under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll. Intended for young readers but enjoyed equally by adults, the fantastic tale transformed children's literature, liberating it from didactic constraints. The story is deeply but gently satiric, enlivened...

"Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters - Elinore and Marianne. Each sister embodies a unique set of traits: Elinore is sense, discrete and of sound judgement; while Marianne is sensibility, emotional and impulsive. Throughout the lives and adventures of the two sisters in matters of love and relationships, Austen captures the need for both sense and sensibility in one's life, the need for a heart that...

A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways. With heart-rending characters, rich imagery...

The haunting story of a wealthy Midwestern family's struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing world at the dawn of the 20th century.

Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many...

Concerning the 300 year life of a man born during the reign of Elizabeth I and his quest to write a great poem, having love affairs as both man and women against the backdrop of some of the most important moments in European history. This novel has been hugely influential stylistically and is still an important moment in literary history and particularly in women's writing and gender studies.

Anthem tells the story of a man who rediscovers the individualism and his own "I" - in a world of absolute collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless, selfless men exist for the sake of serving the State; where their work, their food and their mating are prescribed to them by order of the Collective's rulers in the name of society's welfare - a world which has lost all the achievements of science and civilization, when it lost their root,...

Darkly fascinating short novel depicts the struggles of a doubting, supremely alienated protagonist in a world of relative values. Seminal work introduced moral, religious, political and social themes that dominated Dostoyevsky's later masterworks. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction. A minor official brutally scrutinizes himself and decides to go "underground," away from society. This is a strange...