In addition to Swift's satire on the ruling class and landowners, includes pamphlets critical of British rule in Ireland, essays on war and economics, a journal detailing his political activities in London, letters, newspaper pieces, and other prose works.
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) received a degree from London University where he studied evolutionary science under Thomas Huxley. Wells was stricken with tuberculosis shortly after, and in his weakened condition took to writing. Scientific romance, later known as science fiction, is the genre Wells is most famous for, but he was a prolific writer in many other genres. "Ann Veronica" is a testament to Wells' diverse spectrum of interests, as politics and...
Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman is a literary classic renowned for its richly developed characters and enduring themes. This work introduces readers to a world of intrigue and insight, where John Henry Newman crafts a narrative that is as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally resonant. The story is rooted in themes of human nature, morality, and the timeless questions that define our existence, presented through the lens of characters...
A portrait is a key example of the Keunstlerroman (an Artist's Buldungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel trace the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions in which he has been raise.
One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.
In 1885, Elizabeth Jane Cochran -- pen name, Nellie Bly -- was hired as one of the first female journalists after writing a scathing rebuttal to a misogynist newspaper column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. The newspaper's editor was so taken aback by Bly's incendiary prose that he posted an ad asking the article's author to come work for him. Within five years, Bly had become the first "girl stunt reporter," going undercover to write wildly popular stories...
"The poor and innocent have nothing to fear from him; often they profit from his spontaneous generosity. The rich and powerful, and the detective who tries to spoil his fun, however, must beware. They are the target of Lupin's mischief and tomfoolery. A masterful thief turned detective, his plans frequently evolve into elaborate plots. These stories - the best of the Lupin series - are outrageous, melodramatic, and literate, and they sparkle with...
In 1542, after years of witnessing Indian suffering and slavery, Bartolome de Las Casas wrote this indictment against European exploitation and mistreatment of the native peoples of the New World. The document was dedicated to Prince Philip of Spain and appeared in published form in 1552. It carries all the urgency of a moment in history when it still seemed possible to reverse the tide. --From publisher's description.
This condensed work is a monumental account of the physical, spiritual, and intellectual evolution of the human race, and chronicles key events of humanity's development. More importantly, Wells brings to light the continuity of history, and provokes thoughts on the future implications of our scientific and intellectual progress.
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
Wrote Virginia Woolf of Aurora Leigh in 1931. 'We laugh, we protest, we complain - it is absurd, it is impossible, we cannot tolerate this exaggeration a moment longer - but, nevertheless, we read to the end enthralled. What more can an author ask?' Aurora Leigh (1856), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic novel in blank verse, tells the story of the making of a woman poet, exploring 'the woman question', art and its relation to politics and social oppression....
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 - 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential Classical liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.
"In an age of ferment, following the American and French revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft took prevailing egalitarian principles and dared to apply them to women. Her book is both a sustained argument for emancipation and an attack on a social and an economic system. As Miriam Brody points out in her introduction, subsequent feminists tended to lose sight of her radical objectives. For Mary Wollstonecraft all aspects of women's existence were interrelated,...
