"A hundred and fifty years after its first publication, Crime and Punishment continues to fascinate readers. It was the first of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's long novels to feature not only profound debate on the most pressing philosophical and spiritual questions of the day, but also a murder plot and a level of intrigue and tension associated more commonly with popular fiction than high literature. It established the author's reputation as both...

Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric. The result is an American tragedy of stark...

In addition to the full text of Lord of the Flies, this volume contains statements by Golding about the novel, reminiscences of Golding by his brother, an appreciation of the novel by E. M. Forster, and a number of critical essays from various points of view. Included are psychological, religious, and literary approaches by noted scholars and studies of the novel's relation to earlier works, as well as to other writings by Golding.--Publisher description....