"Written deliberately to increase the circulation of Dickens's weekly magazine, Household Words, Hard Times was a huge and instantaneous success upon publication in 1854. Yet this novel is not the cheerful celebration of Victorian life one might have expected from the beloved author of The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution-and...

A lonely old man in early nineteenth-century London hits upon the idea of inviting acquaintances over to read their manuscripts together. The friends gather one night a week between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and with the formation of their fictional literary club, Charles Dickens launched Master Humphrey's Clock, a weekly periodical that he published from 1840 to 1841. Recounted with the author's customary flair for humor and pathos, the tales range from...

Classic novella about a captivating young American, Daisy Miller, whose behavior causes conflicting feelings in the mind of would-be suitor, Winterbourne.

"A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation, language, and culture to become one of the most popular novels ever written. It is a quintessential tale of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters ever born in literature: Count Dracula, a tragic, night-dwelling specter who feeds upon the blood of the living, and whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, and the beautiful. But...

The Professor is based on the author's experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society. Read less

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design The Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A.R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read...

Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of...

Mischief is in the air when the King and Queen of the Fairies quarrel and Puck is left in charge of the love potion. Four young people are lost in the woods on midsummer's night. Will they find each other and true love, or will Puck's meddling leave them broken-hearted and alone? A band of players prepares to entertain the Duke of Athens. But now that the fairies have made a donkey out of their leading man, will Quince and the others ever get to play...

This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character...

"Hardy's penultimate work, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is arguably the greatest tragedy of all Victorian literature. It tells the story of Tess, an impoverished woman whose past relations and miscarriage cause her to be rejected by her husband on their wedding night. Touching upon the themes of class, religion, gender, and sexuality, the novel was highly controversial for its time and is held in high esteem by literary scholars to this day."--Publisher...