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Victor Frankenstein creates a man, but abdicates his responsibility to his creation and molds him into a monster. Shelley's classic work reveals much about death, ideas of atheism, and the corrupting influence of society on human nature.
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This is the story of a tormented foundling who falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other. Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846, Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell". Emily Brontë died the following year, aged 30. After Emily's death, her sister Charlotte edited the...
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In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook. Rich...
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Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile is the eighth book by American writer Herman Melville. When Israel Potter leaves his plow to fight in the American Revolution, he's immediately thrown into the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he receives multiple wounds. However, this does not deter him, and after hearing a rousing speech by General George Washington, he volunteers for further duty, this time at sea, where more ill fortune awaits him. Israel is...
6) Adam Bede
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Set in the early nineteenth-century English countryside, an English squire yields to the temptations of an innocent country girl and crime, remorse, and suffering are the consequences.
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Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many...
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Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.
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The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town on the early nineteenth century. Here is one of the great American novels, illustrated by one of this country's most distinguished artists. Readers will enjoy the antics of that irrepressible boy-hero, Tom, who lies to his Aunt Polly and still is forgiven, wins the heart of Becky Thatcher by getting whipped at school, gets out of whitewashing a fence by tricking...
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How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? In Flatland, A Square's linear world is invaded by a Sphere bringing the gospel of the third dimension. Part geometry lesson, part social satire, the novel enlarges readers' imaginations beyond the limits of our 'respective dimensional prejudices'. - ;'Upward, yet not Northward.'. How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility...
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Often referred to as “the great American novel,” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn defined American literature with its richness of characters, colorful vernacular, and vibrant depictions of the American Midwest. Told in the first-person from the viewpoint of the classic protagonist, the satirical narrative follows young “Huck” Finn as he searches for escape and adventure along the Mississippi River. The story begins where Twain’s previous...
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A Study in Scarlet is the first story to feature Sherlock Holmes, and the first work of fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as a detective tool. The story opens with Holmes and Watson meeting each other for the first time, and their decision to become flat-mates at 221B Baker Street. Soon they are involved in a murder-mystery involving kidnapping, enslavement and revenge that will test the limits of Holmes' skills and establish a life-long...
14) Romola
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"Presents George Eliot's 1862 novel about Romola, a woman who, having grown up subservient to her scholar-father, and endured an unhappy marriage, has a passionate intellectual and spiritual awakening in Renaissance Florence." *** "One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, 'Romola' is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family when the zealous reformer Savonarola...
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The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward, who is greatly impressed by Dorian's physical beauty and becomes strongly infatuated with him, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism, Lord Henry suggests that...
16) The sign of four
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Every year since the mysterious disappearance of her father, Mary Morstan, a beautiful young woman, has received a lustrous pearl. Now her anonymous benefactor has requested a meeting, and Miss Morstan wants Holmes and Watson to accompany her. Together they uncover a story that began in far-off India with unimaginable treasures and terrible betrayal. Includes a new introduction by Martin Freeman of the television series Sherlock.
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"Jude Fawley, an impoverished stonemason, aspires to the ministry and fails to fulfill the opposite expectations of the two women he loves in Victorian society." *** "Marriage, the Church of England, and the British university system all come under criticism in a story about two cousins who love each other and want to improve their lot in life." *** "In this haunting love story, a couple who have each fled a previous marriage find love and fulfillment...
18) Emma
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As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.
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Tor Classics
Unabridged classics
Project Gutenberg etext volume no. 161
Everyman's library volume 51
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Unabridged classics
Project Gutenberg etext volume no. 161
Everyman's library volume 51
More Series...
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When Mr. Dashwood dies, he leaves his second wife and her three daughters at the mercy of his son and heir, John. John's wife convinces him to turn his step-mother and half-sisters out, and they move to a country cottage, rented to them by a distant relative. In their newly reduced circumstances Elinor and Marianne, the two eldest daughters, wrestle with ideas of romance and reality and their apparent opposition to each other. Elinor struggles in...
20) Dracula
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The punctured throat, the coffin lid slowly opening, the unholy shriek as the stake pierces the heart-these are just a few of the chilling images Bram Stoker unleashed upon the world with his 1897 masterpiece, Dracula. Inspired by the folk legend of nosferatu, the undead, Stoker created a timeless tale of gothic horror and romance that has enthralled and terrified readers ever since. A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation,...