Catalog Search Results
2) The last man
Author
Language
English
Description
Best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man eight years later, on returning to England from Italy after her husband Percy's death. It is the twenty-first century, and England is a republic governed by a ruling elite, one of whom, Adrian, Earl of Windsor, has introduced a Cumbrian boy to the circle. This outsider, Lionel Verney, narrates the story, a tale of complicated, tragic love, and of the gradual extermination...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
When dystopian futures don't feel so future at all…Four decades before George Orwell wrote 1984, The Napoleon of Notting Hill defined the dystopian genre. One of the first dystopian comedies, instead of a dark vision of jackboots and surveillance states, G.K. Chesterton explores the question of what a society would look like if no one could take a joke.In this future England, each new king is decided by lottery. When Auberon Quin, a man who cares...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
How could the son of a glove-maker, born and bred in an Elizabethan backwater, have developed into the immortal William Shakespeare? How is it possible that someone with no formal education beyond grammar school wrote the world's most read and performed plays? This captivating exploration of the mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's life and work offers a persuasive case for the authenticity of his authorship. Scholarly but readable, the study rests...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A weaver by trade and a mystic by nature, the 15-century poet Kabir created timeless works of enlightenment that combine the philosophies of Sufism, Hinduism, and the Kabbala. Expressed in imagery drawn from common life and the universal experience, Kabir's poems possess an appealing simplicity. This collection of 100 songs reflects nearly every aspect of the mystic's thought and emotions: ecstasy and despair, tranquil beatitude and fervid illumination,...
9) Passing
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Nella Larsen's second novel, Passing, first published in 1929, is a fascinating exploration of race and identity set amidst the blossoming Harlem Renaissance. Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for...
10) Quicksand
Author
Language
English
Description
"Helga's mother is white, and her father is black--and absent. Ostracized throughout her lonely childhood for her dark skin, Helga spends her adult life seeking acceptance. Everywhere she goes--the American South, Harlem, even Demark--she feels oppressed. Socially, economically, and psychologically, Helga struggles against the "quicksand" of classism, racism, and sexism"--Back cover.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Cast out from their ship by Fletcher Christian and his rebel band, William Bligh and eighteen seamen were forced to journey thousands of miles to the nearest port in a small open boat, with inadequate supplies and without a compass or charts. This time-honored classic, written in 1790, is Bligh's personal account of an extraordinary feat of seamanship, in which he used a sextant, a pocket watch, and his own iron will to direct an ill-equipped vessel...
Author
Language
English
Description
This comprehensive collection showcases Oscar Wilde's brilliant storytelling skills and his amazing stylistic versatility, ranging from fairy tales and ghost stories to detective yarns and comedies of manners. It includes the complete texts of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," "A House of Pomegranates," "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," "Poems in Prose," and the critical essay "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." Originally published in the...
Author
Language
English
Description
One of the richest, most inexhaustible books in the English language, The Anatomy of Melancholy is an elaborately systematized medical treatise dealing with various morbid mental states - their causes, symptoms, and cures - as well as a compendium of memorable utterances on the human condition in general, compiled from classical, scholastic, and contemporary sources.
Author
Language
English
Description
An eccentric poet acts as spiritual detective in eight thought-provoking tales. Gabriel Gale employs his extraordinary gifts of empathy to solve and prevent crimes perpetrated by madmen. His philosophical police-work forms the basis for captivating explorations of poetry, insanity, and sin - all expressed in the author's characteristic paradoxes and soaring flights of rhetoric. Best known as the creator of priest-detective Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton...
Author
Language
English
Description
Written by two major American poets, this guide to versification is immensely useful for anyone interested in poetry or in general poetic structure. Its systematic study of meter, tempo, rhyme, and other components of verse incorporates countless vivid illustrative examples. Concise and informal, The Prosody Handbook progresses from the smaller elements to the larger: from syllables to feet to lines to stanzas, and from smaller stanzas to larger ones....
Author
Language
English
Description
His mother is a virgin and he's reputed to be the son of a god; he loses favor and is driven from his kingdom to a sorrowful death - sound familiar? In The Hero, Lord Raglan contends that the heroic figures from myth and legend are invested with a common pattern that satisfies the human desire for idealization. Raglan outlines 22 characteristic themes or motifs from the heroic tales and illustrates his theory with events from the lives of characters...
18) The Path to Rome
Author
Language
English
Description
Hilaire Belloc's best work - according to the author, as well as most critics - The Path to Rome is less concerned with Rome itself than with a pilgrim's journey to the Eternal City. A spirited Catholic apologist, Belloc traveled on foot from Toul (near Nancy), France, and crossed the Alps and the Apennines in order to, in his words, "see all Europe which the Christian Faith has saved." Afterward, he turned his pen from his usual polemics to literature,...
Author
Language
English
Description
A leading art patron, lecturer, and author of the Victorian era, John Ruskin was also one of the period's foremost art and social critics. This anthology features excerpts from some of his best-known books, including Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice, on the subjects he held most dear: nature, art, and society.
Author
Language
English
Description
Reporter, author, artist, and screenwriter Wallace Smith (1888-1937) served as the Washington correspondent for the Chicago American for over a decade, and originated the paper's Joe Blow comic panel feature. Reputed to have been one of the most colorful characters to have worked for the Hearst newspapers, he switched back and forth between cartooning and reporting, covering subjects as diverse as the criminal trials of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and...
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Suggest a purchase. Submit Request