A major work of German romanticism in a translation that is acknowledged as the definitive English language version. The Vintage Classics edition also includes NOVELLA, Goethe's poetic vision of an idyllic pastoral society.

The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence's forgotten novel, is a passionate tale of longing and sexual defiance, of devastation and destitution.
Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her father's business is failing. In a desperate attempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter's proper upbringing, James Houghton buys a theater. Among the traveling performers he employs is Ciccio, a sensual Italian who immediately captures Alvina's attention. Fleeing with him to Naples, she leaves her safe world behind and enters one of sexual awakening,...

In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain's unofficial sequel to The Innocents Abroad, the author records his hilarious and diverse observations and insights while on a fifteen-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps. "Here you have Twain's inimitable mix," writes Dave Eggers in his Introduction, "of the folksy and the effortlessly erudite, his unshakable good sense and his legendary wit, his knack for the easy relation of a perfect anecdote, and some achingly beautiful nature writing."
This Modern Library Paperback Classic reproduces the text of the first American...

The Star Rover is the story of San Quentin death-row inmate Darrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and long stretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London's friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author's most complex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in his Introduction, The Star Rover is "written with energy and force, brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality and...

First published in 1891, this morality tale pits a scientist, a government worker, his mistress, a deacon, and a physician against one another in a verbal battle of wits and ethics that explodes into a violent contest: the duel. When Laevsky, a lazy youth who works for the government, tires of his dependent mistress, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, Von Koren, the scientist, delivers a scathing critique of Loevsky's egotism, forcing the young man to examine his soul. The Duel is a tale of human weakness, the possibility of forgiveness, and a man's ultimate ability to change his ways. It is...

L. Frank Baum's timeless classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first uniquely American fairy tale. A combination of enchanting fantasy and piercing social commentary, this remarkable story has entertained and beguiled readers of all ages since it was first published in 1900. Ray Bradbury writes in his Introduction, "Both Baum and Shakespeare] lived inside their heads with a mind gone wild with wanting, wishing, hoping, shaping, dreaming," and it is this same hunger that makes all of us continue to seek out the story of Oz--and be nourished by it.
This Modern...

-My Bondage and My Freedom, - writes John Stauffer in his Foreword, - is] a deep meditation on the meaning of slavery, race, and freedom, and on the power of faith and literacy, as well as a portrait of an individual and a nation a few years before the Civil War.- As his narrative unfolds, Frederick Douglass--abolitionist, journalist, orator, and one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the American civil rights movement--transforms himself from slave to fugitive to reformer, leaving behind a legacy of social, intellectual, and political thought. Set from the text of the 1855...

Ursula K. Le Guin's selection of twenty-six stories showcases H. G. Wells's genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible.

He envisioned a sky filled with airplanes before Orville Wright ever left the ground. He described the spectacle of space travel decades before men set foot on the moon. H. G. Wells was a visionary, a man of science with an enduring literary touch, and his originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection.

"Wells imagined both dark and bright futures...

In its adventurous happenings-its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues-A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and '30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin-the archetypal Russian antihero-Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.

This unique collection of Twain s essential short stories and semiautobiographical narratives is a testament to the author s vast imagination. Featuring popular tales such as Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog and The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation also includes darker works written in the author s twilight years. These selections illuminate the depth of Twain s artistry, humor, irony, and narrative genius."