Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in which he writes of his theories of evolution by natural selection, is one of the most important works of scientific study ever published.

An old sailor, calling himself "the captain" but really called Billy Bones, comes to lodge at the Admiral Benbow Inn on the English coast during the mid 1700s, paying the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for "seafaring men." One of these shows up, frightening Billy (who drinks far too much rum) into a stroke, and Billy tells Jim that his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from another man, Billy has another stroke and dies; Jim and his mother (his father has died only a few days before) unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a...

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, adulteress Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A to mark her shame. Her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, remains unidentified and is wracked with guilt, while her husband, Roger Chillingworth, seeks revenge. The Scarlet Letter's symbolism helps create a powerful drama in Puritan Boston: a kiss, evil, sin, nature, the scarlet letter, and the punishing scaffold. Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece is a classic example of the human conflict between emotion and intellect.

The Elliots of Kellynch Hall, a family of minor nobility, are in financial trouble. Their sense of how important they are has long been larger than their bank account allows. The duct-tape patching job they've been doing on their finances is finally falling apart, so they come up with a last-ditch plan: move out of the ancestral mansion and rent out the place to someone else to increase their income. And so the Elliots move out, and the newly rich Admiral Croft and his wife move in. While the Crofts are total strangers to the Elliots, it turns out Mrs. Croft's brother, Captain Wentworth, is...

Incomplete records make it impossible to know for certain when Jane Austen originally wrote Lady Susan, but the novel was published in 1871 - over 50 years after her death. The novel is different than Jane Austen's typical work in a couple ways. First, it is epistolary novel, which means it is written as a series of letters. Second, unlike many of Jane Austen's more popular works, the main character, Lady Susan, is quite unlikeable. She has no redeeming qualities and while she seems to do well for herself in the novel by manipulating the other people in her life, the end of the novel...

Youthful Emma Woodhouse, whose long-time governess and friend Miss Taylor has just married Mr. Weston, takes some solace in being left alone with her aging father by claiming that she made the match herself. An old friend of the family, Mr. George Knightley, does not believe her, but in her certainty she decides that she must also marry off the young rector, Mr. Elton. Among her friends and acquaintances in the large and populous village of Highbury, she begins to notice young Harriet Smith, the pretty illegitimate seventeen-year-old who lives at Mrs. Goddard's boarding school. Determining...

Candido figura a la cabeza de todas las novelas y cuentos de Voltaire como la pieza indiscutible del arte narrativo del Siglo de las Luces. Es una novela de aprendizaje, y su heroe un optimista que ha asimilado las teorias del providencialismo leibniziano: cree a pies juntillas que el mundo es un paraiso, a pesar de que, desde la primera linea, la realidad se encarga de negarlo. La estructura tiene un hilo conductor claro: el viaje, los vientos de la vida llevan de aqui para alla a Candido, convertido en un juguete del destino que recorre un mundo estragado por catastrofes naturales, por...

Lucy Snowe, a young Englishwoman of the educated class, narrates the story of her life-in a particularly partisan and sometimes unreliable manner. She is left destitute after the death of her mysterious family and, after briefly being a nurse-companion, takes herself off on a blind, daring trip to the Continent. She goes to the kingdom of Labassecour (perhaps modeled on Belgium) and, through a series of very fortunate occurrences, manages to land herself a job and a place to live on her first night in the town of Villette. She becomes a nursery governess to the three daughters of the...

Alexander Schaunard, a poor musician and painter, is unable to pay the rent for his cold and windy top-floor room in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Eluding the porter who is on watch to keep Schaunard from moving his few pieces of furniture, the musician tries in vain to borrow money from his impecunious friends. Shortly after he leaves the tenement, Marcel, a painter, comes to take over the room Schaunard vacated. The painter has no furniture except his canvas flats, and he is pleased to find that his quarters contain Schaunard's table, chairs, bed, and piano.

Poor Jack Fisher's Alley I summoned all my strength, and called out long before we floated past her Anderson reading the Bible to Jack Anderson reading the news of the Battle of the Nile Jack's Father landing after the Battle of the Nile Jack in Nanny's Room Jack and Bramble aboard the Indiaman The Fore peak Yarn "How's her head, Tom?" Bramble saving Bessie Jack heaving the lead Nanny relating her story Jack and his Father under the Colonnade A Surprise Bramble and Jack carried into a French Port The Leith Smack and the Privateer The Arrival of the Privateer at Lanion The Prison Jack a...