All new 6x9 inch paperback edition. "Sense and Sensibility" (considered the first "modern" English novel) portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, in southwest England between 1792 and 1797. The novel follows the young ladies from their comfortable life on the Norland Park estate to their new home, a meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first twelve short stories featuring the world's most famous detective, which were originally published as a series of single stories in The Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892, before being published as a book in 1892. This edition includes cover and frontispiece illustrations by Frederic Door Steele (no other illustrations). A London-based "consulting detective" whose abilities border on the fantastic, Sherlock Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability...

New reformatted edition (not low-quality scans of an old book) which includes ten black and white illustrations of Joshua Reynolds's art. As the most successful portrait painter in 18th century England, and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered fifteen eloquent discourses at the annual or semi-annual awards presentations, instilling encouragement in the students, and providing a concise summary of art theory that continued to influence artists well into the 19th century. This volume presents a selection of seven of the discourses, that are essential...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "The Virginian" was the first western genre novel introducing the cowboy as a romantic hero. Set in Wyoming, Wister weaves a tale of action, violence, hate, revenge, love and friendship that revolves around the Virginian's confrontations with a rival gambler, chasing cattle thieves, and an ongoing romance with the local schoolteacher from back east who is not used to the wild west. Owen Wister is the "father" of western fiction. Like his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Wister became fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of the west after his first trip to...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. "Riders of the Purple Sage" tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon Church. A second plot follows Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl named Bess, whom he has accidentally shot. Venters falls in love with the girl, and together they escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, pursued by both Mormons and rustlers, escape into a paradise-like valley by toppling a giant balancing rock, forever closing off the only way in or out. Zane Grey was an American author best...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. An early example of Joyce's modernist, free indirect speech style of writing, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a semi-autobiographical novel that traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and poet considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition with restored text. Challenging the prevailing morals of the Victorian era, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered by many to be the first feminist novel. This is a story of marital betrayal set within a moral framework tempered by an optimistic belief in universal salvation. The main character, Helen, is spirited and forthright, unafraid to speak with frankness to the men in her life. Anne Bronte portrays this approvingly, in contrast to the meekness of Milicent who is trampled and ignored by her unrepentant husband. Helen leaves with her beloved son in tow,...

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Cover painting by Winslow Homer, 1873.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. Considered by many to be the first existentialist novel, "Notes from Underground" is an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator-the underground man. The first part attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?" The second part describes events that are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man.

New 6x9 inch paperback edition. Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, believes he can rationalize murder without guilt and the story follows this journey from arrogance to repentance and the burden he must carry symbolized by the cross given to him by Sonya. The mental anguish and moral dilemmas expressed in the dialogue, and Raskolnikov's dreams, are cleverly utilized by Dostoyevsky to articulate the broader philosophical debate sweeping through nineteenth-century Europe about nihilism, utopian socialism, utilitarianism, and extreme rationalism.