Special Collections

Wuthering Heights

Considered lurid and shocking by mid-19th-century standards, Wuthering Heights was initially thought to be such a publishing risk that its author, Emily Brontë, was asked to pay some of the publication costs.

A somber tale of consuming passions and vengeance played out against the lonely moors of northern England, the book proved to be one of the most enduring classics of English literature.

The turbulent and tempestuous love story of Cathy and Heathcliff spans two generations -- from the time Heathcliff, a strange, coarse young boy, is brought to live on the Earnshaws' windswept estate, through Cathy's marriage to Edgar Linton and Heathcliff's plans for revenge, to Cathy's death years later and the eventual union of the surviving Earnshaw and Linton heirs.

A masterpiece of imaginative fiction, Wuthering Heights (the author's only novel) remains as poignant and compelling today as it was when first published in 1847.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

The Woman Warrior

In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis.

First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American.

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.”

The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come.

Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own.

A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

War and Peace

Hailed as one of the greatest novels of all time and a classic of world literature, War and Peace unfolds in the early nineteenth century during the turbulent years of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia.

Tolstoy's epic ranges from stirring depictions of historical events to intimate portraits of family life, moving between public spectacles and private lives to offer a tale of both panoramic scope and closely observed detail.

From the breathless excitement of 16-year-old Natasha Rostov's first ball, to Prince Andrei Bolkonsky's epiphany on the battlefield at Austerlitz, the novel abounds in memorable incidents, particularly those involving Pierre Bezukhov.

A seeker after moral and spiritual truths, Pierre and his search for life's deeper meaning stand at the heart of this monumental book.

A tale of strivers in a world fraught with conflict, social and political change, and spiritual confusion, Tolstoy's magnificent work continues to entertain, enlighten, and inspire readers around the world.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Walden

An American masterwork in praise of nature, self-reliance, and the simple lifeI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

In 1845, the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau moved from his home in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to a small cabin he built by hand on the shores of Walden Pond.

He spent the next two years alone in the woods, learning to live self-sufficiently and to take his creative and moral inspiration from nature. P

art memoir, part philosophical treatise, part environmental manifesto, Walden is Thoreau's inspirational account of those extraordinary years and one of the most influential books ever written.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Vanity Fair

Subtitled "a novel without a hero," Vanity Fair offers an acidly satirical romp across all levels of English society during the Napoleonic wars.

William Thackeray focuses on how the war affects people other than soldiers, the typical heroes.

All of his characters are deeply flawed, from social climber Becky Sharp and sweet Amelia Sedley to caddish George Osborne and loyal William Dobbin.

Becky, liar and hypocrite, takes center stage as one of literature's great female protagonists.

Penniless, armed with only her beauty, charm, and cunning, she claws her way forward by practicing the corrupt principles of her world.

Becky seduces her enemies and betrays friends with a charismatic energy that has captivated generations of readers.

Regarded as Thackeray's best novel and masterpiece, Vanity Fair was published in serial form in 1847-48 in Punch and established the author's literary reputation as well as his social status and financial security.

Critic A. E. Dyson acclaimed it as "one of the world's most devious novels, devious in its characterization, its irony, its explicit moralizing, its exuberance, its tone.

Few novels demand more continuing alertness from the reader, or offer more intellectual and moral stimulation in return."

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Selling more than 300,000 copies the first year it was published, Stowe's powerful abolitionist novel fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852.

Denouncing the institution of slavery in dramatic terms, the incendiary novel quickly draws the reader into the world of slaves and their masters.

Stowe's characters are powerfully and humanly realized in Uncle Tom, a majestic and heroic slave whose faith and dignity are never corrupted; Eliza and her husband, George, who elude slave catchers and eventually flee a country that condones slavery; Simon Legree, a brutal plantation owner; Little Eva, who suffers emotionally and physically from the suffering of slaves; and fun-loving Topsy, Eva's slave playmate.

Critics, scholars, and students are today revisiting this monumental work with a new objectivity, focusing on Stowe's compelling portrayal of women and the novel's theological underpinnings.

This Norton Critical Edition includes:
The 1852 first book edition, accompanied by Elizabeth Ammons’s preface, note on the text, and explanatory annotations.
Twenty-two illustrations.
A rich selection of historical documents on slavery and abolitionism.
Seventeen critical reviews spanning more than 160 years.
A Chronology, A Brief Time Line of Slavery in America, and an updated Selected Bibliography.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

The Turn of the Screw

Widely recognized as one of literature's most gripping ghost stories, this classic tale of moral degradation concerns the sinister transformation of two innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look after Miles, aged ten, and Flora, eight. At first, everything appears normal but then events gradually begin to weave a spell of psychological terror.One night a ghost appears before the governess. It is the dead lover of Miss Jessel, the former governess. Later, the ghost of Miss Jessel herself appears before the governess and the little girl. Moreover, both the governess and the housekeeper suspect that the two spirits have appeared to the boy in private. The children, however, adamantly refuse to acknowledge the presence of the two spirits, in spite of indications that there is some sort of evil communication going on between the children and the ghosts.Without resorting to clattering chains, demonic noises, and other melodramatic techniques, this elegantly told tale succeeds in creating an atmosphere of tingling suspense and unspoken horror matched by few other books in the genre. Known for his probing psychological novels dealing with the upper classes, James in this story tried his hand at the occult — and created a masterpiece of the supernatural that has frightened and delighted readers for nearly a century.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Treasure Island

Young Jim Hawkins, while running the Benbow Inn with his mother, comes into possession of a treasure map left by the unfortunate Captain Billy Bones.

So begins a journey that will take Jim and a rowdy band of buccaneers to Treasure Island.

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure was published in 1883 and exerted an enormous influence on the popular perceptions of pirates, including such elements as treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

To the Lighthouse

The subject of this extraordinary novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Tom Jones

Tom, a foundling, is discovered one evening by the benevolent Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget and brought up as a son in their household; when his sexual escapades and general misbehavior lead them to banish him, he sets out in search of both his fortune and his true identity.

Amorous, high-spirited, and filled with what Fielding called "the glorious lust of doing good," but with a tendency toward dissolution, Tom Jones is one of the first characters in English fiction whose human virtues and vices are realistically depicted.

This edition is set from the text of the Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as an e-book.

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country.

A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father-a crusading local lawyer-risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

The Three Musketeers

With its rousing cry of "One for all, and all for one," Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure novel has captivated generations of readers since its initial publication in 1844. Action, intrigue, and romance abound in this swashbuckling epic, which traces a country lad's path to the French court of the early 1600s and the glorious fraternity of the king's men, the Musketeers.A son of impoverished nobility, D'Artagnan arrives in Paris to find the Musketeers disbanded by the cunning Cardinal Richelieu, who hopes to seize power from the weak-willed Louis XIII. The daring and ambitious youth proves his mettle in the company of the famous Musketeers — Porthos, Athos, and Aramis — and joins them in a heroic struggle to defend the king and his lovely queen, Anne of Austria.Dumas transformed the concept of the historical novel by writing in a modern, conversational style. His accessible, fast-paced narratives combine real and fictional characters to recapture the events, manners, and mood of seventeenth-century France. Emerging in the chaotic aftermath of the Revolution, Dumas's novels provided his contemporaries with a welcome sense of identity and national pride. His most popular work, The Three Musketeers, continues to charm modern readers with its timeless tales of romantic valor.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

Things Fall Apart

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria.

The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.

The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.

These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 9-10 at http://www.corestandards.org.]

Date Added: 05/07/2018

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie is an independent African American woman who grows up with a grandmother who is determined to keep her from the sexual and racial violence of her own past.

Janie's first marriage is filled with hard labor, so she runs off with Joe, a handsome and wealthy storekeeper.

Joe becomes mayor of the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, but Janie is still unfulfilled by her new relationship.

After Joe's death, she lives with another man who brings passion into her world, if not stability.

Soon tragedy strikes and Janie learns to face it head-on with optimism and strength.

[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

The ne'er-do-well sire of a starving brood suddenly discovers a family connection to the aristocracy, and his selfish scheme to capitalize on their wealth sets a fateful plot in motion. Jack Durbeyfield dispatches his gentle daughter Tess to the home of their noble kin, anticipating a lucrative match between the lovely girl and a titled cousin. Innocent Tess finds the path of the d'Urberville estate paved with ruin in this gripping tale of the inevitability of fate and the tragic nature of existence.Subtitled A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, Thomas Hardy's sympathetic portrait of a blameless young woman's destruction first appeared in 1891. Its powerful indictment of Victorian hypocrisy, along with its unconventional focus on the rural lower class and its direct treatment of sexuality and religion, raised a ferocious public outcry. Tess of the D'Ubervilles is Hardy's penultimate novel; the pressures of critical infamy shortly afterward drove the author to abandon the genre in favor of poetry. Like his fictional heroine, the artist fell victim to a rigidly oppressive moral code. Today, Tess is regarded as Hardy's masterpiece, embodying all of the most profoundly moving elements of its creator's dark vision. No perspective on 19th-century fiction is complete without a consideration of this compelling tale, now available in an inexpensive and high-quality edition.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

Vocabulary is a critical part of studying for the SATs. Memorizing words that are written on flashcards can be difficult because they are not put in the context of a sentence.

Kaplan's SAT Score-Raising Classics make learning SAT vocabulary words easier and more enjoyable for students. Classic novels that are taught throughout high school can now be read while learning vocabulary words that frequently appear on the SAT exam.

Designed for easy use, these books feature the actual text on one side of the page, with the word definitions on the opposite side. In addition, the vocabulary words are in easy-to-spot bold typeface throughout.

Each Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Classic features:* The complete text of the classic novel* Hundreds of vocabulary words tested on the SAT exam* Definitions for each highlighted work on the facing page* A pronunciation guide* An index for easy reference* A teachers' guide that includes instructional suggestions, in-class activities, and homework assignments posted on our web site: kaptest.com

Kaplan's SAT Score-Raising Classics series give readers get an invaluable learning tool and an enjoyable reading experience.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.

The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to life in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met; Lucie's marriage and the collision between her beloved husband and the people who caused her father's imprisonment; and Monsieur and Madame Defarge, sellers of wine in a poor suburb of Paris.

The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

Swann’s Way

Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu), has inspired many superlatives, among them "the greatest novel ever written" and "the greatest novel of the first half of the twentieth century. "

Swann's Way, the first volume of the Recherche and the most widely read and taught of all the volumes, is the ideal introduction to Proust's inventive genius.

This Norton Critical Edition is based on C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation, which introduced the English-speaking world to Proust and was published during the author's lifetime. It is accompanied by Susanna Lee's introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations.

Marcel Proust was forty-two years old when Swann's Way was published, but its foundational ideas and general shape had been evolving for decades.

"Contexts" includes a 1912 reader's report of the manuscript that exemplifies publishers' complicated reactions to Proust's new form of writing.

Also included are three important post-publication reviews of the novel, by Elie-Joseph Bois, Lucien Daudet, and Paul Souday, as well as Andr#65533; Arnyvelde's 1913 interview with Proust.

The fourteen critical essays and interpretations of Swann's Way in this volume speak to the novel's many facets--from the musical to the artistic to its representations of Judaism and homosexuality.

Contributors include G#65533;rard Genette, whose "Metonymy in Proust" appears here in English translation for the first time, along with Gilles Deleuze, Roger Shattuck, Claudia Brodsky, Julia Kristeva, Margaret E. Gray, and Alain de Botton, among others.

The edition also includes a Chronology of Proust's Life and Work, a Selected Chronology of French Literature from 1870 to 1929, and a Selected Bibliography.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

The Stranger

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

Date Added: 05/07/2018

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner's provocative and enigmatic 1929 novel, The Sound and the Fury, is widely acknowledged as one of the most important English-language novels of the twentieth century.

This revised and expanded Norton Critical Edition builds on the strengths of its predecessors while focusing new attention on both the novel's contemporary reception and its rich cultural and historical contexts.

The text for the Third Edition is again that of the corrected text scrupulously prepared by Noel Polk, whose textual note precedes the novel. David Minter's annotations, designed to assist readers with obscure words and allusions, have been retained.

"Contemporary Reception," new to the Third Edition, considers the broad range of reactions to Faulkner's extraordinary novel on publication.

Michael Gorra's headnote sets the stage for assessments by Evelyn Scott, Henry Nash Smith, Clifton P. Fadiman, Dudley Fitts, Richard Hughes, and Edward Crickmay. New materials by Faulkner ("The Writer and His Work") include letters to Malcolm Cowley about The Portable Faulkner and Faulkner's Nobel Prize for Literature address.

"Cultural and Historical Contexts" begins with Michael Gorra's insightful headnote, which is followed by seven seminal considerations--five of them new to the Third Edition--of southern history, literature, and memory.

Together, these works--by C. Vann Woodward, Richard H. King, Richard Gray, William Alexander Percy, Lillian Smith, William James, and Henri Bergson--provide readers with important contexts for understanding the novel.

"Criticism" represents eighty-five years of scholarly engagement with The Sound and the Fury.

New to the Third Edition are essays by Eric Sundquist, Noel Polk, Doreen Fowler, Richard Godden, Stacy Burton, and Maria Truchan-Tataryn. A Chronology of Faulkner's life and work is newly included along with an updated Selected Bibliography.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

Slaughterhouse Five or the Children’s Crusade

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great anti-war books.

Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Selected Essays

Contains a selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as The Rambler in the early 1750s.

It was here that he first created the literary character and forged the distinctive prose style that established him as a public figure.

This volume also includes Johnson's essays from the periodicals The Adventurer and The Idler.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic American novel The Scarlet Letter follows Hester Prynne, a woman living in the rigid Puritan society of 17th century Boston.

Condemned as an adulteress and forced to wear a scarlet A on her dress, Hester refuses to name the father of her child, born out of wedlock.

Her quiet dignity in the face of persecution only serves to further enrage many of the townspeople.

Separated from society, Hester begins to ask questions about the nature of sin and redemption and comes to conclusions unthinkable to her fellow Puritans.

A story of perseverance in the face of ignorance and injustice, The Scarlet Letter enjoyed immediate and lasting success.

Date Added: 05/07/2018

Romeo and Juliet

One of Shakespeare's most popular and accessible plays, Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers and the unhappy fate that befell them as a result of a long and bitter feud between their families.

The play contains some of Shakespeare's most beautiful and lyrical love poetry and is perhaps the finest celebration of the joys of young love ever written.

This inexpensive edition includes the complete, unabridged text with explanatory footnotes.Ideal for classroom use, it is a wonderful addition to the home library of anyone wanting to savor one of literature's most sublime paeans to love.

Date Added: 05/08/2018

Robinson Crusoe

Thought to have been inspired by the true-life experiences of a marooned sailor, Robinson Crusoe tells the story of the sole survivor of a shipwreck, stranded on a Caribbean island, who prevails against all odds, enduring three decades of solitude while mastering both himself and his strange new world. First published in 1719, the novel has long been one of the English language's great adventure stories.In the journal he shares with us, the endearing, goatskin-clad castaway recounts the details of his lonely existence and his many adventures, including a fierce battle with cannibals and a daring rescue of Friday, the man who becomes his trusted servant and companion. Defoe's brilliant and imaginative use of detail renders Crusoe's island world utterly convincing. In reclaiming his humanity from the savagery of his circumstances, the hero humbly acquires the qualities of courage, patience, ingenuity, and industry.Hailed as the first great English novel, Robinson Crusoe spawned legions of imitations, none of which surpass the original. All readers with a taste for adventure will relish this inexpensive edition of one of the most popular and influential books ever written.

Date Added: 05/07/2018