Introduction by China Miéville Long acknowledged as a master of nightmarish visions, H. P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition’s uncanny discoveries–and their encounter with untold menace in the ruins of a...
"The writings of Immanuel Kant became the cornerstone of all subsequent philosophical inquiry. They articulate the relationship between the human mind and all that it encounters and remain the most important influence on our concept of knowledge. As renowned Kant scholar Allen W. Wood writes in his Introduction, Kant "virtually laid the foundation for the way people in the last two centuries have confronted such widely differing subjects as the experience...
The story of a Jewish prince in the time of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Christianity who leads his people in a revolt against the Romans and suffers their punishment and a self-imposed exile before he learns to forgive.
Traces the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin -- a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.
In the first novel, a New England farmer must choose between his duty to care for his invalid wife and his love for her cousin, and in the second novel, Charity Royall enjoys an idyllic summer romance with visiting architect Lucius Harvey.
"Although Gabriel Oak loves the proud Bathsheba Everdene, she willfully becomes involved with two other unsuitable men, with tragic consequences." "Based on the author's firsthand knowledge of the attitudes, habits, and idiosyncrasies of rural men and women, this is Hardy's best-loved and most humorous novel."
Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
Bold, passionate, and erotic, Lady Chatterly's Lover is a truly classic novel of the twentieth century. Trapped in a rigid aristocratic marriage and sequestered away on the Chatterly estate, Constance Chaterly is irresistibly drawn to Mellors, the gamekeeper, whose uninhibited sexuality and common touch provide a welcome panacea to her husband's neglect.
Written in a time when criminal biographies enjoyed great success, Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles through poverty and sin in search of property and power. Born in Newgate Prison to a picaresque mother, Moll propels herself through marriages, periods of success and destitution, and a trip to the New World and back, only to return to the place of her birth as a popular prostitute and brilliant...
"John Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic poem on the clash between God and his fallen angel, Satan, is a profound meditation on fate, free will, and divinity, and one of the most, beautiful works in world literature. Extracted from the Modern Library's highly acclaimed The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this edition reflects up-to-date scholarship and includes a substantial introduction, fresh commentary, and other features - annotations...
Poet, celebrity, and revolutionary, Lord (George Gordon) Byron was one of the most influential and controversial figures of the first half of the nineteenth century, his distinctive, deeply felt work comprising one of the enduring high points of Romantic literature. From "Manfred," with its evocation of the figure that came to be called the "Byronic hero," to the melancholy "Childe Harold," to the satirical masterpiece "Don Juan" (presented here in...
An immediate success upon its initial publication in 1653, The Compleat Angler has since become the most reprinted secular book in the English language. Here we join Piscator, Venator, and Auceps on a morning journey through the English countryside as Piscator advises on catching and eating different species of fish and expounds upon the satisfactions of the fisherman's life. More than a guide to the subtle intricacies of the sport, Walton's treatise...
A collection of Emerson's major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life's work of an "American Scholar." As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions." He forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and defined what...
The series of essays that comprise The Federalist constitutes one of the key texts of the American Revolution and the democratic system created in the wake of independence. Written in 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the proposed Constitution, these papers stand as perhaps the most eloquent testimonial to democracy that exists. They describe the ideas behind the American system...
In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.
