Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's
Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world--as literature as well.??Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of ar
Hilarious fun, this early comedy is filled with the merry violence of slapstick and farce. When two sets of twins, separated and apparently lost to each other, all end up in the rowdy, rollicking city
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith It is symbolic that Adam Smith’s masterpiece of economic analysis, The Wealth of Nations , was first published in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independ
In 1862 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy Oxford mathematician with a stammer, created a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole. Thus began the immortal adventures of Alice, perhaps the
A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time.??Sensual, rebelli
The Bhagavad-Gita has been an essential text of Hindu culture in India since the time of its composition in the first century A.D. One of the great classics of world literature, it has inspired such
In this superb translation with an introduction and commentary by Allen Mandelbaum, all of Dante's vivid images--the earthly, sublime, intellectual, demonic, ecstatic--are rendered with marvelous clar
H.G. Wells's science fiction classic, the first novel to explore the possibilities of intelligent life from other planets, it still startling and vivid nearly after a century after its appearance, and
Spirited, romantic, and full of danger, Kidnapped is Robert Louis Stevenson's classic of high adventure. Beloved by generations, it is the saga of David Balfour, a young heir whose greedy uncle conni
Merry Christmas, everyone!"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"With those famous words unfolds a tale that renews the joy and caring that are Christmas. Whether we read it aloud with our family and friends o
The complete collection of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in crime, including all four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic heroVolume I includes the early novel
The Declaration of Independence was the promise of a representative government; the Constitution was the fulfillment of that promise.On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued a unanimous
In this striking tragedy of political conflict, Shakespeare turns to the ancient Roman world and to the famous assassination of Julius Caesar by his republican opponents. The play is one of tumultuous
This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare’s loveliest poetry, contrasts a court’s world of envy and rivalry with a forest’s world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest of Arden,
This is one of Shakespeare’s darkest comedies, for the romantic story of a young man, Bassanio, who has squandered his fortune and must borrow money to woo the wealthy lady he loves is set a
Set in a courtly world of masked revels and dances, this play turns on the archetypal story of a lady falsely accused of unfaithfulness, spurned by her bridegroom, and finally vindicated and reunited
Visiting Italy with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England she becomes
Goethe’s masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust,
Oedipus the King ‧ Antigone ‧ Electra ‧ AjaxTrachinian Women ‧ Philoctetes ‧ Oedipus at ColonusThe greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, surpassin
