LITMIR.BIZ

W. Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing.Rain and Other South Sea Stories features one of Maugham's most famous tales, concerning the clash between a missionary and a prostitute. «Rain» was adapted for the stage and filmed on three separate occasions, its leading character portrayed by Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Rita Hayworth. This collection also includes «Macintosh,» a psychological study of the competition between two officials; «The Fall of Edward Barnard,» a tale of social rebellion that foreshadows The Razor's Edge; «The Pool,» a portrait of a marriage between people from different cultures; and other compelling stories of life in the tropics.

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First published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece and one of the greatest American novels. Its themes of sin, guilt, and redemption, woven through a story of adultery in the early days of the Massachusetts Colony, are revealed with remarkable psychological penetration and understanding of the human heart. Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric. The result is an American tragedy of stark power and emotional depth that has mesmerized critics and readers for nearly a century and a half.A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

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This sparkling tale of one of literature's most famous courtships focuses on a spirited family of sisters and their marriage-minded mother's attempts to see them well settled. Jane Austen's wit and shrewd observations elevate her tale of rural romance to the heights of the world's great literature. A timeless satire of nineteenth-century English country life and manners, Pride and Prejudice is the most popular of Austen's novels. Warmly received upon its 1813 publication, it remains universally admired two centuries years later. A definitive survey, this Dover Thrift Study Edition offers the novel's complete and unabridged text, plus a comprehensive study guide. Created to help readers gain a thorough understanding of Pride and Prejudice's content and context, the guide includes: • Chapter-by-chapter summaries• Explanations and discussions of the plot• Question-and-answer sections• Austen biography• List of characters and more Dover Thrift Study Editions feature everything that students need to undertake a confident reading of a classic text, as well as to prepare themselves for class discussions, essays, and exams. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

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Helga's mother is white, and her father is black–and absent. Ostracized throughout her lonely childhood for her dark skin, Helga spends her adult life seeking acceptance. Everywhere she goes — the American South, Harlem, even Denmark–she feels oppressed. Socially, economically, and psychologically, Helga struggles against the «quicksand» of classism, racism, and sexism.One of the most acclaimed and influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen published her powerful first novel in 1928. Quicksand features intriguing autobiographical parallels with Larsen's own life, in addition to reflecting many aspects of African-American culture of the 1920s. Alice Walker praised it and Passing (Larsen's second novel, also available in a Dover edition) as «novels I will never forget. They open up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read them years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable.»

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Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), Russia’s greatest poet and a versatile writer whose great gifts and profoundly Russian sensibility influenced all of modern Russian literature, produced short stories that are masterpieces of the craft.Besides the brilliant title story, a cunningly wrought narrative of romance and murder in the haute bourgeoisie of St. Petersburg, this volume includes all five stories originally collected as The Tales of the Late P. Belkin. These include «An Amateur Peasant Girl,» «The Shot,» «The Snowstorm,» «The Postmaster,» and «The Coffin-Maker.»

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"I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation—or, more accurately, the history of their feelings," declared Gustave Flaubert, who envisioned «a book about love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays—that is to say, inactive.» First published in 1869, this novel fulfills Flaubert's conception with a realistic, ironic portrait of bourgeois lives played out against France's tumultuous revolution of 1848 and the founding of its Second Empire.Frédéric Moreau, a law student in Paris, dreams of achieving success in art, business, journalism, and politics. His aspirations take a romantic turn upon a chance encounter with a married woman, who inspires a lifelong obsession. Frédéric befriends his idol's husband, an influential art dealer, and quickly finds himself seduced by society life—and bedeviled by financial problems, ideological conflicts, and betrayals of trust. Blending romance, historical authenticity, and satire, Flaubert's Sentimental Education ranks among the nineteenth century's great novels.

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A landmark in the development of psychological realism, Stendhal's masterpiece chronicles a young man's struggles with the dualities of his nature. Julien Sorel, a young dreamer from the provinces whose imagination is afire with Napoleonic ideals, sets off to make his fortune in Parisian society of Restoration France. His encounters and experiences along the way incite constant inner conflict, drawing him back and forth between sincerity and hypocrisy, idealism and cynicism, humility and pride, love and ambition.

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Like much of James Joyce's work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a fictional re-creation of the Irish writer's own life and early environment. The experiences of the novel's young hero, Stephen Dedalus, unfold in astonishingly vivid scenes that seem freshly recalled from life and provide a powerful portrait of the coming of age of a young man of unusual intelligence, sensitivity, and character.The interest of the novel is deepened by Joyce's telling portrayals of an Irish upbringing and schooling, the Catholic Church and its priesthood, Parnell and Irish politics, encounters with the conflicting roles of art and morality (problems that would follow Joyce throughout his life), sexual experimentation and its aftermath, and the decision to leave Ireland.Rich in details that offer vital insights into Joyce's art, this masterpiece of semiautobiographical fiction remains essential reading in any program of study in modern literature.

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Isabel Archer, a young American, accompanies her eccentric aunt to Europe, where her wit and beauty — in addition to her substantial inheritance — quickly attract all manner of eager suitors. But beneath the romantic elegance of salons and ballrooms lies a tangle of treachery, deceit, and suffering.The most enduringly popular of Henry James' novels, The Portrait of a Lady reflects the author's interest in the contrast between the Old and New Worlds. He traces Isabel's progress across England, Paris, Florence, and Rome with trenchant observations on customs and attitudes. The heroine's difficulties in reconciling her personal liberty with social propriety express James' shrewd appraisals of the naivete and nobility of the American character, as well as his views on the subtle refinements and conventionality of European culture. A gripping exploration of the clash between freedom and responsibility, this novel offers an accessible entree into the work of Henry James.

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Set on the Nebraska prairie where Willa Cather (1873–1947) grew up, this powerful early novel tells the story of the young Alexandra Bergson, whose dying father leaves her in charge of the family and of the lands they have struggled to farm. In Alexandra's long flight to survive and succeed, O Pioneers! relates an important chapter in the history of the American frontier.Evoking the harsh grandeur of the prairie, this landmark of American fiction unfurls a saga of love, greed, murder, failed dreams, and hard-won triumph. In the fateful interaction of her characters, Willa Cather compares with keen insight the experiences of Swedish, French, and Bohemian immigrants in the United States. And in her absorbing narrative, she displays the virtuoso storytelling skills that have made her one of the most admired masters of the American novel.

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