Other books that might interest you

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  Oliver Twist

  Charles Dickens

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  A pauper's child reared in a workhouse, young Oliver Twist serves an apprenticeship in a loveless house. Despairing, he runs away and is befriended by a gang of young pickpockets who offer him the only welcome home he has ever known. Falling under the influence of villainous company, the young orphan struggles to escape from a life of poverty and crime, in search of the love he longs for. Oliver Twist is one of Dickens' greatest achievements, a vivid depiction of London's outlaw society with an array of memorable characters.

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  The Best of Thomas Hardy

  Thomas Hardy

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  This collection includes two of the most notable titles from author Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village. There, she meets and falls for Angel Clare, the eligible youngest son of the local reverend. But as her life begins to change for the better, she is troubled by a moral dilemma: whether or not to tell Angel about her past. Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.

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  The Battle of Life - The Lost...

  Charles Dickens

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  The Battle of Life is an 1846 novel by Charles Dickens. It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books", coming after The Cricket on the Hearth and followed by The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. 
   
  The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title. 
   
  Battle is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. The story bears some resemblance to The Cricket on the Hearth in two respects: it has a non-urban setting, and it is resolved with a romantic twist. It is even less of a social novel than is Cricket. As is typical with Dickens, the ending is a happy one. 
   
  It is one of Dickens's lesser-known works and has never attained any high level of popularity – a trait it shares with The Haunted Man, in contrast to the other of his Christmas Books

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  James Fenimore Cooper, Honoré de...

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  Within this decade are writers of incredible ability who are able to fashion gem-like stories that astonish our ears and brains across many genres; a literary culture that seems to endlessly build and create new paths for the restless human imagination to tread. 
   
  1 - The Top Ten - The 1830's 
   
  2 - The Eclipse by James Fenimore Cooper 
   
  3 - A  Passion In The Desert by Honoré de Balzac 
   
  4 - The Shot by Alexander Pushkin 
   
  5 - The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe 
   
  6 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
   
  7 - The Dream by Mary Shelley 
   
  8 - Claude Gueux by Victor Hugo 
   
  9 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
   
  10 - The White Pigeon by Maria Edgeworth  
   
  11 - Napolean and the Spectre by Charlotte Bronte

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  The Uses of Literature

  Italo Calvino

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  In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume.

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  The Jungle

  Upton Sinclair

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  "The Jungle" is a novel written by Upton Sinclair and published in 1906. The book is a work of fiction but is based on Sinclair's own experiences working in the meatpacking industry in Chicago during the early 1900s. 
  The story follows the life of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with his family seeking a better life. However, he soon discovers the harsh realities of working in the meatpacking industry, where dangerous working conditions, low wages, and exploitative practices are the norm. 
  Through Jurgis's experiences, Sinclair exposes the corrupt practices of the meatpacking industry, including unsanitary working conditions, unsafe food handling, and the mistreatment of workers. The novel also touches on issues such as poverty, political corruption, and the struggle for workers' rights. 
  "The Jungle" had a profound impact on American society and led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906, which aimed to improve the safety and quality of food products in the United States. 
  Overall, "The Jungle" is a powerful work of social criticism that exposes the harsh realities of industrial capitalism and the impact it has on workers and their families

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