Publisher: Mike Thomas
Finally The New Revised Edition is Available! A House of Pomegranates is a collection of whimisical short stories by Oscar Wilde. This collections includes the following tales: The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul, and The Star-child. Readers of all ages will be delighted by these fanciful tales.
This wonderful novella, first published in 1899, has been described as a case study of 19th-century feminism. Kate Chopin began writing the novel in 1897 and, after its publication, it was heavily criticized as "not wholesome", "vulgar" and even "poison" by the press of the time. The novella received such a wave of disdain that the once-popular author was forced into literary obscurity. The Awakening went out of print for more than 50 years. When it was rediscovered in the 1950s, critics were in wonder at its modern sensibility. A second edition was published in 1964. Now widely read, The Awakening is critically acclaimed and it is an absolute must-read for feminists everywhere, not only for its beautiful pros but as an acknowledgment of how far we have come, albeit far more slowly than some might have hoped.Show book
The classic collection of beloved tales, both sacred and profane, of travelers in medieval England. One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, in the original Middle English. The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of over 20 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century, during the time of the Hundred Years' War. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.An Author's Republic audio production.Show book
The First Men in the Moon tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists, a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford, and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor.Bedford and Cavor discover that the moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites".Show book
A novel of innocence and iniquity, love and murder, by the nineteenth-century Russian author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. After several years in a Swiss sanatorium, twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin returns to Russian society to collect his rightful inheritance. But he soon crosses paths with the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose desire for Nastasya Filippovna will set the three of them on a tragic course. As author Fyodor Dostoevsky traces the effect of Myshkin’s innocence on the people around him in St. Petersburg, scandal escalates to murder . . . “I think The Idiot to be a masterpiece—flawed, occasionally tedious or overwrought, like many masterpieces—but a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils. In those two novels, as in the simpler Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky had plots and political and religious ideas working together. In The Idiot he is straining to grasp a story and a character converting themselves from Gothic to Saint’s Life on the run. What makes the greatness is double—the character of the prince, and a powerful series of confrontations with death. The true subject of The Idiot is the imminence and immanence of death.” —A. S. Byatt, The Guardian “Nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s province. . . . Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.” —Virginia WoolfShow book
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850, and finished 18 months later, a year longer than he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including several years on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. His literary influences include Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides. In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne and was deeply moved by his Mosses from an Old Manse, which he compared to Shakespeare in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise and expand Moby-Dick, which is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius".The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title in a single-volume edition in New York in November. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change to the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as Moby Dick, without the hyphen. Reviewers in Britain were largely favorable, though some objected that the tale seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship, as the British edition lacked the Epilogue recounting Ishmael's survival. American reviewers were more hostile. About 3,200 copies of the book were sold during the author's life.Show book
William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic fiction read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. An army colonel is found dead in a pool of blood, his wife out cold beside him. The room is locked: the key missing. It’s another classic case for Sherlock Holmes to crack, with secrets to untangle and dark pasts to unearth. Robert Hardy, known to many for playing Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is the expert reader bringing this thrilling story to vivid life. For fans of Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days), Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), Cgp Books (GCSE English Shakespeare Text Guide), Jane Austen (Mansfield Park), and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein).Show book
