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  The Awakening

  Kate Chopin

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  The Awakening is an 1899 novel by Kate Chopin set in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th century. It is widely seen as a seminal work of early feminism which put the spotlight on women's issues.The story is about Edna Pontellier, the wife of a New Orleans businessman, who falls in love with Robert Lebrun, a man she meets at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico. When the family returns to New Orleans, Edna isolates herself from society and withdraws from some of the duties customarily associated with motherhood. Edna has two friends that give her opposite advice: her close friend Adèle Ratignolle, and the pianist Mademoiselle Reisz, who lives a life of independence. Ultimately Robert withdraws from Edna’s life, claiming in a note that he refuses to shame her in the eyes of society. The combination of realistic narrative, psychological complexity and social commentary makes The Awakening a forerunner of American modernist literature and prefigures the works of novelists like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

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  Almayer's Folly

  Joseph Conrad

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  A European businessman and his Malayan wife have a daughter, Nina. A Malayan prince comes to do trade with the businessman and falls in love with the daughter. Conflict arises when other influences cause distrust in the business partnership and the daughter runs off to be with the prince.

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  The Tempest

  William Shakespeare

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  The authoritative edition of The Tempest from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for both students and general readers.Putting romance onstage, The Tempest gives us a magician, Prospero, a former duke of Milan who was displaced by his treacherous brother, Antonio. Prospero is exiled on an island, where his only companions are his daughter, Miranda, the spirit Ariel, and the monster Caliban. When his enemies are among those caught in a storm near the island, Prospero turns his power upon them through Ariel and other spirits. The characters exceed the roles of villains and heroes. Prospero seems heroic, yet he enslaves Caliban and has an appetite for revenge. Caliban seems to be a monster for attacking Miranda, but appears heroic in resisting Prospero, evoking the period of colonialism during which the play was written. Miranda’s engagement to Ferdinand, the Prince of Naples and a member of the shipwrecked party, helps resolve the drama. This edition includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Barbara A. Mowat The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

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  The Way of All Flesh

  Samuel Butler

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  "I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them."With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhood and youth "in the bosom of a Christian family." With irony, wit, and sometimes rancor, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs, turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's life through several generations.The Way of All Flesh tells the story of Ernest Pontifex and his struggles with Victorian mores, his restrictive, highly religious family, and Victorian society itself. Butler is remembered as one of the greatest of the anti-Victorians, whose ideas reflected accurately the new, more liberal society that was to come following the death of England's great Queen, and the beginning of a new era.

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  Mysteries Of Atlantis

  William Scott-Elliot

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  This classic work, written by Theosophist, W. Scott-Elliot, this book goes into detail about the lost city of Atlantis. The information came from C. W. Leadbeater, who said he received his information from astral clairvoyance. Scott-Elliot provides info on the people of Atlantis, such as their religion, races, different periods money, education, and much more. 
   
  Atlantis, is a legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean, lying west of the Strait of Gibraltar. The principal sources for the legend are two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In the former, Plato describes how Egyptian priests, in conversation with the Athenian lawgiver Solon, described Atlantis as an island larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined and situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar). About 9,000 years before the birth of Solon, the priests said, Atlantis was a rich island whose powerful princes conquered many of the lands of the Mediterranean until they were finally defeated by the Athenians and the latter’s allies. The Atlantians eventually became wicked and impious, and their island was swallowed up by the sea as a result of earthquakes. In the Critias, Plato supplied a history of the ideal commonwealth of the Atlantians. 
   
  Medieval European writers who received the tale from Arab geographers believed the stories to be true, and later writers tried to identify it with an actual country. After the Renaissance, for example, attempts were made to identify Atlantis with America, Scandinavia, and the Canary Islands. The story of Atlantis, if Plato did not invent it, may in fact reflect ancient Egyptian records of a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera about 1500 BCE. This eruption, one of the most stupendous of historical times, was accompanied by a series of earthquakes and tsunamis that shattered civilization on Crete, thereby perhaps giving rise to the legend of Atlantis.

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  The Moon Pool

  A. Merritt

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  Scientists unleash a subterranean horror in the South Pacific in this classic adventure by the author of Burn, Witch, Burn! and The Ship of Ishtar. 
   
  Dr. Walter T. Goodwin is sailing back to New York after a botanical expedition to the South Seas when he meets his old friend, Dr. David Throckmartin. The heartbroken Throckmartin relates a haunting tale to Dr. Goodwin—a tale of a tropical island and a strange stone door through which a hypnotic otherworldly light shines. Throckmartin tells of how the light had captured his companions and of his own powerlessness to stop it. When his friend disappears, Dr. Goodwin sets out to find the source of the mysterious moonlight. Little does he realize how formidable a foe he has pitted himself against . . .  
   
  Praise for The Moon Pool 
   
  “The Moon Pool is certainly a book which every person seriously interested in fantasy and even science fiction should read.” —sfsite.com

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