Other books that might interest you

• 

  As I Lay Dying

  William Faulkner

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  From Nobel Prize–winning author William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying is a masterpiece of Southern Gothic literature and one of the best books of the twentieth century. This gorgeous hardcover edition includes decorated endpapers and a set of brand-new illustrations. 
  As she nears the end of her life, Addie Bundren wants nothing more than to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. A captivating and stylistically innovative work, the narrative revolves around the grim, yet darkly humorous, pilgrimage as the Bundren family sets out to fulfill her last wish. 
  Told from fifteen different points of view over fifty-nine chapters, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulkner’s imaginary South, and is replete with poignant, complex, violent, and fascinating characters.

  Show book

• 

  The Yellow Wallpaper - From...

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on 3rd July 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to an unaffectionate mother and a father who abandoned her and her older brother to a life of poverty. 
  Inevitably her schooling was limited and by 15 she had attended seven different schools but received only four years education.  However Charlotte was resourceful and did spend time with her father’s aunts – the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and the ‘Uncle Tom Cabin’s’ author, Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as many hours at the public library studying ancient civilisations. 
  In 1878, she enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design where she met Martha Luther and they developed a close relationship until Luther married in 1881. Charlotte was devastated and detested romance and love until she met and married the artist Charles Walter Stetson.  
  Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born in 1885 but left Charlotte with post-natal depression, then often dismissed as a case of hysteria or nerves.  Unsuited to domestic life she ruptured her life and moved to California with Katherine.  She divorced in 1894 and then sent Katharine east to live with her father and his second wife confirming that his paternal rights be acknowledged and that Katherine establish a relationship with her father. 
  After her mother died in 1893, Charlotte moved back east and became involved with her first cousin, Wall Street attorney, Houghton Gilman who she married in 1900. After his death she moved back to California, where Katherine now lived.   
  Her most popular story is ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ which touched on her own post-partum depression and underlined the need for women to be responsible for their mental and physical well-being, as the narrator is ordered by her husband/doctor to take compete rest in her room where she is isolated and becomes obsessed with the revolting yellow wallpaper.   
  She wrote other notable short stories the best of which we also include.   
  Charlotte lectured widely for social reform, wrote important non-fiction works that questioned our patriarchal system and left a legacy as a leading and positive spokesperson for feminism.  
  She was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer in 1932 and, as she wrote in her suicide note and autobiography, she ‘chose chloroform over cancer’    
  Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her own life on 17th August 1935, aged 75, in Pasadena, California.

  Show book

• 

  The Cricket on the Hearth

  Charles Dickens

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A timeless holiday classic, The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens is a heartwarming tale of love, family, and redemption. Set in a cozy Victorian home, the story follows John Peerybingle and his wife Dot, whose simple yet contented lives are disrupted by a series of misunderstandings, mysterious arrivals, and surprising revelations. A seemingly ordinary cricket, chirping beside their hearth, becomes a symbol of warmth, hope, and the unseen forces that guide us through hardship. 
  As secrets unravel and mistaken identities come to light, Dickens masterfully weaves a touching narrative filled with festive spirit, romance, and moral lessons. Blending humor, sentimentality, and social commentary, this novella captures the magic of Christmas and the enduring power of love and kindness. 
  A delightful tale filled with memorable characters and heartfelt moments, The Cricket on the Hearth remains a cherished holiday tradition and a testament to Dickens’ ability to craft stories that resonate across generations.

  Show book

• 

  Washington Irving - A Short...

  Washington Irving

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York. 
    
  Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre.  An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. 
   
  By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes.  When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe.  Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers.  His health, though, did improve.  
   
  In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today.  Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. 
   
  In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’.  It satirised local history, local historians and politics.  It received great critical acclaim. 
   
  Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out.  After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy.  This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing.  
   
  He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’.  The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful.  The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.  
   
  Beset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers.  From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete.  
   
  In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’.  
   
  In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to.  Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality.  Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune.   
   
  Following the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others.  Irving also became an advocate for American copyright legislation.  
   
  A later appointment as Minister to Spain in 1842 left him disheartened at the antics of the various political factions he encountered.  It also afforded him no time to write as he had hoped.  
   
  On his return home he began an ‘Author’s Revised Edition’ of his works agreeing an unprecedented deal for 12 per cent of the retail profits.  
   
  Washington Irving died of a heart attack at his ‘Sunnyside’ home on the 28th November 1859 at the age of 76, a few months after completing his five volume George Washington biography, in whose honour he had been named. 
   
  01 - Washington Irving - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving 
  03 - The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving 
  04 - The Art of Book-Making by Washington Irving 
  05 - The Conquest of the Earth by the Moon by Washington Irving 
  06 - John Bull by Washington Irving

  Show book

• 

  Masterpieces of Tragedies and...

  Euripides, Sophocles, ...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This collection contains the following works:
  Euripides: Medea
  Sophocles: Antigone
  Aeschylus: Agamemnon
  Aeschylus: Eumenides
  Aeschylus: The Choephori
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Romeo And Juliet
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth
  William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear
  William Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Coriolanus
  William Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Julius Caesar
  William Shakespeare: Cymbeline, King of Britain
  William Shakespeare.: The Life of Tymon of Athens
  William Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus
  William Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida
  Henrik Ibsen: A Doll's House
  Anton Chekhov: Uncle Vanya
  Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion

  Show book

• 

  Play It As It Lays - A Novel

  Joan Didion

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  Show book