Classic Literature

Booth Tarkington's classic novel stars the incomparable Penrod Schofield--a supremely ordinary 11-year-old who lives for mischief, and whose adventures evoke American boyhood in the American Midwest of the early 20th century with the authority Mark Twain brought to Tom Sawyer in Missouri. Penrod and Sam is the second Penrod book.

A Charles Dickens classic.

Jane Austen's classic romance story in which the young Anne Elliott is persuaded by her plotting family to reject the man she loves, and her attempt to rekindle that love years later. Although written over 180 years ago the story is nevertheless a gripping tale for modern romance fans, packed with irony, wit, and powerful characters.

Anne Elliot fell in love with Frederick Wentworth when she was young and the two got engaged. However, persuaded by Lady Russell, Anne broke off the engagement with the penniless Frederick, the hope being someone more affluent would come along. Now, eight years later, Anne is still alone, when lo and behold Frederick re-enters her life. But this man is no longer the poor man she once knew, but instead has amassed a considerable sum capturing enemy vessels during the war. The problem is Frederic... more info>>

After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gray is captivated by his own beauty. Tempted by his world-weary friend, decadent friend Lord Henry Wotton, he wished to stay young forever and pledges his very soul to keep his good looks. As Dorian's slide into crime and cruelty progresses, he stays magically youthful, while his beautiful portrait changes, revealing the hideous corruption of moral decay.

In 1844, Charles Dickens took a break from novels to travel in Italy for almost a year. This thrilling travelogue is the result of his encounters with Italy's colorful street life, the visible signs of its richly textured past, and its urban desolation. Dickens was particularly drawn to the costumes, cross-dressing, and sheer exuberant energy of the Roman carnival. Avoiding the traditional tourist sites, Pictures from Italy reveals the anxieties and concerns of its author as he presents, accordi... more info>>

Thirty-five short stories from Rudyard Kipling, including "The House of Suddhoo," "The Bisara of Pooree," "False Dawn," and "The Story of Muhammad Din."

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, published in 1952, heralded the beginning of one of the most diverting and provocative adventures in modern American fiction. Vonnegut went on to write novels that perhaps had greater formal skill and technique, but Player Piano is a tour de force of imaginative insight into modern life and a shrewd satire of American progress. What must Vonnegut's first readers have made of Player Piano? The story gives off the dank chill of 1984 and Brave New World, b... more info>>

Certain of these poems first appeared in Poetry, Blast, Others, The Little Review, and Art and Letters. Contents: Gerontion; Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar; Sweeney Erect; A Cooking Egg; Le Directeur; Mélange adultère de tout; Lune de Miel; The Hippopotamus; Dans le Restaurant; Whispers of Immortality; Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service; Sweeney Among the Nightingales; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; Portrait of a Lady; Preludes; Rhapsody on a Windy Night; Morning at the Wi... more info>>

Collection of Poems by the Bronte sisters.

Many of the works created by the prolific poet John Milton.

Pollyanna, the little girl who played the "glad" game grows up and falls in love. But will the young man she adores return her love? And if he does, how will her old "best friend" Jimmy cope

Using a background of myth and fairytale to expand the boundaries of 19th-century realist fiction, Wilkie Collins not only takes a blind person as his central character but also explores the idea of blindness and its implications.

Anderson's story of inventor Hugh McVey, which he originally published in 1920, the year after Winesburg, Ohio, is considered by many to be his finest novel.

The entire focus of this novel rests on the determined though sometimes woefully mistaken efforts of three British families--the Moseleys, the Jarvises, and the Chattertons--to arrange suitable marriages for their respective sons and daughters. The bulk of the early-nineteenth-century action is therefore played out through dinners, social calls, visits to summer resorts, and development of various designs employed toward the end of matrimony. The "precaution" displayed by Mrs. Wilson in guiding ... more info>>

Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character, who if provoked is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp--but always polite--18th century wit. The point is, you spend the whole book absolutely fixated on the critical question: will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy hook up?

A Robert Louis Stevenson classic.

This collection of poems contains one of Eliot's first and most well-known poems, namely, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in which he examines, through the introspections of the narrator, the emptiness and soulless quality of the bleak social world surrounding him.

Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies are classic children's books which speak powerfully to adult readers. Una and Dan, performing a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream one Midsummer's Eve, accidentally summon Puck to a fairy ring near their Sussex home. Through Puck the children are witnesses to tales of English history, subtly called forth by Kipling's brilliant and fluid adventure writing. Kipling's historical imagination extends to a wide variety of stories, many of which blend the g... more info>>

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is th... more info>>

Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th Century, who first achieved acclaim with his historical romance Monsieur Beaucaire (1900). But his more characteristic work was found in such novels as The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), and the trilogy consisting of Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (1921). He won two Pulitzer Prizes for novels, for The Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams (1921... more info>>

The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the "Decoration Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the procession.

RLS's history of the Stevenson family and excerpts of his grandfather's "Account."

An Anthony Trollope classic.

You've seen the movies, now read the books! Last time Tarzan left Jane engaged to Lord Greystoke, vowing it was in her best interest. But can he stay away? What if Jane is shipwrecked and her life is in danger. Tarzan remains one of the best-loved characters of all time. Find out what the ape-man was really like.