Whether forming a pirate gang to search for buried treasure or spending a quiet time at home, sharing his medicine with Aunt Polly's cat, the irrepressible Tom Sawyer evokes the world of boyhood in nineteenth century rural America. In this classic story, Mark Twain re-created a long-ago world of freshly whitewashed fences and Sunday school picnics into which sordid characters and violent incidents sometimes intruded. The tale powerfully appeals to both adult and young imaginations. Readers...
"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a much loved and classic work of 19th century American literature. It is the story of Tom, a rambunctious young lad who lives with his Aunt Polly. Tom is a boy who doesn't much like going to school and throughout the book does everything he can to get out of it. Near the beginning of the novel Tom exhibits his keen wit by convincing some boys to paint his Aunt Polly's fence that he has been punished with having to paint on a Saturday for skipping...
HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.'I want – I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that – categories like that – won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.’Newland Archer, a successful and charming young lawyer conducts himself by the rules and standards of the polite, upper class New York society that he resides in....
First serialized in 1920 in the “Pictorial Review” magazine, “The Age of Innocence” is Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, which depicts the bygone era of 1870s New York upper class society. It is the story of Newland Archer, a lawyer and heir to one of New York’s most prominent families. Newland is planning to marry the young, beautiful, and sheltered May Welland, a match, which because of May’s social position, he views as highly desirable. However, when May’s exotic thirty-year-old...
"The Age of Innocence" is Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, which depicts the bygone era of 1870s New York upper class society. The novel is the story of Newland Archer, a lawyer and heir to one of New York's most prominent families. Newland is planning to marry the young, beautiful and sheltered May Welland, however when May's exotic thirty-year-old cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, appears on the scene he begins to question these plans. A classic and romantic...
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) wrote carefully structured fiction that probed the psychological and social elements guiding the behavior of her characters. Her portrayals of upper-class New Yorkers were unrivaled. The Age of Innocence, for which Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, is one of her most memorable novels.At the heart of the story are three people whose entangled lives are deeply affected by the tyrannical and rigid requirements of high society. Newland Archer, a restrained...
First published in 1903 in serial form, Henry James’ “The Ambassadors” is the story of the middle-aged and naïve Lewis Lambert Strether, who travels to Europe at the behest of his widowed fiancée to find her supposedly wayward son, Chad Newsome. Mrs. Newsome fears he has fallen under the spell of a sinful woman and Strether must rescue him. With the intent of bringing Chad back to America and to his post at the family business, Strether encounters many unexpected complications along the way and...
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to," declares the primary «ambassador» of this 1903 novel, adding, «It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?»In this complex tale of self-discovery, Henry James invokes his favorite theme: the clash of American innocence with European experience. It traces the path of an aging idealist, Lambert Strether, who arrives in Paris intending to persuade his...
First published anonymously in 1912, “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” is James Weldon’s Johnson fictional account of a young biracial man living in America during the second half of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. The so-called “Ex-Colored” man makes his living as a jazz pianist playing ragtime music at a popular New York club. It is here that he catches the attention of a wealthy white gentleman who takes a curious interest in him and employs him to play at his...
'Introducing this release of The Awakening has given me an opportunity to re-experience one of my life's important books . . . I still marvel at Chopin's realism, her impatience with conventional trappings, her arresting honesty' BARBARA KINGSOLVER 'Incisive, brilliant and haunting' MAGGIE O'FARRELL Over one long, languid summer Edna Pontellier, fettered by marriage and motherhood, becomes acquainted with Robert Lebrun. As the days shorten and the...
The Awakening , originally titled A Solitary Soul, is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It...