Зарубежная классическая проза
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First published in 1813, “Pride and Prejudice” is a story set in the English countryside outside of London during the early 19th century which centers on the life of Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five sisters who are all unmarried. When a wealthy and sociable young gentleman, Charles Bingley, rents the nearby manor of Netherfield Park the opportunity to find husbands presents itself. While attending a ball the Bennets meet Charles Bingley and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy for the first time....
| Автор | Джейн Остин |
First published in 1818, “Persuasion” was English novelist Jane Austen’s last completed work. The novel centers on the story of Anne Elliot, a lovely young woman who years prior had accepted the proposal for marriage from the handsome young naval officer Frederick Wentworth. Despite Frederick’s cleverness and ambition, his lower social status and lack of wealth makes him an inappropriate match for Anne in the view of her family. Instead of following her heart Anne follows the advice of family...
| Автор | Джейн Остин |
Charles Dickens’s tenth novel, which was first published serially in Dickens’s own periodical journal “Household Words” in 1854, “Hard Times,” is a work that sought to highlight the social and economic divide that was growing between capitalistic mill owners and workers during the Victorian era of Great Britain. Set in the fictitious Coketown, “Hard Times” is a critical examination of the poor working conditions in many English factory towns of the time as well as the changing nature of the...
| Автор | Charles Dickens |
First published in 1861, “Silas Marner” is George Eliot’s tale of an English linen weaver. When Silas is falsely accused of stealing the funds of the small Calvinist congregation to which he belongs, his fiancé breaks off their engagement and he flees in shame to the English Midlands settling near the rural village of Raveloe in Warwickshire. Here he lives alone quietly plying his trade in the pursuit of gold. After awhile Silas has amassed a small fortune but when he returns one day to his...
| Автор | George Eliot |
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is considered by many to be the greatest of all American novels. This sequel to Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” is a first person narrative told by its title character. The novel picks up where “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” leaves off. Huck Finn who is now wealthy with the discovery of treasure at the end of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” finds himself in great danger from his abusive drunkard father who wishes to cash in on Huck’s fortune. Fearing...
| Автор | Mark Twain |
During a boat trip up the Isis River with Reverend Robinson Duckworth and the three young daughters of Henry Liddell, one of whom is named Alice, Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, invents a story about a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure. Several years later this tale would be forever immortalized as “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.” The story begins with Alice idly passing away the time next to a river when she sees a White Rabbit in a...
| Автор | Lewis Carroll |
First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around McTeague, a dentist practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a parsimonious young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain of events that lead to many painful, gruesome deaths....
| Автор | Frank Norris |
First published in 1924, “A Passage to India” is E. M. Forster’s classic tale of prejudice and misunderstanding in colonial India. Widely considered to be one of the best novels of 20th century English literature, “A Passage to India” was based on Forster’s own experiences in India while it was under the rule of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement was gaining in popularity. The novel centers around the tensions between the native people of India and the prejudices of the British...
| Автор | E. M. Forster |
Written in Greek in the 3rd century BC, “Jason and the Golden Fleece” or “The Argonautica” is the epic of Apollonius of Rhodes. It is the only surviving Hellenistic epic and recounts the timeless tale of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Based upon sources such as Homer and Pindar and written during the age of the famous Library of Alexandria, Apollonius was the first to include in his retelling of the already famous tale information about the geography,...
| Автор | Apollonius of Rhodes |
The fourteenth novel in a twenty book series collectively entitled, «Les Rougon-Macquart, L'Œuvre» was first translated into English in 1886, the title having since been rendered «The Masterpiece». Set in France's Second Empire, the story of naturalist painter Claude Lantier is believed to be a highly fictionalized account of Zola's friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne. The fictional artist of Zola's Bohemian world, Lantier, strives to complete a great work that will...
| Автор | Emile Zola |
First published in 1931, “Black No More” is a clever and important satirical novel by George S. Schuyler which was written during the creative time of the Harlem Renaissance. This humorous and insightful work explores what would happen if blackness could be erased and black people could choose to become white. The novel begins with the central character Max Disher, a young, intelligent and ambitious black man, finding himself lonely and rejected on New Year’s Eve at a speakeasy in Harlem. He...
| Автор | George S. Schuyler |
Originally published in serial format in “The Egoist” between 1914 and 1915, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” is the semi-autobiographical portrayal of James Joyce’s early upbringing as an Irish Catholic in late 19th century and early 20th century Dublin. The novel was originally planned as a 63-chapter autobiographical novel in a realistic style entitled “Stephen Hero” however Joyce reworked the novel into five condensed chapters, dispensing with the strict realism which he originally...
| Автор | James Joyce |
First published in 1912, “Riders of the Purple Sage” is Zane Grey’s genre defining novel which has been referred to as “the most popular western novel of all time.” Set in the canyon country of southern Utah in 1871, it is the story of Jane Withersteen, a Mormon who has refused the wishes of her father to marry Elder Tull because she does not love him. Jane, whose father has passed away and has inherited his valuable ranch, is persecuted by the Mormon community for her refusal to marry Elder...
| Автор | Zane Grey |
Considered to be one of Balzac’s most important works, “Pere Goriot” is the story of its title character Jean-Joachim Goriot, a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin, and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac. We are introduced to the characters at Maison Vauquer, a boarding house owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. Central to the theme of the book is the struggle to achieve upper-class status in society. Rastignac is eager to achieve this upper-class standing but is unfamiliar to...
| Автор | Оноре Бальзак |
Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, “Far from the Madding Crowd,” is a classic portrayal of 19th-century rural English life. It is the story of Gabriel Oak, a would-be shepherd, who falls for Bathsheba Everdene, a vain young woman, who comes to live with her aunt and uncle in the country. A set of unfortunate circumstances brings Gabriel into the employment of Bathsheba, an awkward situation given that she has already refused his offer of marriage. Bathsheba has no shortage of suitors. Amongst them...
| Автор | Thomas Hardy |
First published in 1807, “Tales from Shakespeare” is the classic retelling of Shakespeare’s plays by brother and sister duo Charles and Mary Lamb. All told twenty of Shakespeare’s plays are represented in this work. On what basis the two made their selection of tales is unknown, the English Histories are left unattempted, as well as the Roman Plays. Of the comedies only “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is omitted. As Alfred Ainger comments in his introduction “perhaps Miss Lamb felt how little would have...
| Автор | Charles and Mary Lamb |
First published in 1888, “Looking Backward: 2000-1887” is the highly influential work of utopian science fiction by American journalist Edward Bellamy. In the years following the American Civil War a growth in inequality led to an increase in social and economic turmoil. The rise of ever larger and less competitive firms was causing wages to stagnate and created an appetite amongst the populace for solutions to help mitigate the negative effects of an unrestrained and increasingly plutocratic...
| Автор | Edward Bellamy |
One of the greatest novels ever written, “Anna Karenina” follows the self-destructive path of a beautiful, popular, and sensual Russian aristocrat. The lovely Anna seems set in a respectable marriage with the powerful statesman Karenin, yet their lack of passion breeds the discontent she fully faces upon meeting the elegant and affluent officer Count Vronsky. Soon convinced that allowing herself to deeply love this man will enable her to find the meaning and truth of her life, Anna defies the...
| Автор | Leo Tolstoy |
First published in 1905, “A Little Princess” is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s most beloved stories. Expanded from an earlier serialized short story entitled “Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s”, it is the story of young girl named Sara who is enrolled by her father, Captain Richard Crewe, a wealthy English widower, at Miss Minchin’s boarding school for girls in London. Because of her father’s wealth Sara enjoys a life of luxury and convenience which abruptly comes to an end when...
| Автор | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
First published in 1885 under the title “Penny Whistles”, Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses”, is a collection of sixty-five poems for children about darkness and solitude. Amongst the collection includes such classics as “Foreign Children”, “The Lamplighter”, “The Land of Counterpane”, “Bed in Summer”, “My Shadow”, and “The Swing.” Inspired by many of his personal experiences as a child, Stevenson in this collection evokes the loneliness of being young, which he personally...
| Автор | Роберт Стивенсон |
First published in 1843, “A Christmas Carol” is arguably Dickens’s most popular and accessible work. An instant success ever since its original publication, it is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cold, bitter, old miser who despises Christmas and everything about it. When the ghost of Scrooge’s former business partner, Jacob Marley, visits him on Christmas Eve exactly seven years after his death, Scrooge is challenged to rethink his ways before it is too late. Over the course of the evening he...
| Автор | Charles Dickens |
First published in 1774, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” is the loosely autobiographical epistolary novel by German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This classically tragic story is one of unrequited love. During a stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim, Werther becomes enamored with the simple ways of the peasantry there. He meets and falls in love with the beautiful young Lotte, despite her engagement to Albert. The highly emotional Werther is overcome with grief over the fact that the one...
| Автор | Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте |
First published serially between 1881 and 1882, “Pinocchio” is the popular story of a wooden puppet who yearns to be a real boy. Set in the Tuscan region of Italy, “Pinocchio” is a story which has undergone numerous adaptations, even from the first serialization to its publication in book form. In the original serialization Pinocchio dies a gruesome death, however this ending was changed for the book to make it more suitable for children. Pinocchio begins life as a talking piece of pine that...
| Автор | Carlo Collodi |
“The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution” is Mariano Azuela’s fictional account of the Mexican Revolution. Originally published as a newspaper serial in 1915, then as a complete novel in 1920, it was first translated into English in 1929 and was a critical and financial success. Based closely on Azuela’s own experiences, it is the story of Demetrio Macias, a peasant who is mistreated by government soldiers and must flee his home. He runs to the mountains and forms a group of...
| Автор | Mariano Azuela |