Зарубежная классическая проза
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A classic coming of age story, “Jane Eyre” is the tale of its title character, a poor orphaned girl who comes to live with her aunt at Gateshead Hall. While there she endures great emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her aunt and cousins. Jane subsequently ships off to Lowood, a Christian boarding school for poor and orphaned girls. The conditions at the school are quite brutal. The students are subjected to cold lodgings, poor food, inadequate clothing, and the harsh rule of the...
| Автор | Шарлотта Бронте |
![Dante's Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy, Volume II, Purgatory) [Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with an Introduction by William Warren Vernon]](https://knigism.online/covers/58/d0/680652.jpg "Dante's Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy, Volume II, Purgatory) [Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with an Introduction by William Warren Vernon]")
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in the middle of the 13th century and what is principally known of him comes from his own writings. One of the world’s great literary masterpieces, “The Divine Comedy” is at its heart an allegorical tale regarding man’s search for divinity. The work is divided into three sections, “Inferno”, “Purgatorio”, and “Paradiso”, each containing thirty-three cantos. It is the narrative of a journey down through Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory, and through...
| Автор | Данте Алигьери |
“Candide” is Voltaire’s most famous work, a satirical masterpiece, which was first published in 1759. It is the story of its central character, the titular Candide, who lives a sheltered comfortable life and has been indoctrinated into the philosophy of Leibnizian optimism, by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. When Candide travels throughout the world he begins to witness the pervasive hardships of life, an experience that leads to his ultimate disillusionment with Leibnizian philosophy. Through...
| Автор | Voltaire |
On Wild Island a group of lazy animals had captured a baby dragon and put him to work. This little dragon could fly, so they used him to ferry them across the river. He didn’t like it. So went the tale that Elmer Elevator (“my father”) heard from his friend, the cat, long ago. Being a kind-hearted boy, Elmer set out to rescue the dragon. With the advice of the cat, he made elaborate preparations for his secret journey, but he never dreamed what adventures were to befall him once he set foot on...
| Автор | Ruth Stiles Gannett |
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” so begins Charles Dickens’s famous novel concerning the contentious time leading up to and during the French Revolution. In these first words Dickens exemplifies the dichotomous relationship that existed between the aristocracy and the lower classes of the time and the universal themes that would be depicted throughout the book. “A Tale of Two Cities,” is set in London and Paris, the titular two cities, at the end of the 18th century, and...
| Автор | Charles Dickens |
In the late 19th century, discoveries of ancient civilizations, like those in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, stirred the imaginations of Europeans with regard to the largely unexplored interior of Africa. First published in 1885, H. Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines” was one the first novels to capitalize on this fascination of the public. It is the story of adventurer Allan Quatermain, who is enlisted by the aristocratic Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to help them find Henry’s...
| Автор | H. Rider Haggard |
A predecessor to such monumental works as “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov”, “Notes from Underground” represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky’s writing towards the more political side. In this work we find a story in two parts, the first a rambling memoir of a bitter, isolated, retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg, Russia. In the second part we follow the unnamed narrator through a series of events which further exhibit the consciousness of a man who is...
| Автор | Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
First published in 1851, “The House of the Seven Gables” is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gothic novel which follows the fates of a New England family and their ancestral home. Inspired by a house in Salem Massachusetts which had belonged to the ancestors of Nathaniel Hawthorne who had played a part in the Salem Witch Trials, “The House of the Seven Gables” is the story of Hepzibah Pyncheon and her brother Clifford who has recently been released from prison after serving a thirty-three year sentence for...
| Автор | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
First published in 1873, “Around the World in Eighty Days” is a classic tale of adventure by French author Jules Verne, which tells the story of eccentric English inventor Phileas Fogg and his newly employed French valet Passepartout as they set out to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. When Fogg gets into an argument at the Reform Club over an article in “The Daily Telegraph,” which posits that the building of a new railway section in India may now make it possible to circle the earth in...
| Автор | Жюль Верн |
Written by Elizabeth Prentiss and first published in 1869 in installments, “Stepping Heavenward” is the fictional coming of age story of a young Christian girl named Katherine. The novel tells the story of Katherine’s life through a series of journal entries beginning when she is sixteen and trying to discover how to live a good and Godly life. The novel follows her though courtship, engagement, marriage, having children, and the many challenges that she confronts as she transforms from an...
| Автор | Elizabeth Prentiss |
William Wells Brown, who is credited with being the first African American novelist, crafts a groundbreaking piece of American fiction in his 1853 work “Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter”. The long untouched subject matter of mixed race identity during the antebellum South is here treated with great deft and bravery. William Wells Brown confronts the hypocrisy of slavery, examining the detrimental effects it has on society. Even more direct is Brown’s confrontation of Thomas Jefferson’s...
| Автор | William Wells Brown |
Literally meaning “heart”, the Japanese word “kokoro” can be more distinctly translated as “the heart of things” or “feeling.” Natsume Soseki’s 1914 novel, which was originally published in serial format in a Japanese newspaper, “Kokoro” deals with the transition from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era. Divided into three parts “Sensei and I,” “My Parents and I,” and “Sensei and His Testament,” the novel explores the themes of loneliness and isolation. In the first part we find the...
| Автор | Natsume Soseki |
“From Superman to Man”, self-published in 1917 by J. A. Rogers, was the author’s first book and a powerful attack on racism and the ignorance that fuels it. Born Joel Augustus Rogers in Jamaica around 1880, Rogers emigrated to the United States in 1906 and eventually settled in Harlem, New York during the exciting artistic and cultural time of the Harlem Renaissance. In “From Superman to Man”, a black Pullman porter and a white racist Southern politician on his way to California debate racial...
| Автор | J. A. Rogers |
Apuleius was a student of Platonist philosophy and Latin prose writer who produced the novel “Metamorphoses”, more popularly known as “The Golden Ass”. This work is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Adapted from an earlier Greek story, “The Golden Ass” tells of the adventures of Lucius, a young man who is obsessed with magic. In attempting to perform a spell, Lucius inadvertently transforms himself into an ass. His long and arduous journey is ornately illustrated by Apuleius’...
| Автор | Apuleius |
Born and raised in a Longford, Ireland workhouse, Padraic Colum left home at seventeen to become a clerk in the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin. This venture was short-lived, however, and with the success of a few poems and a play, “The Saxon Shillin’,” in 1904 he went on to pursue a career in writing. His success as a dramatist, poet, novelist, essayist, biographer, children’s writer, and editor, as well as his participation in the founding of the Abbey Theatre, made Colum a central...
| Автор | Padraic Colum |
Often referred to as a “father of science fiction”, H. G. Wells was one of the first authors to write a type of speculative fiction which referenced the advancements in science of his time. Characteristic of Wells’s work is their warning against the unintended consequences of technological development gone too far. First published in 1896, “The Island of Dr. Moreau” is the account of Edward Prendick, an Englishman who finds himself stranded on an island in the South Pacific after being...
| Автор | H. G. Wells |
First published in 1871, “Little Men” or “Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys” is considered the second book in the unofficial “Little Women” trilogy by author Louisa May Alcott. “Little Men” follows the adventures of Alcott’s beloved character Jo March and her husband, Professor Fredreich Bhaer, as they run their Plumfield Estate School. As to be expected, Jo and her husband do not run their school along conventional lines and they encourage their students to have pets, gardens, and even weekly...
| Автор | Louisa May Alcott |
First published in 1907, “The Iron Heel” is Jack London’s dystopian novel about the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. Displaying the socialist views that were held by London himself and that were prevalent at the beginning of the 20th century, “The Iron Heel” tells the story of events far in the future when a small, wealthy class squeezes out the middle class and effectively rules with brutality for three centuries until a revolution ushers in a new era called the “Brotherhood...
| Автор | Jack London |
Originally published serially in 1912, “The Lost World” is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger’s unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee, and the adventurer Lord John Roxton, into...
| Автор | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
First published anonymously in 1678, Madame de Lafayette is generally believed to be the author behind “The Princess of Cleves”. Set between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France, the novel is concerned with Mademoiselle de Chartres, a sheltered heiress who is brought to the court by her mother to find her a proper husband. This soon to be princess will find herself caught between her duty as a wife and her untimely love for another man. “The Princess of Cleves”...
| Автор | Madame de Lafayette |
“Great Expectations” is the classic novel by Charles Dickens that traces the life of an orphan named Pip. The novel begins on Christmas Eve 1812 where we find a seven year old Pip as he encounters an escaped convict in the cemetery where Pip’s family is buried. Pip lives with his abusive older sister, and her husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith, whom Pip works for as an apprentice. A wealthy spinster, Miss Havisham, encourages a friendship between Pip and her adopted daughter Estella. When Pip...
| Автор | Charles Dickens |
First published in “McClure’s Magazine” between December of 1901 and October of 1901, “Kim” is the story of Kim (Kimball) O’Hara, the orphaned son of a British soldier. Set against the backdrop of “The Great Game” a political conflict between Russia and Great Britain in central Asia, the novel traces the life of the title character from begging and errand running on the streets of Lahore to his schooling at a top English school in Lucknow, where he is trained in espionage, and ultimately to a...
| Автор | Редьярд Киплинг |
The first major work of the father of French Naturalism, “Thérèse Raquin” is the shocking and scandalous initial big success in Emile Zola’s impressive writing career. Zola’s third novel was published serially in 1867 and then as a book in 1868. The story revolves around a young woman, Thérèse, who is unhappily married to her first cousin Camille, largely due to her domineering, if well-intentioned, aunt and Camille’s mother, Madame Raquin. Camille, selfish and spoiled by his mother, decides to...
| Автор | Emile Zola |
First published in Russian in 1866, “The Gambler”, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a gripping narrative of the dangers of gambling. As was common with Dostoyevsky’s other writings, he draws upon his own life in a semi-autobiographical way. Dostoyevksy himself suffered from a compulsion to gambling and had to complete “The Gambler” under a strict deadline to pay off his own debts. These first-hand experiences bring a depth of realism to the novel and to his portrayal of the main character, Alexei...
| Автор | Fyodor Dostoyevsky |