Зарубежная классическая проза
6404 кн.
First published in 1864, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” is Jules Verne’s classic tale of adventure, one of the earliest examples of science fiction. When German professor Otto Liedenbrock finds a coded message in an original runic manuscript of Snorri Sturluson’s Icelandic saga, “Heimskringla,” he discovers what he believes to be a secret passage to the center of the Earth. Professor Liedenbrock, who has long hypothesized that there are volcanic tubes which descend deep into the Earth,...
| Автор | Жюль Верн |
First published posthumously in 1817, “Northanger Abbey” was actually the first finished novel that Jane Austen wrote. It is the story of seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, one of ten children of a country clergyman, who imagines life as living in one of the Gothic novels with which she is excessively fond of reading. When she is invited by her wealthy neighbors, the Fullertons, to accompany them to the spa town of Bath she experiences her first taste of the fashionable upper class society of...
| Автор | Джейн Остин |
Historically recognized as the man who wrote the dictionary, Dr. Johnson amplified his literary fame with the 1759 publication of “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia”. This novel was wildly popular upon its release, despite the fact that Johnson completed the work in the evenings of a single week, donning it his “little story book”. The story is of a royal brother and sister who have been kept in a luxurious, fertile valley, where their every desire is quickly fulfilled, and where they...
| Автор | Samuel Johnson |
First published in 1922, “Babbitt” is Sinclair Lewis’ satire of American culture in the early part of the 20th century. In the years following World War I Americans began to idealize the middle-class lifestyle as a symbol of success, one crucial to the American identity. The successful self-made family man living in a Midwestern town began to symbolize the “American Dream”. The titular character of this novel, George F. Babbitt, is one such man. Babbitt is a successful middle-aged partner in a...
| Автор | Sinclair Lewis |
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 serially between January and December of 1878 in the sensationalistic monthly London magazine “Belgravia”, Thomas Hardy’s “The Return of the Native” is the author’s sixth published novel. Set in Egdon Heath, an area of Thomas Hardy’s fictionalized Wessex known for the thorny evergreen shrubs, called furze or gorse, which are cut there by its residents for fuel. When the story begins, on Guy Fawkes Night, we find Diggory Venn, a merchant of the red mineral called reddle which...
| Автор | Thomas Hardy |
What begins as the story of a middle-aged country gentleman absorbed with novels of chivalry deliberately evolves into a tale of purely imaginative knight-errantry in this highly influential work of the Spanish Golden Age. This first of modern novels was written in the experimental episodic form, allowing Don Quixote and his ‘squire’ Sancho Panza to go on quests that just as often as not land them in trouble or earn them the incredulity of those fully engaged in reality. While initially...
| Автор | Miguel de Cervantes |
![Dante's Paradiso (The Divine Comedy, Volume II, Paradise) [Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with an Introduction by Ellen M. Mitchell]](https://knigism.online/covers/d2/28/680735.jpg "Dante's Paradiso (The Divine Comedy, Volume II, Paradise) [Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with an Introduction by Ellen M. Mitchell]")
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 |
Mikhail Lermontov’s pioneering psychological novel, “A Hero of Our Time”, is probably his most impactful work, one which influenced the works of other great Russian authors such as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The novel’s narrative is the story of Pechorin a young officer in the army whose story is told in five non-chronological parts. Drawing upon his own experiences in the military, Lermontov creates a fascinating anti-hero in Pechorin, a man who is intelligent, calculating, manipulative,...
| Автор | Mikhail Lermontov |
Agatha Christie’s second novel, “The Secret Adversary”, which was first published in 1922, introduces the world to the adventures of intrepid detectives Tommy and Tuppence, or as they are more formally known, Thomas Beresford and Prudence Cowley. The two young friends find themselves out of work after the end of the first world war and form the partnership “The Young Adventures, Ltd.” They are immediately hired by a mysterious individual by the name of Mr. Whittington to find a young lady named...
| Автор | Agatha Christie |
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 |
Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who through a strangely unorthodox experiment creates a grotesque yet sentient being. Victor, repulsed by the thing that he has created, abandons the monster. The creature in turn saddened by this rejection, departs as well. What follows is a series of tragic events. There is no greater novel in the monster genre than “Frankenstein” and no more well known monster than the one that is at the center of this novel....
| Автор | Mary Shelley |
Jane Austen’s first published novel, “Sense and Sensibility” is the classic coming of age story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who have contrasting temperaments. On the surface Elinor, the older sister represents sense, or reason, while Marianne represents sensibility, or emotion; however upon closer examination we find that they both exhibit varying aspects of each characteristic. Set in southwest England, in the towns of London and Kent, the novel follows the lives of the two...
| Автор | Джейн Остин |
Originally published in French under the title “À Rebours” in 1884 and translated into English in 1926, “Against Nature”, also known as “Against the Grain”, is a book by Joris-Karl Huysmans and is well described by its subtitle “A Novel Without a Plot”. The premise of the novel is simple and follows the seclusion of Jean des Esseintes, the last member of a once powerful and noble family. Having lived an extremely decadent life in 19th-century bourgeois Parisian society, Des Esseintes finds...
| Автор | J. K. Huysmans |
Mark Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction, “The Prince and the Pauper”, was first published in 1881. It is a story set in the time of Prince Edward, of house Tudor, who at age nine would become King Edward VI. When young Prince Edward meets a Pauper, Tom Canty, who likes a lot like him, he convinces the two to switch clothes so that they can be mistaken for each other and end up switching places. While they play out their new roles, Prince Edward learns of the struggles of the commoners...
| Автор | Mark Twain |
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 |
“The Diaries and Adam and Eve” by Mark Twain was originally published as two separate stories and were later combined at Twain’s request. “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” was published as a stand-alone book in 1904. In 1905, “Eve’s Diary” was published in the Christmas issue of “Harper’s Bazaar” and then as a book in 1906. With his signature wit and charm, Twain tells the separate stories of humanity’s biblical ancestors from the perspective of each in the form of diary entries. As one would expect...
| Автор | Mark Twain |
Widely acknowledged as one of Emile Zola's masterpieces, «L'Assommoir» is a novel immersed in the harsh poverty and relief-giving alcoholism of working-class Paris in the nineteenth century. At the heart of Zola's shockingly realistic descriptions is Gervaise, a mother abandoned by her lover who must learn to survive alone on what she can earn. When she marries the abstemious roof-worker Coupeau and manages to open her own laundry, life is for a while successful and happy....
| Автор | Emile Zola |
When Princess Anastasia's private jet crashed, she couldn't recall her royal roots. Her handsome rescuer, former FBI agent Jake Sanderstone, took the beautiful lone survivor to his humble home. And while Jake struggled to untangle a web of clues, the only thing the pair discovered was an undeniable attraction burning between them….As they were trapped by stormy weather, desire raged, though Jake fought off his longing to ravish the anonymous beauty. But as Princess Anastasia's...
| Автор | Patricia Thayer |
Violet Paget (1856–1935), also known under the pseudonym Vernon Lee, was a French-born British writer famous for her supernatural fiction and contributions to the field of aesthetics. She also wrote more than a dozen books on a variety of subjects ranging from music to travel, and today she is best remembered for her original ideas and amusing use of irony. First published in 1903, “Penelope Brandling” is a fantastic example of classic Victorian literature not to be missed by those who have read...
| Автор | Vernon Lee |
First published serially in magazines beginning in 1915 and then as a complete novel in 1919, “Lad: A Dog” is the beloved tale of the perfect dog by Albert Payson Terhune, the American journalist, dog breeder, and novelist. Lad, the central character of the tale, is a Rough Collie dog who lives with his Master, Mistress, and mate, Lady, at their home called the Place. Lad, who was based on Terhune’s real life pet Rough Collie, is a loyal and brave dog who saves people and animals alike,...
| Автор | Albert Payson Terhune |
Jedna z najsłynniejszych powieści o upadku kultury i cywilizacji, która weszła na stałe do kanonu najważniejszych dzieł XX wieku Grupa chłopców, którzy jako jedyni ocaleli po katastrofie lotniczej, znajduje schronienie na bezludnej wyspie. Początkowo rozbitkowie, pozbawieni nadzoru dorosłych, cieszą się wolnością w rajskiej scenerii z dala od cywilizacji. Jednak ich wysiłki, by stworzyć własne małe społeczeństwo, prowadzą do katastrofy, a przygoda obraca się w koszmar. Laureat literackiej...
| Автор | William Golding |
First published in 1925, Anzia Yezierska’s “Bread Givers” is the tale of a young Jewish-American immigrant woman and her struggle to control her own destiny in Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The novel is based in large part on Yezierska’s own life experiences immigrating from Poland as a child and growing up in New York City in an Orthodox Jewish family. “Bread Givers” centers on the story of its main character, Sara Smolinsky, who lives with her older sisters and...
| Автор | Anzia Yezierska |
«Что же такое жизнь и что мне с ней делать?» Эта взволнованная фраза героини одной из новелл сборника «Белый конь, бледный всадник», где каждая новелла по напряженности происходящих событий стоит большого романа, может послужить эпиграфом ко всему творчеству Кэтрин Портер. Где бы ни происходило действие этих историй – на маленькой молочной ферме среди равнин Техаса или в большом городе, что бы ни лежало в основе сюжета – случайное преступление или смутная, грозовая атмосфера Первой мировой...
| Автор | Кэтрин Портер |