The Ark
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"A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen is a groundbreaking and thought-provoking masterpiece that challenges societal norms and explores the complex dynamics of marriage and identity. Set in 19th-century Norway, the play revolves around Nora Helmer, a seemingly content wife and mother, and her husband Torvald.
As the plot unfolds, the audience is drawn into a web of secrets, lies, and personal revelations. Nora's journey from a docile, doll-like existence...
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"The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway's first big novel, and immediately established Hemingway as one of the great prose stylists, and one of the preeminent writers of his time. It is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I generation, known as the Lost Generation. This poignantly beautiful story of a group of American and English expatriates in Paris on an excursion to Pamplona represents a dramatic step forward for Hemingway's...
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Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies...
5) Passing
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Description
Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past. Clare s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, but refuses to acknowledge the racism that continues to constrict her family s happiness.
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Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.
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Publisher
The Press of the Readers Club
Pub. Date
1941
Description
The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. The protagonist of The History of Mr. Polly is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells's early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his "innate sense of epithet",...
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Appears on list
Description
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, preparing to host an evening party. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she "had not the option" to be with a close female friend, Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning.
Septimus...
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Norton library volume N283
Publisher
Norton
Pub. Date
[1964]
Description
First published in 1818, "Nightmare Abbey" Is a novella by Thomas Love Peacock and his third long work of fiction. It is a Gothic satirical tale that follows Christopher Glowry, Esquire, a melancholic widower who lives with his only son Scythrop in Nightmare Abbey, a run-down mansion that has been in his family for generations. It explores in a comical way the romantic movement in contemporary English literature and its preoccupation with morbidity,...
10) Daniel Deronda
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Appears on list
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Deronda, a high-minded young man searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a series of dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the English country-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beauty trapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives of a poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers the long-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving and suspenseful narrative opens up a...
11) Middlemarch
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Middlemarch is a recognized masterpiece that explores the complex social world of 19th century England. It is concerned with the lives of several ordinary people, albeit ones with high social standing. The novel explores the very fabric of Victorian society in the 1800s, showing how various human passions--heroism, egotism, love, and lust--interrelate within this society.
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Harper & brothers
Pub. Date
1909
Description
Ann Veronica is a New Woman novel by H.G. Wells. Ann Veronica describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, "a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty," against her middle-class father's stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It is set in Victorian era London and environs, except for an Alpine excursion. Ann Veronica offers vignettes of the Women's suffrage movement in Great Britain and features a chapter...
13) Cape Cod
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Description
Robert Pinsky is Professor of English at Boston University and an editor of the weekly online magazine Slate. He is the author of many books of poetry and literary criticism. He served two terms as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1997-2000.
This new paperback edition of Henry D. Thoreau's compelling account of Cape Cod contains the complete, definitive text of the original. Introduced by American poet...
15) Tales of unrest
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Publisher
Doubleday, Page
Pub. Date
1923
Description
Featuring five works of short fiction from the critically acclaimed author, Joseph Conrad, Tales of Unrest is a fascinating exploration of human struggle and philosophy. Karain: A Memory adopts elements of a traditional ghost story, setting an eerie mood as it explores the duality common among colonial and post-colonial people. The Idiots depict a family driven to murder after a couple stains to raise their intellectually disabled children. With the...
16) The voyage out
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The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a na♭ve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love and learns how to face life, intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight...
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Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
When the Melmottes arrive in London everyone agrees their manners are wanting, their taste is execrable and their lineage and background decidedly shadowy. But their money is far from revolting, and city society quickly makes allowances for the mysterious financier and his family. Soon hearts, minds and family savings are swept into the whirl of Augustus Melmotte's lavish parties and exciting investment plans - but is it all an elaborate swindle?
18) The jungle book
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Selected stories from Kipling's two "Jungle Books" chronicle the adventures of Mowgli, the boy reared by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle. Also includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."
19) Emma
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As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.
20) Peer Gynt
Author
Publisher
Doubleday
Pub. Date
1963
Description
Born in Skien, Norway in 1828, Henrik Ibsen has often been referred to as the founder of modern drama and modernism in theatre. Ibsen was widely known as an atheist and political radical, and channeled some of those sentiments into his works. "Peer Gynt" captures humankind's unsure, imperfect and opportunistic nature in many memorable scenes: a portrait so intimate and accurate that the play has become a classic in Norwegian literature. This five...