Best of
19th-Century
1848
White Nights
Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1848
Set in St. Petersburg, it is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Anne Brontë - 1848
Actual opening line of the novel is: "To J. Halford, Esq. Dear Halford, when we were together last..."This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter.
Joseph Balsamo
Alexandre Dumas - 1848
An alchemist, conspirator, and Freemason, Balsamo figures prominently in the eventual downfall of the French monarchy.
Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens - 1848
As Jonathan Lethem contends in his Introduction, Dickens’s “genius . . . is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he’s planned to give, and then more.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the 1867 “Charles Dickens” edition.
The Boy of Mount Rhigi
Catharine Maria Sedgwick - 1848
“My Pa’s taught me all about thievin’. It’s in my bloodline… ain’t no escapin’ it.” Those are the words he lives by and he almost believes them. But a steadfast friend will show him that no one has to be a prisoner of their past.Trapped in a life of thievery, Clapham is faced with a choice. Will he choose to steal from his friends? Will betrayal rob a faithful friend of his loyalty and forgiveness? Join us for The Boy of Mount Rhigi - a heartening story with unexpected twists and turns that will keep all ages on the edge of their seats!
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë - 1848
The love story of Agnes Grey, gentle, though it has a significant shadow behind it
Essays and Reviews
Edgar Allan Poe - 1848
Here are all his major writings on the theory of poetry, the art of fiction, and the duties of a critic: “The Rationale of Verse,” “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle,” and “About Critics and Criticism.” Articulating Poe’s passion for technical proficiency and his theory of poetic method, these essays show why he so strongly influenced the French symbolists toward the end of nineteenth century and, through them, the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Hart Crane.Included in this collection are Poe’s reviews and candid opinions of the leading literary figures of his day: Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Percy Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Margaret Fuller, among others. Here also are reviews of long-forgotten writers, reviews that are interesting not so much for their subjects as for Poe’s unflinching and witty candor. Many of his then controversial judgments have been vindicated by time.Poe particularly relished his prolonged critical war with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard and America’s most respected poet of the nineteenth century, whom he accused of conventionality and plagiarism. The skirmishes in this campaign are represented here in full.Poe wrote many articles describing the literary world in which he circulated: “The Literati of New York,” the “Editorial Miscellanies” from the Broadway Journal, “Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House,” and his long running series “Marginalia.”Also included are a wealth of articles on a wide variety of topics: South Sea exploration, cryptography, drama, geography, music, transcendentalism, phrenology, ancient languages, and modern cities.As a reviewer Poe was direct, discriminating, and feared; as an essayist he was alert to any possibility that in literature there might be found a sense of unity missing from life. This volume restores an essential and often neglected part of our literary heritage.
Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
Charles Dickens - 1848
Loss and Gain
John Henry Newman - 1848
Loss and Gain, his first novel, tells the story of a young man's search for faith in early Victorian Oxford. This edition is the first one to appear ineighty years.
Dickens's Dictionary of London 1888: An Unconventional Handbook
Charles Dickens - 1848
An unconventional Victorian guidebook which vividly captures the atmosphere and vitality of what was then the largest city in the world, the heart, not just of the nation, but also of a great empire.
The History of England
Thomas Babington Macaulay - 1848
His History, translated throughout Europe and achieving sales in America second only to the Bible, immediately became the canon of historical orthodoxy, replacing previous histories so completely that it is now difficult to see past its long and apparently effortless triumph.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I
Anne Brontë - 1848
The character development is very strong and realistic, and the dialogue of the novel is very powerful.
The Night Side of Nature
Catherine Crowe - 1848
Spirits of the dead who cannot break their link with the Earth, the unfathomable mysteries of dreams that predict the future, apparitions, doppelgangers, haunted houses and poltergeists - Catherine Crowe's book examines these and other cases of supernatural happenings.
Life in the Far West
George Frederick Augustus Ruxton - 1848
Louis in 1848 at the youthful age of twenty-seven, brilliantly brings to life the whole heroic age of the Mountain Men. The author, from his intimate acquaintance with the trappers and traders of the American Far West, vividly recounts the story of two of the most adventurous of these hardy pioneers - Killbuck and La Bonté, whose daring, bravery, and hair-breadth escapes from their numerous Indian and "Spaniard" enemies were legend among their fellow-frontiersmen.With Ruxton, we follow Killbuck and La Bonté and their mountain companions - Old Bill Williams, "Black" Harris, William Sublette, Joseph Walker, and others - across the prairies and forests, west from picturesque old Bent’s Fort, into the dangerous Arapaho country near the headwaters of the Platte. We share with them the culinary delights of their campfires - buffalo "boudins" and beaver tails - and hear from their own lips, in the incomparable mountaineer dialect, hair-raising stories of frontier life and humorous tales of trading camp and frontier post.Life in the Far West, then, is adventure extraordinary - the true chronicle of the rugged Mountain Men whose unflinching courage and total disregard for personal safety or comfort opened the Far West to the flood of settlers who were to follow. The breath-taking water colors and sketches, which depict with great detail many of the familiar scenes of the early West, were done by one of Ruxton’s contemporaries and fellow-explorers, Alfred Jacob Miller.
The Inheritance
Christoph von Schmid - 1848
When the old man finally opens his eyes, he sees a painting on the wall before him and realizes that this is the very house where he buried a wealthy man’s inheritance fifty years ago. To their surprise, much more is found than earthly treasure!