Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.In the background of this second volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, the rumble of distant events in Germany and Spain presages the storm of World War II. In England, even as the whirl of marriages and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures gathers speed, men and women find themselves on the brink of fateful choices. Includes these novels: At Lady Molly'sCasanova's Chinese RestaurantThe Kindly Ones

    M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, and Salman Rushdie, the new Major Authors edition is a library between two covers -- an indispensable addition to the family bookshelf.

    What does the child mean?" ..."Oh, she means the chairs in your hall, the ones your husband had covered with skin. I'm afraid she is a morbid little thing." She giggled and bounced about on her rickety chair.Her father dies and the ten-year-old Frances, her mother and assorted siblings are taken under the wing of their horsey relations, led by bullying Aunt Lawrence. Their new home is small and they can't afford a maid. Mother occasionally dabs at the furniture with a duster and sister Polly rules the kitchen. Living in patronised poverty isn't much fun but Frances makes friends with Mrs Alexander who has a collection of monkeys and a yellow motor car, and the young widow, Vanda, who is friendly if the Major isn't due to call. But times do change and one day Aunt Lawrence gets her come-uppance and Frances goes to live in the house with 'the skin chairs'.First published in 1962, this quirky novel describing the adult world with a young girl's eye, resounds with Barbara Comyn's original voice.

    From the first moment Derek, who was not until then a cat-lover, met a tiny bundle of fur with Jeannie, through to the pet's old age when he would still walk down to the stream to make 'Monty's Leap', this is a touching story of friendship between two people and their cat.

    Tracing many of the same themes as that earlier work, this novel is a bemused, sometimes acid portrait of people caught in private sexual hells of their own making. Its four episodes are connected by four narrators. All are called "Christopher Isherwood, " but each is a different character inhabiting a new setting: Berlin in 1928, the Greek Isles in 1933, London in 1938, and California in 1940. Down There on a Visit is a major work that shows Isherwood at the height of his literary powers.

    As Matthew and Harry struggle with their memories of personal and social change, a beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son emerges.

    Battles have been few and far between since then, in what the Germans have been calling der Sitzkrieg—the sitting war.  In May 1940, under the leadership of their new prime minister, Winston Churchill, the British are hoping to stem the tide of Nazi invasion along their southern border. But now, flanked to the east and west by German troops and cut off from the Allies further south, Sergeant Williams and his battalion must retreat to Dunkerque in the north, and escape by sea is their only hope.

    Throughout his life, he confided his thoughts and emotions to his Notebooks, where we can still see his speculations and observations taking shape. This edition presents a selection from this unique work, newly presented, with notes and commentary, for the student as well as the general reader.

    He is untidy, nervous, shy: women have never paid him any attention. But here is virgin clay from which Nancy can mould her Adam. She marries him, and on their wedding night Marcus realises he is as much her protege in sex as in other fields. But soon he is confident that, under her guiding hands, he had been transformed into a consummate lover; and he begins to feel the urge to slip his leash.

    Book by Muir, Edwin

    Also included in the 896-page volume are seven great novels and novelettes: Rumer Godden's A candle for St. Jude, W. Somerset Maugham's The Alien Corn, Colette's Gigi, Paul Gallico's Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, Alice Duer Miller's Death and Professor Raikes, Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey, and Walker D. Edmond's Courtship of My Cousin Doone.

    Part of Macmillan's 1962 series of oversized picture books of classic fairy stories printed in Italy, here is The Young King by Oscar Wilde with an introduction by John Updike and illustrated by Sandro Nardine and Enrico Bagnoli.Stories included:The Young KingThe Devoted FriendThe Happy Prince

    This monumental novel, divided into four separate books, celebrates the end of an era, the irrevocable destruction of the comfortable, predictable society that vanished during World War I.