Best of
Classic-Literature

1985

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English


Sandra M. Gilbert - 1985
    The text also contains 11 complete works such as Oroonoko, Jane Eyre, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The Awakening and Caryl Churchill's play, Top Girls.

Anne of Green Gables: Three Volumes in One


L.M. Montgomery - 1985
    Anne's romantic soul, her idealism, and her adventurous spirit often lead her into mishaps, but she always survives, learning from her experience, and the read does too, while enjoying her marvelous adventures. Fiercely independent and outspoken, Anne is not afraid of conflicts with her elders - this, in an age (the early 1900's) when childeren were "seen and not heard." But Anne's bright intelligence, honesty, and resourcefulness are impossible to defeat, and she carries the day. Her story spoke to the readers of the time, as it does still, to the young, and the young at heart, today. Anne of Green Gables, the first novel, introduces our lively heroine at age eleven, fresh from an orphanage, when she must win the right to stay at Green Gables with the taciturn Matthew Cuthbert and his reserved sister, Marilla, and takes her into her teens. In Anne of Avonlea, she is the village schoolteacher and the story takes her up to her preparations to enter college. Finally, Anne's House of Dreams, the most romantic, and, many believe, the best of the Anne books, finds Anne, now a lovely young woman, on the verge of her marriage to a young doctor whom she has known and loved for years, and describes the fulfillment of her dreams of romance and career, in a village peopled with memorable characters. This volume is uniquely illustrated with period drawings that evoke the era in which Anne was created and were taken from books and magazines of the day. One can do no better than to quote an editorial from one of those magazines, The Housewife, in describing Anne: "Droll one minute, pathetic the next; staid and wise as a grandmother one minute, bubbling over with impish mischief the next," but always "lovable." Contemporary readers will find her just as engaging, as they follow her from lonely waif to fulfilled young woman.

The Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Collins Classics)


Edgar Allan Poe - 1985
    They focus on the internal conflict of individuals, the power of the dead over the living, and psychological explorations of darker human emotion.An American writer of fantastical, bizarre and sometimes disturbing short stories, Poe wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century. Preoccupied with delving into the darker reaches of the human psyche, Poe is inventor of the detective story and master of the macabre.

Julie


Catherine Marshall - 1985
    Trying to escape the Great Depression, Julie’s father buys The Alderton Sentinel, a small-town newspaper in flood-prone Alderton, Pennsylvania, and moves his family there. As flash floods ominously increase, Julie’s investigative reporting uncovers secrets that could endanger the entire community.Julie, the newspaper, and her family are thrown into a perilous standoff with the owners of the steel mills as they investigate the conditions of the steelworkers. Battle lines are drawn between the steel mill owners and their immigrant laborers. As The Sentinel and Julie take on a more aggressive role in reforming these conditions in their community, seething tensions come to a head.When a devastating tragedy follows a shocking revelation, Julie’s courage and strength are tested. Will truth and justice win, or will Julie lose everything she holds dear?

The Runaway


Patricia St. John - 1985
    Evil hangs over their house like a cloud. And it all seems to come from his sister Illyrica, who is possessed by a demon. Hearing about a prophet from Nazareth who has healed the sick and even raised the dead, Philo wonders if He can save his sister. But the mere mention of the prophet's name sends Illyrica into fits of rage and despair. Even if the prophet really is as powerful as people say He is, how can Philo and his little sister, Ione, take Illyrica to Him to be healed? Hopeless, Philo runs away from home. But everywhere he goes he hears more about the Jewish prophet and His miracles. Who is He? How strong is His power? Most of all, would the Jewish prophet help Philo, a Gentile? This story of revenge and forgiveness, sickness and healing, and evil and grace traces the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth -- to the places He walked and the people He touched.

The Commonsense Teaching of the Bible


Hannah Whitall Smith - 1985
    

Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years


Peter Griffin - 1985
    It sheds new light on his wartime romance with Agnes vonKurowsky, his first love (and a model for the character of Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms), as well as on the circumstances surrounding his wounding and convalescence. It closes with Hemingway on the brink of the literary career that would bring him worldwide fame. The five short stories--The Mercenaries, Crossroads, Portrait of an Idealist in Love, The Ash Heel's Tendon, and The Current--reveal that the Hemingway vision and style preceded the 1920s, his Paris years with Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. The book also contains many other newlyuncovered documents--including letters written by Ernest to his closest friend, Bill Horne, before and after the Kurowsky love affair--which provide a rich new perspective on Hemingway's emotional development and his beginnings as a writer. Jack Hemingway, Ernest's son by his first wife, HadleyRichardson, made his mother's complete correspondence available to Griffin and also contributed a foreword in which he writes, [Griffin] has shown me insights into my own father's character and behavior I would not have thought possible in view of the time lapse between Hemingway's death and theresearch he accomplished. This is the first installment of a projected three-volume life which promises to be the definitive Hemingway biography for this generation.

David Copperfield


Richard Widdows - 1985
    Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way.