The more than 175 tales culled from a centuries-old Russian storytelling tradition by the outstanding Russian ethnographer Aleksandr Afanas’ev reveal a rich, robust world of the imagination that will fascinate readers both young and old.With black-and-white drawings throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    The text of Leaves of Grass is again that of the indispensable "Reader's Comprehensive Edition," edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, which is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. New to this edition is the full text of the celebrated 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, as well as generous excerpts from Whitman's two prose masterpieces, Democratic Vistas and Specimen Days.Following the texts is an album of portraits of Whitman, as well as "Whitman on His Art," a collection of Whitman's statements about his role as a poet taken from his notebooks, letters, conversations, and newspaper articles.While continuing to provide leading commentary on Whitman by major twentieth-century poets and critics, among them D. H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, and Randall Jarrell, this revised edition adds important commentary by Whitman contemporaries Henry David Thoreau, Fanny Fern, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde, among others. An entirely new section of recent criticism includes six essays--by David S. Reynolds, Karen Sanchez-Eppler, John Irwin, Allen Grossman, Betsy Erkkila, and Michael Moon--that reflect both the continuing historicist mainstream of Whitman literary interpretation and influential recent work in gender and sexuality studies.The volume also includes a Chronology, a Selected Bibligraphy, and an Index of Titles.

            The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood. The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant's Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them with literature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.

    A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century.

    

    "Contexts" collects important sources for each novel, including writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amasa Delano, and Nathaniel Hawthorne."Criticism" includes twenty-eight essays about the novels sure to promote classroom discussion. Contributors include Leo Marx, Elizabeth Hardwick, Frederick Busch, Robert Lowell, Herschel Parker, Carolyn L. Karcher, Thomas Mann, and Hannah Arendt.A Selected Bibliography is included.--wwnorton.co.uk

    The poem tells the tale of Roland, a knight, who comes as last to the object of his quest: the Dark Tower. His comrades have all fallen, and he is the last. He endures, marching on and on, until he comes at last to the Tower.

    As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.

    She was devoted to the Church of England, and much influenced by John Keble, a near neighbour and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Her novels reflected the values and concerns of Anglo-Catholicism. She began writing in 1848, and published during her long life about 100 works, chiefly novels. Her first commercial success, The Heir of Redclyffe (1854), provided the funding to enable the schooner Southern Cross to be put into service on behalf of George Selwyn. Similar charitable works were done with the profits from later novels. She was also editor, for nearly forty years, of a magazine for young ladies, the Monthly Packet. Among the best known of her works are Heartsease; or, The Brother's Wife (1854), The Daisy Chain; or, Aspirations (1856), A History of Christian Names (1863, revised 1884), A Book of Golden Deeds (1864), The Dove in the Eagle's Nest (1866), Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands (1873) and Hannah More (1888).

    A collection of letters from Adina to her father, Manasseh Benjamin, while she is living and studying in Jerusalem. Interesting from a historical perspective in that the first letter is dated, according to the Jewish chronology, three years before the crucifixion of Christ.

     The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood. The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant's Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them withliterature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.

    Considered to be one of Melville's best short stories, "Benito Cereno" is a tale of the revolt aboard a Spanish ship. "Bartleby: The Scrivener" is a moral allegory set on Wall Street in New York. And "The Encantadas" are a collection of sketches based on Melville's experiences in the Galapagos Islands.