Best of
Classics

1981

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1)


Brian Sibley - 1981
    Brian Sibley's famous 1981 adaptation, starring Ian Holm and Michael Hordern.

Good Night, Mr. Tom


Michelle Magorian - 1981
    Timid, scrawny Willie Beech -- the abused child of a single mother -- is evacuated to the English countryside. At first, he is terrified of everything, of the country sounds and sights, even of Mr. Tom, the gruff, kindly old man who has taken him in. But gradually Willie forgets the hate and despair of his past. He learns to love a world he never knew existed, a world of friendship and affection in which harsh words and daily beatings have no place. Then a telegram comes. Willie must return to his mother in London. When weeks pass by with no word from Willie, Mr. Tom sets out for London to look for the young boy he has come to love as a son.

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter


Astrid Lindgren - 1981
    Soon Ronia learns to dance and yell with the robbers, but it is alone in the forest that she feels truly at home. Then one day Ronia meets Birk, the son of Matt's arch-enemy. Soon after Ronia and Birk become friends the worst quarrel ever between the rivals bands erupts, and Ronia and Birk are right in the middle.

Life at Blandings


P.G. Wodehouse - 1981
    Wodehouse entices us into the demesne of Blandings Castle - an apparent paradise where it is eternal high summer, with jolly parties, tea on the lawn and love trysts in the rose garden. But for Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, there is always something to disturb this tranquil scene.This omnibus contains Something Fresh, Summer Lightning and three short stories (The Custody of the Pumpkin, Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best and Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey).

The Collected Poems


Sylvia Plath - 1981
    The aim of the present complete edition, which contains a numbered sequence of the 224 poems written after 1956 together with a further 50 poems chosen from her pre-1956 work, is to bring Sylvia Plath's poetry together in one volume, including the various uncollected and unpublished pieces, and to set everything in as true a chronological order as is possible, so that the whole progress and achievement of this unusual poet will become accessible to readers.

A Fortunate Life


Albert B. Facey - 1981
    It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate.Facey's life story, published when he was eighty-seven, has inspired many as a play, a television series, and an award-winning book that has sold over half a million copies.

War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad


Christopher Logue - 1981
    Compulsively readable, Logue's poetry flies off the page, and his compelling descriptions of the horrors of war have a surreal, dreamlike quality that has been compared to the films of Kurosawa. Retaining the great poem's story line but rewriting every incident, Logue brings the Trojan War to life for modern audiences.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love


Raymond Carver - 1981
    Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition


Walt Whitman - 1981
    As Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass 'might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing', for it exhibits 'Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman transformed by a new experience.' Mr Cowley has taken the first edition from its narrow circulation among scholars, faithfully edited it, added his own introduction and Whitman's original introduction (which never appeared in any other edition during Whitman's life), and returned it to the common readership to whom the great poet really speaks.

The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1981
    A collection of stories, plays, & poems provide the final account of the great sleuth Holmes.

Selected Poems


Sylvia Plath - 1981
    This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and include many of her most celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

The Unabridged Jack London


Jack London - 1981
    Included here, in addition to his classic novels and short story collections, is a group of "uncollected" short stories, some of which have never appeared in book form. We have sought, wherever possible, to use only first editions of London's work - the only way, we feel, to convey the truly original spirit of London's boundless imagination, his insight into humankind's passion for adventure, and his gripping life view.Three novels...and 54 short stories, some of them never available in book form, that exemplify two sides of Jack London (1876-1916): the quiet, contemplative writer of San Francisco and the bruising, lusty adventurer of the Yukon and the Pacific. - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWCover Illustration: Gill Cohen

The Adventures of Mr. Toad: From The Wind in the Willows


Kenneth Grahame - 1981
    This beautiful companion volume to The River Bank features the second half of Kenneth Grahame's treasured children's classic.

The Celebrated Cases of Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1981
    The adventures of Sherlock Holmes The memoirs of Sherlock Holmes The return of Sherlock Holmes A study in scarlet The sign of four The hound of the Baskervilles.

Liars in Love


Richard Yates - 1981
    Whether it be in the depiction of the complications of divorced families, grown-up daughters, estranged sisters, office friendships or fleeting love affairs, the pieces in this collection showcase Richard Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and his understanding of human frailty.

Bread Upon the Waters


Irwin Shaw - 1981
    Far from wealthy they are still reasonably content with their life until one night when their teenage daughter helps a wealthy and lonely Wall Street lawyer. Out of gratitude the lawyer showers the family with gifts and money. The Strands find their lives altered and not necessarily for the best.

Black Beauty


Betty Evans - 1981
    

Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. The Raven and Other Poems


Edgar Allan Poe - 1981
    Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0706415523This edition first published in the United States of America in 1984 by Octopus Books LImited.This edition reprinted 1985.Copyright (c) 1981 Introduction, arrangement and illustrations Octopus Books Limited.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Book One


Catherine Edwards Sadler - 1981
    A Study in ScarletThe Red-headed LeagueThe Man with the Twisted Lip

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Book Two


Catherine Edwards Sadler - 1981
    The sign of the four --The adventure of the blue carbuncle --The adventure of the speckled band.

Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography


Bruce M. Metzger - 1981
    Part One surveys the fundamentals of Greek palaeography. Part Two, the heart of the book, is a collection of forty-five facsimile pages from thirteen manuscripts of the Old Testament and thirty-two manuscripts of the New Testament.

Graphite


Varlam Shalamov - 1981
    Varlam Shalamov, considered by many to be Russia's greatest living writer, spent seventeen years there and set down the Kolyma experience in powerful short stories. This is the second, more extensive collection which presents a somewhat different view of the camps and the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances.

The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories


D.J. Richards - 1981
    20 Russian writers are represented in this collection, beginning with Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, and concluding with contributions from such modern writers as Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

A Lifetime's Reading: Five Hundred Great Books to be Enjoyed over 50 Years


Philip Ward - 1981
    The aim of this book is to fulfil just that purpose, with an indication of the best edition, and a concise description of the book and its significance. A Lifetime's Reading is arranged year by year over fifty years, judging ten great works to be a good annual average. The selection is balanced between novelists, poets, essayists, playwrights, biographers and religious and philosophical teachers, from China to India, from the U.S.A. to the U.S.S.R., from England to Morocco, Colombia, Iran ... Translations are evaluated, and guidance is also offered on music, art, and travel, arranged generally speaking in ascending order of the books' complexity and the reader's maturity, from Alice in Wonderland to Immanuel Kant, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shimazaki Toson.

Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism


Eli Siegel - 1981
    In good condition

Herodotus Book 1


George A. Sheets - 1981
    They provide clear, concise, accurate, and consistent support for students making the transition from introductory and intermediate texts to the direct experience of ancient literature. They assume that the student will know the basics of grammar and vocabulary and then provide the specific grammatical and lexical notes that a student requires to begin the task of interpretation. The volumes in the series are modestly priced and remain in print indefinitely. The text in each volume is in either the original Greek or Latin, with grammatical and lexical commentary in English.

The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City


Nicole Loraux - 1981
    Arguing that the ceremony of public burial began circa 508-460 BCE, Loraux demonstrates that the institution of the funeral oration developed under Athenian democracy. A secular, not a religious phenomenon, a literary genre with fixed rhetoric effects, the funeral oration was inextricably linked to the epainos--praise of the city--rather than to a ritualized lament for the dead as is commonly assumed. Above all, the funeral oration celebrated the city of Athens and the Athenian citizen.Loraux interprets the speeches from literary, anthropological, and political perspectives. She explains how these acts of secular speech invented an image of Athens often at odds with the presumed ideals of democracy. To die in battle for the city was presented as an act of civic choice--the -fine- death that defined the citizen-soldier's noble, aristocratic ethos. At the same time, the funeral oration cultivated an image of democracy at a time when there was, for example, no formal theory of a respect for law and liberty, the supremacy of the collective and public over the individual and the private, or freedom of speech.This new edition of The Invention of Athens includes significant revisions made by Nicole Loraux in 1993. Her aim in editing the original text was to render this groundbreaking work accessible to nonspecialists. Loraux's introduction to this revised volume, as well as important revisions to the 1986 English translation, make this publication an important addition to scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences.

The Gingerbread Man


Pam Adams - 1981
    A real incentive to read this classic again and again.

Tales from M. Saltykov-Shchedrin


Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin - 1981
    "The Mighty Bogatyr" and "The Eagle-Patron of Arts" are biting satires on autocracy; "The Crow That Went in Search of Truth" and "The Old Nag" picture the misery of the Peasants; the conceited lion of "Bears in Government" with his ludicrous "self-pawed" inscriptions, is a well-aimed thrust at the illiterate resolutions of Tsar Alexander III, while the Bruins in the same tale ridicule the woebegone ministers of tsarist Russia. But the message of the tales and the bitter truth conveyed in them go far beyond the limits of any one epoch, assuming ever new poignancy and actuality. "The sole object of my literary work," wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin, "was unfailingly to protest against greed, hypocrisy, falsehood, theft, treachery, stupidity..." The Tales, which he wrote during the last years of his life (1826-89), epitomize the entire work of the great satirist who did so much for the cause of revolutionary thought in Russia.

The Broons 1981


Dudley D. Watkins - 1981
    

The Illustrated Odyssey


E.V. Rieu - 1981
    

The Arabian Nights Entertainments


Anonymous - 1981
    Part of the The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Collection of Easton Press.

Midnight's Children


Salman Rushdie - 1981
    Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

The Collected Stories


Elizabeth Bowen - 1981
    Vividly featuring scenes of bomb-scarred London during the Blitz, frustrated lovers, acutely obcerved children, and even vengeful ghosts, these stories reinforce Bowen's reputation as an artist whose finely chiseled narratives—rich in imagination, psychological insight, and craft—transcend their time and place.

A Christmas Carol


Joan Collins - 1981
    First published on 19 December 1843, A Christmas Carol became an instant classic. Scrooge's transformation from grumpy miser to charitable figure carries a heart-warming message for the Christmas season - a time of peace and goodwill to all men.This deluxe edition makes a wonderful gift or collectible for adults and children alike.ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Ornate Classics are beautifully bound editions of iconic literary works across history. These compact, foil-embossed hardbacks are printed using deluxe ivory paper and make the perfect gift.

Whispering Sands: Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert


Erle Stanley Gardner - 1981
    Sand blast --Law of the rope --Gold blindness --Written in sand --Blood red gold --Carved in sand --Fall guy --Priestess of the sun --Golden bullets

Ghostly Tales of Washington Irving


Washington Irving - 1981
    

Piglet Meets a Heffalump and Other Stories


A.A. Milne - 1981
    These sparkling audio adaptations of A.A. Milne's beloved stories—now available on CD—feature an all-star cast of readers, including Oscar winner Judi Dench. Three cheers for that silly old bear! In Piglet meets a Heffalump, Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents, Kanga and Baby Roo come to the Forest, Piglet has a bath, and Christopher Robin leads an expedition to the North Pole.

Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology


Anita Dore - 1981
    Arranged around major themes such as love and hate, war and peace, liberty and oppression, alienation and city life, The Premier Book of Major Poets is an invaluable reference work as well as a source of great pleasure.Among the poets included are-- Matthew Arnold-- W. H. Auden-- William Blake-- Gwendolyn Brooks-- Robert Browning-- Geoffrey Chaucer-- Samuel Taylor Coleridgee-- e. e. cumming-- Emily Dickinson-- John Donne-- T. S. Eliot-- Mari Evans-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti-- Robert Frost-- Allen Ginsberg-- Nikki Giovanni-- Robert Graves-- Thomas Hardy-- Langston Hughes-- David Ignatow-- Randall Jarrell-- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)-- John Keats-- Rudyard Kipling-- Denise Levertov-- Federico Garcia Lorca-- Robert Lowell-- Archibald MacLeish-- Andrew Marvell-- Edna St. Vincent Millay-- John Milton-- Marianne Moore-- Howard Nemerov-- Sylvia Plath-- Ezra Pound-- Theodore Roethke-- William Shakespeare-- Percy Bysshe Shelley-- Stephen Spender-- Wallace Stevens-- Alfred Tennyson-- Dylan Thomas-- Margaret Walker-- Walt Whitman-- William Wordsworth-- William Butler Yeats

Mary Cassatt: Oils and Pastels (Watson-Guptill Famous Artists)


E. John Bullard - 1981
    The text and accompanying chronology traces Mary Cassatt's career from her academic art studies in Philadelphia, through her discovery of the works of Manet, Degas, and other impressionists to her highly successful one-woman shows at Gallerie Durand-Ruel, the impressionist's loyal art dealer. Excerpts from the correspondence between Mary Cassatt and her closest friend, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, help to illuminate the artist's personality. Most of the quotations from these letters appear in print for the first time in this volume.

The Wind In The Willows (Ladybird Children's Classics)


Joan Collins - 1981
    These charming, exciting and humorous tales of the riverbank and its life featuring the wonderfully imagined Ratty, Mole, Badger and the irrepressible but conceited Toad of Toad Hall — whose passion for motor cars ("The only way to travel! Here today — in next week tomorrow") lands him in many scrapes — still continue exert their charm over adults as well as children.

Selected Plays


William Shakespeare - 1981
    Here are seven selected plays.

Custer Legends


Lawrence A. Frost - 1981
    The older officers over whom he had jumped in rank soon displayed their animosity. From them, and many others, a series of charges against him were circulated; from these grew the innumerable Custer legends. This volume includes many interesting and unusual Custer legends, which include the alleged fathering of Monahseetah’s Indian son; the Annie Jones story buried in the National Archives; Custer’s capture of Lee’s supply trains at Appomattox Court House that caused Lee to surrender—and much more.

Chasing After Annie


Marjorie Weinman Sharmat - 1981
    When Richie tries to get Annie's attention by replacing her lost dog, Fritz, with a look-alike, his troubles are only beginning.

Dostoevsky and "The Idiot: Author, Narrator, and Reader


Robin Feuer Miller - 1981
    

Structural Change and Economic Growth: A Theoretical Essay on the Dynamics of the Wealth of Nations


Luigi L. Pasinetti - 1981
    The conditions for full employment and full capacity utilisation are examined when prices are stable and when there is inflation. This approach is carried out, not in terms of input-output relations, as has become customary in multisector models, but rather in terms of vertically integrated sectors. This makes it possible to analyse the economic growth process in terms of the structural dynamics of production, of prices and of employment. Remarkable implications are drawn for a surprisingly large number of theoretical problems, which have been under discussion since Adam Smith: from price theory to the theory of rates of profit and the rates of interest; from production theory to the theories of fluctuating growth, ever-changing composition of output, choice of technique and international trade.

The Complete Poems


Henry Vaughan - 1981
    

Origins Of History


Herbert Butterfield - 1981
    

The Parthenon


Susan Woodford - 1981
    An introduction to the History of the Parthenon: How the Parthenon came to be built, how the Greeks worshipped their Gods and Goddesses and the history of Parthenon from the 5th century BC until the present day.