Four Plays: The Clouds/The Birds/Lysistrata/The Frogs


Aristophanes - 1983
    The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers - Socrates in particular - and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. The Birds takes place in a flawed utopia, with man's eternal flaws observed from up above. In Lysistrata a band of women use sex's manipulative power in order to try and end a war. In The Frogs, the god Dionysus visits the underworld, consulting the late Aeschylus and Euripides regarding whether or not classical Athens will ever have another great dramatist - and provoking an argument between both.Three of the leading Greek translators of the twentieth century - William Arrowsmith, Richmond Lattimore, and Douglas Parker - have created versions of the comedies that are at once contemporary, historically accurate, and funny. Also included are introductions to each play that describe the historical and literary background of the work.

The Secret Sharer and other stories


Joseph Conrad
    This is a collection of gripping tales of crime, crisis or disaster, in which ordinary people find themselves tested in extraordinary circumstances.

Red Storm Rising/Patriot Games


Tom Clancy - 1989
    "Allah!"With that shrill cry, three Muslim terrorists blow up a key Soviet oil complex, creating a critical oil shortage that threatens the stability of the USSR.To offer the effects of this disaster, members of the Politburo and the KGB devise a brilliant plan of diplomatic trickery - a sequence of events designed to pit the NATO allies against each other - a distraction calculated to enable the Soviets to seize all the oil in the Persian Gulf.But as this spellbinding story of international intrigue and global politics nears its climax, the Soviets are faced with another prospect, one they hadn't planned on: a full-scale conflict in which nobody can win.

The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: Fifty North American Stories Since 1970


Lex WillifordSandra Cisneros - 1999
    JonesCold snap by Thom JonesDoe season by David Michael KaplanPatriotic by Janet KauffmanGirl by Jamaica KincaidTerritory by David LeavittThe kind of light that shines on Texas by Reginald McKnightYou're ugly, too by Lorrie MooreThe management of grief by Bharati MukherjeeMeneseteung by Alice MunroGhost girls by Joyce Carol OatesThe things they carried by Tim O'BrienThe shawl by Cynthia OzickBrokeback Mountain by Annie ProulxStrays by Mark RichardIntensive care by Lee SmithThe way we live now by Susan SontagTwo kinds by Amy TanFirst, body by Melanie Rae ThonAble, Baker, Charlie, Dog by Stephanie VaughnNineteen fifty-five by Alice WalkerFever by John Edgar WidemanTaking care by Joy Williams

Shelley's Poetry and Prose


Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1977
    All headnotes are new or updated, and many footnotes have been added, replaced, or revised. Criticism reflects the recent renaissance in Shelley studies, the greatest renaissance since 1870-92. All twenty-three essays are new to the Second Edition; among them are the work of Harold Bloom, Stuart Curran, Annette Wheeler Cafarelli, Michael Ferber, James Chandler, and Susan J. Wolfson. A Chronology, an updated Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are included.

Aeneid: Books I-VI


Virgil
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

The Knight of the Burning Pestle


Francis Beaumont - 1613
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Cry of the Children


Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1842
    

100 Best-Loved Poems


Philip SmithRobert Herrick - 1995
    Dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, these splendid poems remain evergreen in their capacity to engage our minds and refresh our spirits. Among them are Marlowe: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"; Shakespeare: "Sonnet XVIII" ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"); Donne: "Holy Sonnet X" ("Death, be not proud"); Marvell: "To His Coy Mistress"; Wordsworth: "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"; Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind"; Longfellow: "The Children's Hour"; Poe: "The Raven"; Tennyson: "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; Whitman: "O Captain! My Captain!"; Dickinson: "This Is My Letter to the World"; Yeats: "When You Are Old"; Frost: "The Road Not Taken"; Millay: "First Fig."Works by many other poets — Milton, Blake, Burns, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Emerson, the Brownings, Hardy, Housman, Kipling, Pound, and Auden among them — are included in this treasury, a perfect companion for quiet moments of reflection.

The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings


Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1949
    An invaluable selection of contextual material includes five Hawthorne stories that are closely related to The Scarlet Letter, along with relevant letters and notebook entries. A substantial excerpt from Hawthorne s campaign biography of Franklin Pierce offers a revealing glimpse at Hawthorne s political thought, especially regarding slavery and abolition. "Criticism" provides a comprehensive overview of early and modern commentary on The Scarlet Letter and the stories in this edition, including nineteenth-century reviews of the novel and critical essays by Robert S. Levine, Nina Baym, Larry J. Reynolds, and Jean Fagan Yellin. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, Vols. 1-2


Isaac Asimov - 1970
    Highly respected and widely read author Isaac Asimov offers a fresh, easy-to-read approach to understanding the greatest writer of all time.Designed to provide the modern reader with a working knowledge of topics pertinent to Shakespeare's audience, this book explores, scene-by-scene, thirty-eight plays and two narrative poems, including their mythological, historical and geographical roots.

An Experiment in Criticism


C.S. Lewis - 1961
    Lewis's classic analysis springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. Crucial to his notion of judging literature is a commitment to laying aside expectations and values extraneous to the work, in order to approach it with an open mind.

Mortal Coils


Aldous Huxley - 1920
    The grandson of Thomas H, Huxley (Darwin's famous defender), he was born in England and educated at Eton and Oxford. He traveled widely in his youth and lived in Italy for a while in the 1920s. He began his literary career with poetry and critical essays, then turned to novels. Having been born just too late to participate in World War I, he was able, in his early works, such as CROME YELLOW (1921), ANTIC HAY (1923), THOSE BARREN LEAVES (1925), and POINT COUNTER POINT (1928), to perfectly capture a sense of purposeless aftermath which resonated strongly in British society at the time. A satirical strain already evident manifested itself spectacularly in BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), after which much of his work began to show a fantastic or speculative cast, including AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN (about immortality, 1939), TIMES MUST HAVE A STOP (1944), and APE AND ESSENCE (a dystopia, 1948). ISLAND, his last work, published in 1962, is a utopia. Late in life he developed an increasing disdain for Western society and an interest in Eastern mysticism and in the possibilities of psychedelic drugs, which he described in THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (1954). MORTAL COILS is a short-story collection from Huxley's early period, including one of his most popular stories, "The Gioconda Smile."

The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft


H.P. Lovecraft - 1997
    Lovecraft is one of America's giants of the horror genre. Now, in this second volume of annotated tales, Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon provide another rare opportunity to look into the mind of a genius. Their extensive notes lift the veil between real events in the writer's life—such as the death of his father—and the words that spill out onto the page in magnificent grotesquerie. Mansions, universities, laboratories, and dank New England boneyards appear also as the haunts where Lovecraft's characters confront the fabulous and fantastic, or—like the narrator in "Herbert West—Reanimator"—dig up fresh corpses. Richly illustrated and scrupulously researched, this extraordinary work adds exciting levels of meaning to Lovecraft's chilling tales . . . and increases our wonder at the magic that transforms life into a great writer's art.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy


Scott McMillin - 1973
    The close relationship between theater and society during the period continues to be the focus of Contexts. The editor offers contemporary discussions of the following topics: On Wit, Humour, and Laughter: 1660 1775, The Collier Controversy: 1698, Steele and Dennis: On The Man of Mode and The Conscious Lovers, and Stages, Actors, and Audiences. Criticism has been revised to reflect approaches in scholarly interpretations. Two seminal essays from the First Edition have been retained Charles Lamb s appreciation of the period s comedy and L. C. Knights s condemnation of it. New essays by Jocelyn Powell, Harriet Hawkins, Elin Diamond, Martin Price, and Laura Brown have been added."