Here the protagonist is Anson Hunter, a well-to-do young New Yorker, who would seem to have the whole world ahead of him and the streets paved in gold.By his early twenties, he has found his ideal woman as well: the exquisite -- and very rich -- Paula Legendre. On the surface, Paula would not seem to be the type of girl that would exert such a pull on Anson. Anson seems to have a lot of oats to sow, and Fitzgerald describes Paula as being "conservative and rather proper." But he is, nonetheless, obsessed by her, not because she represents the money he wants -- after all, he already has enough of his own -- but because she represents the social system that justifies his existence. In his world, responsible older men (like his uncle Robert) hold the reins of government and business; chaste and proper women (like Paula and her mother) maintain the rules of propriety and etiquette; and, until they get old enough to assume the mantle of responsible older manhood, playboys like Anson play. That is all Anson thinks he is doing right now. Just as he sees in himself the undeveloped kernel of a future leader, he sees in Paula the kernel of a future society matron. He thinks they would make a good pair.What he doesn't realize, however, is that his virtually unlimited wealth has within it the power to corrupt him, and it's already doing a good job. His first problem is that he sees himself as superior. He carries himself that way; Fitzgerald says that ". . . He had a confident charm and a certain brusque style, and the upper-class men who passed him on the street knew without being told that he was a rich boy and had gone to one of the best schools. . . . Anson accepted without reservation the world of high finance and high extravagance, of divorce and dissipation, of snobbery and of privilege."Anson doesn't see any reason why, being young and rich, he has to play by anyone else's rules. If he wants to drink himself under the table, why shouldn't he have the right to do that? And regardless of where or with whom he happens to be when he acts drunkenly, or obscenely, or boorishly, why should he apologize for his behavior? He's rich, and the rich make the rules, don't they? People should just accept his natural superiority, regardless of how he behaves.It would seem very difficult to sympathize with a character who holds these beliefs and acts upon them so wholeheartedly; but we do, because we sense that he is headed for a fall. His first mistake lies in his inability to commit himself to Paula. Fate gave Anson every opportunity to take Paula as his own. In doing so, he would be asserting his adulthood; he would be taking his place alongside the other well-to-do movers and shakers of New York. But, true to his status as a tragic hero, he constantly tries to defy fate. The role ordained for him is to be a wealthy, responsible scion of business, a lord of some suburban manor, the benefactor of deserving charities; for far too long, he refuses. Anson doesn't want to grow up. He gets a job, "entering a brokerage house, joining half a dozen clubs, [and] dancing late." Even as he moves up the corporate ladder, there is still that part of him that is unable to give up the schoolboy carousing, the indifference toward the responsibilities that fate has laid upon his shoulders as the wages of being rich.His second mistake is in self-righteously condemning his aunt Edna for having an affair. Anson, of all people, ought to be the last person to condemn anyone for moral lapses, and certainly not lapses of the heart; Anson's heart is far more lapsed than Edna and Cary's. He himself had just broken up with Dolly Karger, whom he dated all the while knowing she meant nothing to him, and her careless behavior merely mirrored his own. He has no right to threaten to expose Edna and Cary, and he is thus directly responsible for Cary's suicide. But "Anson never blamed himself for his part in the affair [because he believed] the situation which brought it about had not been of his making." But there, of course, he is wrong.His third mistake lies in the belief that when he is ready, Paula will be waiting. He is disturbed when he hears she has married someone else, but, as we have pointed out, Anson lives in a world characterized by "divorce and dissipation", and he seems to feel Paula will come around on his timetable. What this basically amounts to is a belief that fate is on his side; it must be, because he was born rich. But the overriding lesson of Anson's life is that of those to whom much is given, much is asked. Anson does not seem to realize that payback is a lifelong process.The rich boy --The bridal party --The last of the belles.

    But despite its masterly control, this startlingly modern tale is also a simmering, rebel cri de coeur unleashed by a writer who was herself unappreciated in her own time. The combination of these attributes make this edgy novella a moving and suspenseful homage to the power of literature itself.The Art of The Novella SeriesToo short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

    

    AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."

    "Benito Cereno" -- a subversive satire -- of grows out of a true story of mutiny among the enslaved . . .1."The Piazza"2."Bartleby the Scrivener" (first published in Putnam's November and December 1853)3."Benito Cereno" (first published in Putnam's October, November and December 1855)4."The Lightning-Rod Man" (first published in Putnam's August 1854)5."The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles" (first published in Putnam's March, April, and May 1854)6."The Bell-Tower" (first published in Putnam's August 1855)

    Over the next two decades, he returned to these characters again and again, tracing their years together raising children, finding moments of intermittent happiness, and facing the heartbreak of infidelity and estrangement. Seventeen Maples stories were collected in 1979 in a paperback edition titled Too Far to Go, prompted by a television adaptation. Now those stories appear in hardcover for the first time, with the addition of a later story, “Grandparenting,” which returns us to the Maples’s lives long after their wrenching divorce.

    Considered at the time to be immature, it was a failure. Since that time it has come to be considered one of the earliest American realistic novels. Maggie is the story of a pretty child of the Bowery which is written with the same intensity and vivid scenes of his masterpiece -- The Red Badge of Courage. In her short life, Maggie "blossomed in a mud puddle", was driven to prostitution, and died by her own hand while still a teenager.Crane, who worked as a free lance reporter, was in many ways addicted to the low life of the cities. He died at the age of 29.

    The work takes its title from the mythological God Dagon, and tells a disturbing story, happened years before to a man with the obsession of suicide. Before throwing himself from the window of his attic, this man writes some notes related to his mental state. Then, he began to recall an old story that happened in the years of the First World War: suddenly, he finds himself a prisoner of a German ship in the Pacific Ocean. After only five days, the protagonist manages to escape with a raft. Wandering for days, adrift in the sea, one afternoon he finds himself stranded on a disquieting and apparently deserted island. Immediately he notices that in the mud, a lot of rotting fish are stranded...

    F Collier & Son published a five volume collection of Poe's work in hardback in 1903. This is volume 1, with a frontspiece in color from a painting by Arthur E. Becher.contains:Edgar Allan Poe, An Appreciation, by W.H.R.Life of Poe, by James Russell LowellDeath of Poe, by N. P. WillisThe Unparalled Adventures of One Hans PfallThe Gold BugFour Beasts in OneThe Murders in the Rue Morgue (Audio version)The Mystery of Marie RogêtThe Balloon HoaxMS. Found in a BottleThe Oval Portrait

    The "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts," "Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk," and "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab" chronicle the exploits of Prince Florizel of Bohemia and Colonel Geraldine through some of 19th-century London's most dangerous haunts.

    Alexander's relationship with Hilda erodes his sense of honor and eventually proves disastrous when a bridge he is constructing begins to collapse. Alexander's Bridge is an instructive, thought-provoking study of a man's growing awareness of his loss of integrity. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    Anti-Gerasone halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it; as a result, America now suffers from severe overpopulation and shortages of food and resources. With the exception of the very wealthy, most of the population appears to survive on a diet of foods made from processed seaweed and sawdust. Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irascibly at the five-foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings. Every thirty seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his cane-tip and shout, "Hell, we did that a hundred years ago!" Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, where they had been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity--privacy--were obliged to take seats in the back row, behind about a dozen relatives with whom they shared the house. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed, by pre-anti-gerasone standards, to be about the same age--somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since. "Next one shoots off his big bazoo while the TV's on is gonna find hisself cut off without a dollar--" his voice suddenly softened and sweetened--"when they wave that checkered flag at the Indianapolis Speedway, and old Gramps gets ready for the Big Trip Up Yonder." He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.

    This volume collects many of his most famous short works and is a fitting compendium of his literary achievements for newcomers or longtime Hawthorne fans alike.

    The animals seem intelligent enough, and Red recruits Slim to help him train the odd creatures to do circus tricks. But the boys are about to discover their playthings aren’t exactly animals—and they’ve allowed themselves to be caught for a reason . . . Youth is a riveting tale from the author of countless classics, including I, Robot and the Foundation Trilogy, which won the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series.

    His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced the storm yet, he doesn't believe that it really can be much of a problem, and if they sailed around it, they would waste time. Jukes is shocked at the decision, but respects MacWhirr's conviction. They keep their course, setting sail to go directly through the storm. Though the crew objects, Jukes and MacWhirr are convinced they each made the right call, but disastrous outcomes are inevitable when facts are ignored. Now in the heart of a great typhoon, MacWhirr and Jukes must work together to save their crew. Facing tuberous winds, powerful waves, and the sea's worst moods, the combination of MacWhirr's rationalism and Jukes' imagination prove to be vital.Based off of events in Joseph Conrad's sea life, Typhoon is an allegorical work that explores consequences of making decisions without considering facts or other perspectives, while hailing the importance of tolerance and collaboration. With satirical characters and a thrilling setting, Typhoon is both thought-provoking and adventurous. First published in 1902, Joseph Conrad's has been reprinted in many publications, including literary magazines and literary collections. Typhoon depicts a story of high stakes and adventure with a uniquely observant narrative style, shouldering Conrad's stylistic legacy of masterful prose.Previously published among other literary works, this edition allows Joseph Conrad's Typhoon stand on its own. Now with a new, eye-catching cover design and printed in a modern, easy-to-read font, Typhoon is accessible for a contemporary audience. Even nearly one-hundred and twenty years later, Conrad's adventurous, allegorical work is still relevant and intriguing as it acknowledges the various personalities required for human success and survival.