The Arthurian tales of chivalry, romance, and tragedy have left a lasting impact on English literature. This collection contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (trans. 1898), The Lady of Shallot (1833), The Founding of the Round Table (trans. 1914), The Passing of Arthur (trans. 1914), The Morte D'arthur (1914), The Lady of the Fountain (trans. 1877), Arthurian Songs: 1. Avalon (1894), and Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery (1858).

    Includes "The Cretan Bull," "The Horses of Diomedes," "The Stymphalean Birds," and "The Augean Stables." 2 cassettes.

    Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from fellow residents of her quaint English village, writing a revealing novel that features the townsfolk as characters. The smashing bestseller is published under the pseudonym John Smith, which is a good thing because villagers recognize the truth. But what really turns her world around is when events in real life start mimicking events in the book. Funny, charming, and insightful, this novel reveals what happens when people see themselves through someone else's eyes.

    

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    

    I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead...

    

    Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble ClassicsNew introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholarsBiographies of the authorsChronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural eventsFootnotes and endnotesSelective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the workComments by other famous authorsStudy questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further readingIndices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. When Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855 as a slim tract of twelve untitled poems, Walt Whitman was still an unknown. But his self-published volume soon became a landmark of poetry, introducing the world to a new and uniquely American form. The "father of free verse," Whitman drew upon the cadence of simple, even idiomatic speech to "sing" such themes as democracy, sexuality, and frank autobiography.Throughout his prolific writing career, Whitman continually revised his work and expanded Leaves of Grass, which went through nine, substantively different editions, culminating in the final, authoritative "Death-bed Edition." Now the original 1855 version and the "Death-bed Edition" of 1892 have been brought together in a single volume, allowing the reader to experience the total scope of Whitman's genius, which produced love lyrics, visionary musings, glimpses of nightmare and ecstasy, celebrations of the human body and spirit, and poems of loneliness, loss, and mourning.Alive with the mythical strength and vitality that epitomized the American experience in the nineteenth century, Leaves of Grass continues to inspire, uplift, and unite those who read it. Karen Karbiener received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and currently teaches at New York University. She also wrote the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Frankenstein.

    He cleaned out the pocket before sunset, the richer for several thousand dollars. "'You brought me luck, ' said Tappan, to the little gray burro staggering round its mother. 'Your name is Jenet. You're Tappan's burro, an' I reckon he'll stick to you.'"--from the book Prospecting was a lonely business for Tappan, but his burro Jenet was good company, and more. She knew the trails and waterholes better than Tappan, from the scorching heat and poison air of Death Valley to the blinding blizzards of Arizona's mountains. Jenet tracked with him, faithful, his only friend. And he repaid her loyalty with a final, supreme effort of heart, will, and spirit.

    William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome chronicling "my personal rollercoaster"--or rather, "not so much a rollercoaster", but a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child." From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef executive and his Uraguayan secretary, through his years at a Norfolk public school and Oxford, Mountstuart traces his haphazard development as a writer. Early and easy success is succeeded by a long half-century of mediocrity, disappointments and setbacks, both personal and professional, leading him to multiple failed marriages, internment, alcoholism, and abject poverty.Mountstuart's sorry tale is also the story of a British way of life in inexorable decline, as his journey takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, 1930s Americans in Paris, wartime espionage, New York avant garde art, even the Baader-Meinhof gang--all with a stellar supporting cast. The most sustained and best moment comes mid-book, as Mountstuart gets caught up in one of Britain's murkier wartime secrets, in the company of the here truly despicable Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Elsewhere Boyd occasionally misplaces his tongue too obviously in his cheek--the Wall Street Crash is trailed with truly crashing inelegance--but overall Any Human Heart is a witty, inventive and ultimately moving novel. Boyd succeeds in conjuring not only a compelling 20th century but also, in the hapless Logan Mountstuart, an anti-hero who achieves something approaching passive greatness. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

     At the beginning of the first novel, French Legionnaires find one of their fortresses manned by dead men. Who could have done it? A flashback unravels the mystery of the three English Geste brothers. A classic, rip-roaring tale of adventure... This volume also contains 36 short stories of the Foreign Legion, grouped in four well known collection (now in one volume!): STEPSONS OF FRANCE Ten Little Legionaries A la Ninon de L'Enclos An Officer and--a Liar The Deserter Five Minutes "Here are Ladies" The MacSnorrt "Belzébuth" The Quest Moonshine The Coward of the Legion Mahdev Rao The Merry Liars GOOD GESTES What's in a Name A Gentleman of Colour David and His Incredible Jonathan The McSnorrt Reminiscent Buried Treasure If Wishes were Horses The Devil and Digby Geste The Mule Presentiments Dreams Come True PORT O' MISSING MEN The Return of Odo Klemens The Betrayal of Odo Klemens The Life of Odo Klemens Moon-rise Moon-shadows Moon-set FLAWED BLADES No. 187017 Bombs Mastic--and Drastic The Death Post E Tenebris Nemesis The Hunting of Henri

    Opening with a chapter on how Emily BrontA's masterpiece was received in the nineteenth century, the "Guide" links together a selection of extracts that demonstrate the major critical developments of the twentieth century -- from humanism through formalism to deconstruction. Within this general framework, subsequent chapters focus on psychoanalytic readings, source studies, readings using discourse theory, work on dissemination, and political readings from Marxist, postcolonialist, and feminist points of view.

    I. Lonoff, he soon finds himself enmeshed in the great Jewish writer's domestic life, with all its complexity, artifice and drive for artistic truth. As Nathan sits in breathlessly awkward conversation with his idol, a glimpse of a dark-haired beauty through a closing doorway leaves him reeling. He soon learns that the entrancing vision is Amy Bellette, but her position in the Lonoff household - student? mistress? - remains tantalisingly unclear. Over a disturbed and confusing dinner, Nathan gleans snippets of Amy's haunting Jewish background, and begins to draw his own fantastical conclusions...

    When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever.