George Stade
1) Persuasion
Author
Language
English
Description
Austen's last novel is the crowning achievement of her matchless career. Her heroine, Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity, breeding and great depth of emotion, stands in stark contrast to the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England. Includes a new Introduction by Margaret Drabble, famed novelist and editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Language.
3) Lord Jim
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A young Englishman branded as a coward seeks personal redemption for an act of selfishness.
4) Middlemarch
Author
Language
English
Description
Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and, the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.
6) Oliver Twist
Author
Language
English
Description
Oliver Twist is a classic tale of a boy of unknown parentage born in a workhouse and brought up under the cruel conditions to which pauper children were exposed in the Victorian England. With this novel, Dickens did not merely write a topical satire on the workhouse system and the role of the 1834 New Poor Law in fostering criminality. He created a moral fable about the survival of good, a romance, and a gripping story in which he exploited suspense...
7) Jane Eyre
Author
Language
English
Description
"Jane Eyre is poor, parentless and plain. Her future looks bleak. Jane's aunt and cousin detest her. Life at Lowood School is cruel and dangerous. What inner strength can the young Jane find? Seeking adventure and independence, Jane sets out alone. Is her new master, Mr Rochester, all that he seems? What secret does he keep locked in the third storey, where strange laughter haunts the nights? In her search for affection, Jane faces horror, cruelty,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
A dark tale of love, crime, and revenge set in colonial New England, The scarlet letter revolves around a forbidden act of passion that alters the lives of three members of a Puritan community: Hester Prynne, who is forced to wear the letter "A" and bears the punishment of her sin in humble silence; the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a respected minister who is tormented by hidden guilt; and the malevolent Roger Chillingworth, Hester's vengeful husband....
Author
Language
English
Description
He does not, here or anywhere else in his writing, attempt to provide any moral justification for ruthlessness, but merely says that a leader will always be judged by his people based on the end result of his actions. He was very pragmatic in his outlook on princely rule, and sought to explain the actions that would and would not be effective in gaining and maintaining the rule of a nation.
11) Treasure Island
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune as well as great danger.
12) Swann's way
Author
Language
English
Description
Presents the first book of Proust's monumental work "Remembrance of Things Past", introducing such themes as the destructive force of obsessive love, the allure and the consequences of transgressive sex, and the selective eye that shapes memories.