"An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how...

"Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progress of the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction, David Gates argues that “intensity of imagination is the gift from which Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear,...

Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, Les miserables is not only superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean-Valjean struggled to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity, in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance, became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed.

First published serially in 1897, Henry James's novel "What Maisie Knew" is the story of Beale and Ida Farange and their young daughter, Maisie. When Maisie is very young, Beale and Ida divorce and the court orders that the custody of Maisie be split between the two. Spending six months with each, Maisie finds herself in an unstable position as her immoral and frivolous parents use Maisie to intensify their animosity for each other. The novel follows...

A fiftyish American is dispatched to Europe by a rich widow on a mission to bring back her wayward son who is enraptured by a French woman.

In turn-of-the-century London, an undercover, counter-revolutionary mole provokes a radical group he has penetrated into an act of violence that will bring about its own destruction. The scene is turn-of-the-century London. The characters include idealistic revolutionaries, ruthless ideologues, bureaucratic police, and at the center, an undercover, counter revolutionary mole whose mission is to provoke the radical group he has penetrated into a monstrous...

"This vivid travelogue conveys John Muir's life-changing adventure in the Sierra Nevada. Penniless but itching to travel, Muir took a job relocating Pat Delaney's sheep from California's Central Valley to the Yosemite region. When he set out in the summer of 1869, Muir, whose closest previous experience was walking a thousand miles from Indiana to Florida, wasn't sure that "the silly sheep" would make it through the wilds of the mountains. He was...

A club-footed orphan struggles for independence, his intellectual development and his attempt to become an artist.

Profiles the people of a small Midwestern town in the early 1900s, revealing the consequences of human misunderstanding. This short story cycle is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man; the style of the work progresses as the complexity of his life increases.

"Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth. But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still...