"Humanist, skeptic, acute observer of himself and others, Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) was the first to use the term 'essay' to refer to the form he pioneered and he has remained one of its most famous practitioners. He reflected on the great themes of existence in his masterly and engaging writings, his subjects ranging from proper conversation and good reading, to the raising of children and the endurance of pain, from solitude, destiny, time and...

"Ever since its first flowering, jazz has had a powerful influence on American poetry; this scintillating anthology offers a treasury of poems that are as varied and as vital as the music that inspired them. From the Harlem Renaissance to the beat movement, from the poets of the New York school to the contemporary poetry scene, the jazz aesthetic has been a compelling literary force -- one that Jazz Poems makes palpable. We hear it in the poems of...

A collection of novels by the Russian-born author of Suite Franc?aise," who died in Auschwitz in 1942, features David Golder," a parable about greed and loneliness, as well as three novels available in English for the first time.

Eighteen classic short stories that form a luminous chronicle of the life and times of one marriage in all its rich emotional complexity—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

In 1956, Updike published a story, “Snowing in Greenwich Village,” about a young couple, Joan and Richard Maple, at the beginning of their marriage. Over the next two...

A collection of two classic novels by novelist, E.M. Forster, of English women visiting Italy, including "A Room With a View," and "Where Angels Fear to Tread."

"The groundbreaking novel by one of the most important twentieth-century American writers--now in an Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics hardcover edition. Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair...