Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.`Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine''s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy.''Considered the most light-hearted and satirical of Austen''s novels, Northanger Abbey tells the story of an unlikely young heroine Catherine Morland. While staying in Bath, Catherine meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor who invite her to their family estate, Northanger Abbey. A fan of Gothic Romance ...

Daisy Miller is one of Henry James's most attractive heroines: she represents youth and frivolity. As a tourist in Italy, her American freedom and freshness of spirit come up against the corruption and hypocrisy of European manners. From its first publication, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have quarrelled about her, defending or attacking the liberties that Daisy takes and the conventions that she ignores. All three tales in this collection, Daisy Miller, An International Episode and Lad...

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.Considered one of Shakespeare’s most rich and enduring plays, the depiction of its hero Hamlet as he vows to avenge the murder of his father by his brother Claudius is both powerful and complex. As Hamlet tries to find out the truth of the situation, his troubled relationship with his mother comes to the fore, as do the paradoxes in his personality. A play of carefully crafted conflict and tragedy, Shakespeare’s intricate dialogue cont...

Sometimes, animals must make long or difficult journeys. They can do this to find food, run from danger, or have babies.Ladybird Readers is a graded reading series of traditional tales, popular characters, modern stories, and non-fiction, written for young learners of English as a foreign or second language.Beautifully illustrated and carefully written, the series combines the best of Ladybird content with the structured language progression that will help children develop their reading, writing...

About 1,000 years ago, there were men called knights. They lived in castles. It took many years to become a knight!Readers is a graded reading series of traditional tales, popular characters, modern stories, and non-fiction, written for young learners of English as a foreign or second language. Beautifully illustrated and carefully written, the series combines the best of Ladybird content with the structured language progression that will help children develop their reading, writing, speaking, l...

The ponies were at the Pony Games! Soarin hurt his wing. Did Rainbow Dash fly with the fastest ponies, or with her friends?Ladybird Readers is a graded reading series of traditional tales, popular characters, modern stories, and non-fiction, written for young learners of English as a foreign or second language.Beautifully illustrated and carefully written, the series combines the best of Ladybird content with the structured language progression that will help children develop their reading, writ...

Victor Frankenstein was a brilliant scientist. He wanted to create something beautiful, but he created something terrible - a monster!Ladybird Readers is a graded reading series of traditional tales, popular characters, modern stories, and non-fiction, written for young learners of English as a foreign or second language. Recommended for children aged 4+, the eight levels of Readers and Activity Books follow the CEFR framework (Pre-A1 to A2+) and include language activities that help develop key...

All animals need to eat to live. Some animals eat other animals, and these predators must do some amazing things to hunt their prey!Ladybird Readers is a graded reading series of traditional tales, popular characters, modern stories, and non-fiction, written for young learners of English as a foreign or second language. Recommended for children aged 4+, the eight levels of Readers and Activity Books follow the CEFR framework (Pre-A1 to A2+) and include language activities that help develop key s...

With this intensely moving short novel, Edith Wharton set out `to draw life as it really was' in the lonely villages and desolate farms of the harsh New England mountains. Through the eyes of a visitor from the city, trapped for a winter in snowbound Starkfield, readers glimpse the hidden histories of this austere and beautiful land. Piecing together the story of monosyllabic Ethan Frome, his grim wife, Zeena, and Mattie Silver, her charming cousin, Wharton explores psychological dead-lock:frust...

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic detective chiller. It features the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and dripping jaws" which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around the isolated Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry, the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this devilish spectre the manifestation of the family curse? Or is Si...

Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulfilment seems to lie in his relationship with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead. But life as social outcasts proves undermining, and when tragedy occurs, Sue has no resilience and Jude is left in despair.Hardy's portrait of Jude, the idealist and dreamer who is a prisoner of his own physical natu...

Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her.

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial.The text may seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature.Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. In h...

Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.Henry James described Middlemarch as a `treasurehouse of detail' while Virgin...

Othello is one of the most powerful of Shakespeare's tragedies. It is a thrilling drama about love and hate, trust and betrayal, jealousy and revenge. With its complex themes, and compelling language, it speaks directly to today's audiences and sparks vigorous debate. This new edition includes the complete text with explanatory notes and a full introduction that describes the setting, summarises the plot and profiles the main characters. It discusses Shakespeare's language and the play's themes,...

In this new edition of Shakespeare's most controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice, the merchant Antonio - on behalf of his friend Bassano - seeks a loan from Shylock. The loan is required to impress an heiress. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender whom Antonio has always treated with the utmost contempt, and Antonio is to honour the debt with a pound of the merchant's own flesh. When Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock prepares to take his gruesome revenge - only to find that the law is a knife...

William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a comedy. In medieval and Tudor times, the 'Twelfth Night' was the end of a winter festival that started on 31 October (All Hallows Eve, or as we know it today, Halloween). Mulled cider was drunk, and special pastries baked, and a king and queen (who could have been servants in charge for the night) ruled the festival until the clock struck midnight. People expected a topsy-turvy evening, with singing and clowning about, when the normal order of things was ...

The drama of Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous of all tragedies. It tells the story of two 'star-crossed' lovers whose young lives are cruelly cut short because of a bitter feud between their families. Since it was published in 1597, Romeo and Juliet has been performed all round the world, made into box office recordbreaking films, ballets and adapted by Leonard Bernstein for his world-famous musical, West Side Story. Shakespeare was young when he wrote the play, and the exquisite langu...

Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's capabilities. When the wife of a prominent surgeon dies suddenly in the hospital emergency room of Mercy Hospital in Milwaukee, USA, Dr Maxine Cassidy suspects murder. Maxine is determined to find the killer and starts an investigation of her own. However, when someone tries to kill her, she begins to ...

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suici...