Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Formats
Description
"The story opens when an unemployed farmhand, Michael Henchard, sells his wife, Susan, and daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, while in a drunken stupor at a fair, for five guineas to a sailor called Newson. On sobering up the following day, Henchard is filled with remorse, swears a twenty year abstinence from alcohol and begins a search for his family. Eighteen years later the reformed Henchard has become the mayor of Casterbridge, but his past is set to...
Author
Series
Appears on list
Formats
Description
'Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's ... was more striking' As the title of Jane Austen's first published novel suggests, the difference between two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, lies not only in their appearance but also in their temperament. Yet Sense and Sensibility not only contrasts Elinor's good sense,...
Author
Formats
Description
Growing Up! Young David Copperfield, orphaned as a child, abandoned by a vicious stepfather, must learn to make a life for himself. In Charles Dickens' brilliant novel, we learn of David's early harsh years... his adoption by his eccentric aunt... his betrayal by a childhood friend... the pressures of starting a career... immature, young love... and finally career success and personal happiness. Charles Dickens' sensitive portrayal of David's early...
Author
Description
This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...
5) The Duchess
Author
Formats
Description
Angélique Latham has grown up at magnificent Belgrave Castle under the loving tutelage of her father, the Duke of Westerfield, after the death of her aristocratic French mother. But when he dies, her half-brothers brutally turn her out, denying her very existence. Angélique has a keen mind, remarkable beauty, and an envelope of money her father pressed upon her. To survive, she will need all her resources--and one bold stroke of fortune. Unable...
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
Description
When Elizabeth Bennet meets Fitzwilliam Darcy for the first time at a ball, she writes him off as an arrogant and obnoxious man. He not only acts like an insufferable snob, but she also overhears him rejecting the very idea of asking her for a dance! As life pits them against each other again and again, Darcy begins to fall for Elizabeth's wit and intelligence and Elizabeth begins to question her feelings about Darcy. But when Darcy saves her youngest...
7) Jane Eyre
Author
Series
Description
"Jane Eyre recounts the story of a governess who, having suffered during childhood both at her aunt's house and then at school, finds herself falling for her new employer, Mr Rochester. But Mr Rochester and his home are not all they seem and when secrets come to light, Jane is forced to abandon all her hopes and dreams."--Amazon.
Author
Series
Appears on list
Description
Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860...
9) Silas Marner
Author
Series
Formats
Description
What is the value of human relations, the connection between souls? In Silas Marner, George Eliot explores this question in the story of a reclusive weaver in a small English town who learns to trade his love of gold for the love of those around him. Though he started life as a religious man, a heartbreaking betrayal drove Silas Marner to become a recluse whose only companions were his gold coins. But one day, his gold is stolen and a golden-haired...
10) Middlemarch
Author
Formats
Description
Dorothea Brooke is a young woman of fervent ideals who yearns to effect social change yet faces reisistance from the society she inhabits.
Author
Description
Young Copperfield's life is happy at first, but he is forced to run away from his home following the arrival of his stepfather. David is then adopted by his aunt, Betsey Trotwood, sent to school at Canterbury and meets the unctuous Uriah Heep, whose activities lead eventually to David's self-discovery.
Author
Pub. Date
1985
Description
First published anonymously in 1872, "Under the Greenwood Tree" is Thomas Hardy's story of the romantic entanglement between church musician, Dick Dewey, and the attractive new school mistress, Fancy Day. A pleasant romantic tale set in the Victorian era, "Under the Greenwood Tree" is the first of Hardy's "Wessex" novels and is one of his most gentle and pastoral stories. Dick falls in love with the beautiful and talented Fancy the moment he meets...
Author
Series
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Wuthering Heights tells the story of a romance between two youngsters: Catherine Earnshaw and an orphan boy, Heathcliff. This tale of hauntings, passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of the dark side of love.With an Afterword by David PinchingDesigned to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality...
14) Oliver Twist
Author
Series
Formats
Description
The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements...
15) Mansfield Park
Author
Series
Formats
Description
Mansfield Park is a study of three families - the Bertrams, the Crawfords, and the Prices - with the isolated figure of the heroine, Fanny price, at its centre. Fanny's quiet passivity, her steadfast loyalty, and love for the son of the family who regard her as the poor relation, and who have taken her under their roof, are among the qualities whose true worth is not appreciated until they are tried against the brilliant and witty Mary and Henry Crawford,...
Author
Series
Description
Follow the adventures of the four endearing March sisters as they journey into young womanhood. There's Meg, at sixteen the oldest, who longs for a rich life full of beautiful things and free from materail want. Next comes Jo, the willful and headstrong tomboy, who plans to become a writer and who retires to the attic when "genius burns." Gentle, music-loving Beth, "the pet of the family," is delicate and sweet. And fashionable Amy, the youngest of...
Author
Description
The final novel by Charles Dickens, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", was unfinished at the time of his death in 1870. The novel revolves around John Jasper, choirmaster and opium addict, who is the guardian of his orphaned nephew Edwin Drood. Before the death of his parents, Edwin was promised to marry Rosa Bud, another orphan, but their affections have cooled upon reaching adulthood. Rosa has also attracted the affections of Jasper, her teacher, as...
18) The warden
Author
Series
Pub. Date
1989
Description
The first novel of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, this work introduces the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and many of its clerical inhabitants. Originally published in 1855, the story centers on Mr. Septimus Harding who has been granted the comfortable wardenship of Hiram's Hospital, an almshouse from a medieval charity of the diocese. Mr. Harding, a fundamentally good man and an excellent musician, conscientiously fulfills his...
Author
Description
"For the character of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, Dickens drew on a tragedy in his own life, the death at the age of seventeen of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth. Five years later he wrote, 'the desire to be buried next her is as strong upon me now ... and I know (for I don't think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never diminish.'" "The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset...
20) The Forsyte saga
Author
Appears on list
Description
The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commerical upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. This, the only critical edition of Galsworthy's popular masterpiece, contains detailed notes which are vital to the saga, explaining particularly the contemporary artistic and literary allusions, and slang of the time.