When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousin’ Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.
The Spoon River Anthology is a collection of 245 free-verse epitaphs in the form of monologues. They are spoken from beyond the grave by former residents of a dreary, confining small town like those Masters himself had known during his Illinois boyhood.
An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, it is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated treatment of a variety of issues ranging from religion to industrialisation to community.
An age-old vendetta between two powerful families erupts into bloodshed.
Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.
The works of Rabindranath Tagore consist of poems, novels, short stories, dramas, paintings, drawings, and music that Bengali poet and Brahmo philosopher Rabindranath Tagore created over his lifetime.
Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party.
Mrs. Bennet hunts for husbands for her five daughters, who offer no help themselves.
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The poem concerns the biblical story of the fall of man; the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Iago is Othello's malevolent ensign, who maliciously stokes his master's jealousy until the usually stoic Moor kills his beloved wife in a fit of blind rage.
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is a revolutionary work that proposes the theory of evolution by natural selection.
It's a classic rags-to-riches story about an orphan who has to find his way through a city full of criminals, and avoid being corrupted.
Oedipus the King unfolds as a murder mystery, a political thriller, and a psychological whodunit. Throughout this mythic story of patricide and incest, Sophocles emphasizes the irony of a man determined to track down, expose, and punish an assassin, who turns out to be himself.
The autobiographical account of the life of Frederick Douglass, describing his life, his freedom, and how slavery effects slaves and slave owners.
The book details his experiences growing up in China, his journey to America, and his struggles to adapt to a new culture and way of life.
My Ántonia is a classic tale of pioneer life in the American Midwest.
T. S. Eliot's most famous drama, a retelling of the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury
Mrs Dalloway is an assured socialite. Yet as she prepares for her party on a hot London day in June 1923, she feels the terror of existence and the pull of death.
A literary classic that wasn't recognized for its merits until decades after its publication, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick tells the tale of a whaling ship and its crew, who are carried progressively further out to sea by the fiery Captain Ahab. Obsessed with killing the massive whale, which had previously bitten off Ahab's leg, the seasoned seafarer steers his ship to confront the creature, while the rest of the shipmates, including the young narrator, Ishmael, and the harpoon expert, Queequeg, must contend with their increasingly dire journey.
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides. It is based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and was first produced in 431 BC as part of a trilogy; the two other plays have not survived.
Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighborhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation.
Three witches tell the Scottish general Macbeth that he will be King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth kills the king, becomes the new king, and kills more people out of paranoia.
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young women in nineteenth-century New England.
Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War.
Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman.
