Heidi
Written by Johanna Spyri in 1889/1880. Heidi is a beloved book for children and has since been read and enjoyed for more than a century.
Written by Johanna Spyri in 1889/1880. Heidi is a beloved book for children and has since been read and enjoyed for more than a century.
"A Pair of Blue Eyes" is the third novel by Thomas Hardy, and the first to be published in his own name. First published in 1873, the book tells the story of a love triangle between a young woman and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Elfride Swancourt, a vicar's daughter living in a remote corner of En...
Little House in the Big Woods is the first installment in the classic Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls-Wilder. Also, although it is categorized as 'historical fiction', it is not fiction. I am trying to figure out how to add it to 'classics' as it is not available for me.
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar) is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. ...
The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals (dinosaurs and other extinct creatures) still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine and illustrated by New-Ze...
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional county of Wessex in rural south-west England. It d...
The Odyssey (Greek: Ὀδύσσεια Odýsseia] in Classical Attic) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature; th...
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an 1850 novel in a historical setting, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book is considered to be his "masterwork". Set in 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter thro...
Lady Susan Vernon, a beautiful and charming recent widow, visits her brother- and sister-in-law, Charles and Catherine Vernon, with little advance notice at Churchill, their country residence. Catherine is far from pleased, as Lady Susan had tried to prevent her marriage to Charles and her unwanted guest has been desc...
"Twelfth Night; or, What You Will" is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601-02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria and she comes ashore with the help of a captain. She loses contact with her twin bro...
The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, which recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos an...
Simply a collection of poems by my favorite poet and author, the lovely Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). **None of these poems belong to me (obviously).**
"The Count of Monte Cristo" focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment. However, his plans have devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty. Cover by xflowerpetalsx
The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in L...
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and Hippolyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors, who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set.
Fanny Price is a young girl from a large and relatively poor family, who is taken from them at age 10 to be raised by her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas, a baronet, and Lady Bertram, of Mansfield Park. She had previously lived with her own parents, Lieut. Price and his wife, Frances (Fanny), Lady Bertram's sister. Sh...
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published privately in 1928 in Italy, and in 1929 in France and Australia. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books. Penguin w...
The Phantom of the Opera (French: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois from 23 September 1909, to 8 January 1910. It was published in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte. The novel is partly inspired by historical event...
A Christmas Carol tells the story of bitter and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and his ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation resulting from supernatural visits by Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.
The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naively unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of the...
Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, "Dracula" tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
"Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The themes and settings of Through the Looking-Glass make it a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May (4 May), uses frequent changes in size as a plot device...
"Moby-Dick" tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bi...
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is relayed by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity while simultaneously describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls...
Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, a hypochondriac who is excessively concerned for the health and safety of his lo...
"Anna Karenina" is the tragedy of married aristocrat and socialite Anna Karenina and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story starts when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation, though with less tolerance for h...
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children.