Beginner-Friendly Classics to Read at the Mearns-McPherson Library (HerCampus UVic)

Beginner Friendly Classics to Read at McPherson Library by HerCampus UVic (November 18, 2024).


Updated November 25, 2024
University of Victoria Libraries  Tina Bebbington, Anthropology and Newspaper Librarian, UVic Libraries
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Animal farm
Orwell, George
Paper Book
George Orwell's modern fable on the way power corrupts is as apt as ever in the twenty-first century.
Animal farm : pastoralism and politics
Smyer, Richard I.
Paper Book
Animal farm and Nineteen eighty-four
Calder, Jenni.
Paper Book
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you...
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you really...
L'e?tranger
Camus, Albert
Paper Book
The Stranger, unabridged.
The stranger
Camus, Albert
Paper Book
The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus, now in a striking American English translation, The Stranger remains vital for its unsettling insights into the impossibility of moral certainty in the face of violence. "Matthew Ward has done Camus and us a great...
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The great Gatsby
Bloom, Harold.
Paper Book
-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature -- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism -- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
Gatsby : the cultural history of the great American novel
Batchelor, Bob.
Ebook
In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald produced his third novel, a slim work for which he had high expectations. Despite such hopes, the novel received mixed reviews and lackluster sales. Over the decades, however, the reputation of The Great Gatsby has grown and millions of copies have been sold. One of...
Gatsby le magnifique de
Fitzgerald, Francis Scott
Ebook
Great Gatsby
Paper Book
For use in schools and libraries only. A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she is married.
Great Gatsby
Paper Book
The Great Gatsbyis widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of American fiction. It tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsby's grand effort to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, the rich girl who embodies for him the promise of the American dream. Deeply romantic in its concern with self making, ideal...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's account of the American dream gone awry, has established itself as one of the most popular and widely read novels in the English language. Until now, however, no edition has printed the novel exactly as Fitzgerald himself wrote...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
For use in schools and libraries only. A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she is married.
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of American fiction. It tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsby's grand effort to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, the rich girl who embodies for him the promise of the American dream. Deeply romantic in its concern with self-making, ideal...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
One of the classics of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby is now available in a definitive, textually accurate edition. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition...
The great Gatsby : a variorum edition
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
This eighteenth and final volume in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a variorum edition of The Great Gatsby (1925), the author's masterpiece. The variorum text is based on multiple witnesses including the extant holograph of the novel and Fitzgerald's revised galley...
J. D. Salinger's The catcher in the rye : a cultural history
Benson, Josef
Ebook
A fascinating examination of J.D. Salinger and his landmark novel, The Catcher in the Rye Since its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has been a cultural phenomenon, not only as an assigned text for English courses, but as a touchstone for generations of alienated youth. But who...
I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya.
Paper Book
A phenomenal #1 bestseller that has appeared on theNew York Timesbestseller list for nearly three years, this memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women,...
Orwell: Animal Farm
Paper Book
The outsider
Camus, Albert
Paper Book
The outsider
Camus, Albert
Paper Book
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Paper Book
HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics. 'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young... If it was only the other way!' Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. The novel was met with moral outrage by contemporary critics who, dazzled...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Wilde's portrayal of the search for internal youth, its wild joys and wilder sins-and its price Dorian Gray has had his portrait painted. It is a perfect likeness of the quite extraordinarily beautiful young man, and prompts him to make a mad wish for eternal youth. ...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
In Oscar Wilde's famous novel, Dorian Gray is tempted by Henry Wotton to sell his soul in order to hold on to beauty and youth. Dorian succumbs and murders the portrait painter Basil Haliward, who stands between him and his goal. Though in the end vice is punished and virtue rewarded, the novel...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
This Norton Critical Edition is the only edition available that includes both the 1890 Lippincott's and the 1891 book versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, allowing students to compare the two published versions with the editorial guidance of Michael Patrick Gillespie.
The picture of Dorian Gray : an annotated, uncensored edition
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
The Picture of Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited. It heralded the end of a repressive Victorianism, and after its publication, literature had-in the words of biographer Richard Ellmann-"a different look." Yet the Dorian Gray that Victorians...
The stranger
Camus, Albert
Paper Book
The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus, now in a striking American English translation, The Stranger remains vital for its unsettling insights into the impossibility of moral certainty in the face of violence. "Matthew Ward has done Camus and us a great...
The stranger
Ferrandez, Jacques
Paper Book
A visually stunning adaptation of Albert Camus' masterpiece that offers an exciting new graphic interpretation while retaining the book's unique atmosphere. The day his mother dies, Meursault notices that it is very hot on the bus that is taking him from Algiers to the retirement...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
Subject of this extraordinary novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides. “Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
A beautiful hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel. Though its fame as an icon of twentieth-century literature rests primarily on the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose, To the Lighthouse is above all the...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
This reading of Virginia Woolf's most celebrated novel is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction, a survey of the novel's critical reception, notes, bibliography and textual variants. It should be useful to students of modern literature at all levels.
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
To the lighthouse : the original holograph draft
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
Wuthering Heights
Bronte?, Emily
Paper Book
Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles.
Wuthering heights
Bronte?, Emily
Paper Book
Wuthering Heights
Bronte?, Emily
Paper Book
Over a hundred and fifty years after its initial publication, Emily Brontë's turbulent portrayal of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, two northern English households nearly destroyed by violent passions in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, continues to provoke and fascinate readers....
Wuthering Heights : the 1847 text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism
Bronte?, Emily
Paper Book
This Norton Critical Edition includes: * The first edition of the novel (1847), accompanied by a new preface and revised explanatory footnotes. * Key excerpts from Emily Brontë's diary papers and devoirs, along with thirteen of her sister Charlotte Brontë's letters...
Wuthering Heights : the 1847 text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism
Bronte?, Emily
Paper Book
For the Fourth Edition, the editor collated the 1847 text with the two modern texts (Norton's William J. Sale collation and the Clarendon), and found a great number of variants, including accidentals. This discovery led to changes in the body of the Norton Critical Edition text that are explained...

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