1898 C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 NovelsUnpublished

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Introduction by Anna Quindlen * Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." So begins Pride and...

Charlotte Brontë's moving masterpiece - the novel that has been "teaching true strength of character for generations" (The Guardian). Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read A novel of intense power and...

Late one moonlit night, drawing master Walter Hartright encounters a solitary, terrified, and beautiful woman, dressed all in white. He saves her from capture by her pursuers, and determines to solve the mystery of her distress and terror. Arriving at Limmeridge House to take up his new position as...

Contemporary perspectives of the text are provided in two sections: Contexts helps place the novel in relation to the mind of its creator through writings by Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori; Nineteenth-Century Responses collects six reactions to the book...

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his 'favourite child' and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of...

Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva- their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"   It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters,...

Victor Hugo's towering novel of Jean Valjean, his unjust imprisonment, and his lifelong flight from a relentless police officer.

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the social ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way...

In this heartwarming classic, a gentle linen weaver named Silas Marner is wrongly accused of theft actually committed by his best friend. Silas exiles himself to a rustic village, where he finds spiritual rebirth through his unselfish love of an abandoned child. Includes a new Afterword. Revised...

Dumas's most popular novel has long been a favorite with children, and its swashbuckling heroes are well known from many a film and TV adaptation. Set in 17th-century France, this tale of the adventures of D'Artagnan and the three musketeers is the finest example of its author's brilliantly...

The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and...

Jane Porter (1776-1850), was born in the Bailey in Durham City. Her book "The Scottish Chiefs" (1810) about William Wallace was a notable success (the French version was banned by Napoleon) and has remained popular with Scottish children. She is also the author of "Thaddeus of Warsaw."