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 presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

"Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? Set on the bleak moors of Yorkshire, Lockwood is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights, the home of his new landlord, Heathcliff. The intense and wildly passionate Heathcliff tells the story of his life, his all-consuming love for Catherine Earnshaw and the doomed outcome of that relationship, leading to his revenge. Poetic, complex and grand in scope, Emily Brontë's masterpiece...

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order whose motto is "Community, Identity, Stability."—all at the cost of our freedom, humanity, and perhaps our souls. "A genius [who] who spent his life decrying...

Better known for her novels Little Women and Little Men, Louisa May Alcott continued the story of her feisty protagonist Jo in this final novel chronicling the adventures and misadventures of the March family. Entertaining, surprising, and overall a joy to read, Jo's Boys is nevertheless shaded by a bittersweet tone, for with it Alcott brought her wonderful series to an end. Beginning ten years after Little Men, Jo's Boys revisits Plumfield, the New...

In power, passion, and the brilliant display of moral conflict, the drama of ancient Greece remains unsurpassed. For this volume, Professor Hadas chose nine plays which display the diversity and grandeur of tragedy, and the critical and satiric genius of comedy, in outstanding translations of the past and present. His introduction explores the religious origins, modes of productions, structure, and conventions of the Greek theater, individual prefaces...

The series begins as Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.