A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society, the Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Demaria, Jr.Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages..
Tom Sawyer, a mischievous young boy, lives in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri with his Aunt Polly and half-brother Sid. Together with his friend Huckleberry Finn, the son of a drunk, ruthless father, he accidentally witnesses a murder. What unfolds in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (187..
In order to reach perfection, one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal.A descendant of one of Russian nobility’s oldest families, the gentle, good natured and epileptic Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to St. Petersburg after spending four years in a Swiss sanatorium. Taken to be an ‘..
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Two women fall in love with men of the same name. This mythical suitor is called ‘Ernest’, a name that has been adopted by both Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff to win the hearts of their beloved, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, respectively. As Pa..
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was first published in serial instalments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. A canvas exploring a diverse array of themes matrimony, politics, philosophy, altruism, adultery, religion and death, it is a masterpiece in realist fiction.Anna Karenina,..
The more I know of the world, the more i am convinced that i shall never see a man whom i can really love. I require so much! Sense and sensibility (1811) was the first novel by Jane Austen, anonymously published as a novel ‘by a lady’. it garnered positive reviews and turned out to be a success for..
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince—a book on the ruthless acquisition of power and governance of the State—with the intention of appeasing Lorenzo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence, in the hope of resuscitating his political c..
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves. Virginia Woolf’s most autobiographical novel, to the Lighthouse (1927) revolves around the Ramsay family and their life in the summer home situated at a distance from a Lighthouse, in the Hebrides, Isle of..
The book, 'Three men in a Boat’ revolves around three friends, J, Harris and George. On one ordinary day, the three friends gather at J’s house and spend some time smoking and talking about the lows in life. That’s when they come up with the idea of taking a boat trip up the river Thames. They belie..
Volpone (or The Fox) is a comedy in five acts, performed about 1605 and ndash;1606 and published in 1607, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-performed play and it is ranked among the finest Jacobean era comedies. It is a..
Published in 1847, Emily Bronte's only novel Wuthering Heights is an evergreen classic. A passionate tale of love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, the novel challenged Victorian ideals of morality, class, religion and gender inequality. Heathcliff, an orphan, brought to Wuthering Heights b..