Mikhail Lermontov's pioneering psychological novel, "A Hero of Our Time", is probably his most impactful work, one which influenced the works of other great Russian authors such as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The novel's narrative is the story of Pechorin a young officer in the army whose story is told in five non-chronological parts. Drawing upon his own experiences in the military, Lermontov creates a fascinating anti-hero in Pechorin, a man who is...

Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings.

John Gardner's essential collection encompassing the fundamentals of fiction writing. In this posthumously published collection of his essays and reviews, acclaimed novelist John Gardner discusses the craft of fiction writing, taking to task some of his best-known contemporaries in the process. Gardner criticizes some for writing disingenuous fiction, and commends others who produce literature that acts as a life-affirming force. He offers insights...

Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...

Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...

Evocación de un pasado remoto, entrelazamiento de voces y de recuerdos, fantasmas que frecuentan los pasillos de las viejas casas porteñas, amores frustrados, secretos inconfesables de familia, todo como si de una gran partitura se tratara. Ritmo y melodía de un lenguaje en deuda con la vocación musical del autor. Esta novela es el punto final de una obra lúdica y alucinada que desde siempre fue un misterio para el público y un reto para la...

The humorist takes on the controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays in this 1909 essay, one of the last published in his lifetime. Twain argues that the man from Stratford could not have written the plays, because he lacked the education and was not famous in his home town, as Twain was in Hannibal, Missouri.

Letters written to F.X. Kappus during the years 1903-1908.

Though he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University, at the age of 26, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) emigrated to England, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Influenced equally by his formative years in the New World and his experiences in London during and after World War I, Eliot strove to reconcile a variety of conflicting ideas while trapped in an unhappy marriage-a struggle that gave rise to some of...

Great poetry can indeed outlast stone and the glory of princes, and the English poetic tradition is perhaps the richest in the world. This ebook tells the story of that tradition through its towering figures — Spenser and Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden, Wordsworth and Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson and Eliot — and through scores of other poets. Clear and accessible, blending criticism with imagination and illustrated with scores of quotations, this...