Wordsworth

The Trumpet-Major

Thomas Hardy, 1995

Thomas Hardy's only historical novel, «The Trumpet Major» is set in Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars. Hardy skilfully immerses us in the life of the day, making us feel the impact of historical events on the immemorial local way of life — the glamour of the coming of George III and his soldiery, fears of the press-gang and invasion, and the effect of distant but momentous events like the Battle of Trafalgar. He interweaves a compelling, bitter-sweet romantic love story of the rivalry of two brothers for the hand of the heroine Anne Garland, played out against the loves of a lively gallery of other characters. While there are elements of sadness and even tragedy, «The Trumpet-Major» shows Hardy's skills of story-telling, characterisation and description in a novel of vitality, comedy and warmth. Подробнее

The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers

Henry James, 1993

»The Turn of the Screw» is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural. «The Aspern Papers» is a tale of Americans in Europe, cleverly evoking the drama of comedie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace. Подробнее

Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare, 1995

The gentle melancholy and lyrical atmosphere of «Twelfth Night» have long made the play a favourite with Shakespearian audiences. The plot revolves around mistaken identities and unrequited love, but is further enlivened by a comic sub-plot of considerable accomplishment. In it, Sir Toby Belch and his companion outwit the pretentious Malvolio, who despite suffering their most outrageous and insulting practical jokes, emerges as an almost noble figure. Подробнее

Twilight of the Idols / Antichrist / Ecce Homo

Friedrich Nietzsche, 2007

The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous utterances of the prophet (together with the ill-defined figure of the Ubermensch) are forsaken, as wit, exuberance and dazzling insights predominate, forcing the reader to face unpalatable insights and to rethink every commonly accepted 'truth'. Thinking with Nietzsche, in Jaspers' words, means holding one's own against him, and we are indeed refreshed and challenged by the vortex of his thoughts, by concepts which test and probe. In «The Twilight of the Idols», The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes at breakneck speed of his provenance, his adversaries and his hopes for mankind; the books are largely epigrammatic and aphoristic, allowing this poet-philosopher to bewilder and fascinate us with their strangeness and their daring. He who fights with monsters, Nietzsche once told us, should look to it that he himself does not become one, and when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. Reader, beware. Подробнее

The Ultimate Cocktail Book

Ned Halley, 2008

This book contains more cocktails than any other — 1,500 of them, ranging from classic Martinis to unblushing modern concoctions such as Sex on the Beach. Recipes are user friendly, assembled on a 'unit' basis that clearly shows the proportions needed to make the perfect cocktail — without fuss. Ingredients and equipment are easy to acquire, techniques straightforward. Bewildering measures — 'jigger', 'half-gill' 3/4 fl oz — are avoided. There is much entertainment to be found in these pages too, with revealing anecdotes about many of the cocktails, and generous sprinklings of apposite quotations, risque jokes and little curiosities. The Ultimate Cocktail Book is more than a reference guide, it's a concocter's companion and a source of enlightenment. A volume tailor-made, in short, for good mixers. Подробнее

Uncanny Stories

May Sinclair, 2006

May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her «Uncanny Stories» (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle. Specially included in this volume is «The Intercessor» (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontes. Подробнее

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1999

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe’s rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes that only 'repentance, justice and mercy' will prevent the onset of 'the wrath of Almighty God!'. Подробнее

Under the Greenwood Tree

Thomas Hardy, 1994

»Under the Greenwood Tree» is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and quiet irony, established Hardy as a writer. However, the novel is not merely a charming rural idyll. The double-plot, in which the love story of Dick Dewey and Fancy Day is inter-related with a tragic chapter in the history of Mellstock Choir, hints at the poignant disappearance of a long-lived and highly-valued traditional way of life. Подробнее

Upanishads Upanishads are mankind's oldest works of philosophy, predating the earliest Greek philosophy. They are the concluding part of the Vedas, the ancient Indian sacred literature, and mark the culmination of a tradition of speculative thought first expressed in the Rig-Veda more than 4000 years ago. Remarkable for their meditative depth, spirit of doubt and intellectual honesty, the Upanishads are concerned with the knowledge of the Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, and Man's relationship with it. The name Upanishad is derived from the face-to-face mode of imparting knowledge — in the utmost sanctity and secrecy, to prevent its trivialisation or perversion. Composed in Sanskrit between 900 and 600 BC, the Upanishads presented here are by far the oldest and most important of those that exist. Twelve were first translated more than a hundred years ago, and have been extensively revised and edited. The thirteenth is an entirely new translation by Suren Navlakha. Подробнее

Utopia

Thomas More, 1997

More's 'Utopia' is a complex, innovative and penetrating contribution to political thought, culminating in the famous 'description' of the Utopians, who live according to the principles of natural law, but are receptive to Christian teachings, who hold all possessions in common, and view gold as worthless. Подробнее

Vintage Mystery and Detective Stories

David Stuart Davies, 2006

A richly entertaining and exciting collection of mystery and detective stories from the golden age of crime fiction. This was a period when crimes were solved by the wit and ingenuity of the sleuth who only had his own intelligence to rely on rather than a battery of scientific devices and procedures employed by the modern crime solver. Within these pages you will meet such fascinating sleuths as G.K. Chesterton's Mr Pond, Ernest Bramah's remarkable blind detective, Max Carrados, who can read newspapers by allowing his sensitive fingers to run over the print, Craig Kennedy, 'the American Sherlock Holmes' created by Arthur B. Reeve, and Jacques Futrelle's Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen, 'The Thinking Machine' amongst others. Tales by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Arnold Bennett, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle will thrill and puzzle you. Подробнее

The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories

D.H. Lawrence, 2004

These stories of myth and resurrection, of uncanny events and violent impulse, were with one exception written and published in the latter half of the 1920s, coinciding with the composition of Lawrence's controversial masterpiece «Lady Chatterley's Lover». At this time Lawrence declared himself to be 'really awful sick of writing'; yet here we find some of his most beautiful, hauntingly melancholy fictions. In struggling to escape from their thwarted lives and to achieve human 'tenderness', the characters embody and continue the major preoccupations of Lawrence's work as a whole. «Love Among the Haystacks» provides an early illustration of the intensity and innovation which made Lawrence one of the most distinctive and important of twentieth-century writers. Подробнее

The Voyages of Captain Cook

James Cook, 1999

Cook's three voyages of discovery, which took place between 1768 and 1779, are among the most remarkable achievements in the history of exploration. Cook charted vast areas of the globe with astonishing accuracy, and the voyages also made a significant contribution towards solving some of the great problems of cartography and navigation. With crews containing gifted sailors and navigators, as well as botanists, painters and scientists, Cook provides the link between the speculative, profit-hungry voyages of the Elizabethan seafarers and the scientific expeditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Подробнее

Wagner the Werewolf

George Reynolds, 2006

In the midst of a wood of evergreens on the banks of the Arno, a man — young, handsome, and splendidly attired — has thrown himself upon the ground, where he writhes like a stricken serpent. He is the prey of a demoniac excitement: an appalling consternation is upon him — madness is in his brain — his mind is on fire. Lightnings appear to gleam from his eyes — as if his soul were dismayed, and withering within his breast. 'Oh! no-no!' he cries with a piercing shriek, as if wrestling madly — furiously — but vainly, against some unseen fiend that holds him in his grasp. Aged and deserted, Fernand Wagner agrees to serve John Faust for the last year of his life. In return he is given youth, wealth and beauty — but at the terrible price of becoming a werewolf. He loves the glacial, beautiful, sensual Nisida, whose family history conceals a dreadful secret. Together, they flee from Florence to a desert island: but dogged by the Inquisition, and by the might of the Ottoman Empire, they are finally forced to face the horror that lurks in the closet... First published in 1847, «Wagner the Werewolf» is one of the very earliest treatments of the Werewolf theme in English literature, and has lost none of its power to shock, it is one of the greatest works of George W. M. Reynolds, once the most popular author in England, and the «Master of the Penny Dreadful». Подробнее

Washington Square

Henry James, 2001

»Washington Square» marks the culmination of James’s apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870’s, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression. Подробнее

The Water Babies

Charles Kingsley, 1994

Tom, a poor orphan, is employed by the villainous chimney-sweep, Grimes, to climb up inside flues to clear away the soot. While engaged in this dreadful task, he loses his way and emerges in the bedroom of Ellie, the young daughter of the house who mistakes him for a thief. He runs away, and, hot and bothered, he slips into a cooling stream, falls asleep, and becomes a Water Baby. In his new life, he meets all sorts of aquatic creatures, including an engaging old lobster, other water babies, and at last reaches St Branden's Isle where he encounters the fierce Mrs Bedonebyeasyoudid and the motherly Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. After a long and arduous quest to the Other-end-of-Nowhere young Tom achieves his heart's desire. Подробнее

The Waves

Virginia Woolf, 2000

'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, «The Waves». Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children — Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis — meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature.In pure stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf presents a cross-section of multiple yet parallel lives, each marked by the disintegrating force of a mutual tragedy. «The Waves» is her searching exploration of individual and collective identity, and the observations and emotions of life, from the simplicity and surging optimism of youth to the vacancy and despair of middle-age. Подробнее

The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope, 1995

The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is one of the Victorian novel’s greatest and strangest creations, and is an achievement undimmed by the passage of time. Trollope's 'Now' might, in the twenty-first century, look like some distant disenchanted 'Then', but this is still the yesterday which we must understand in order to make proper sense of our today. Подробнее

The Well of Loneliness

Radclyffe Hall, 2006

'As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved...It was good, good, good...' Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents — a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. «The Well of Loneliness» was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond. Подробнее

The Well-Beloved

Thomas Hardy, 2000

»The Well-Beloved» completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art, and the suffering that ensues. Jocelyn Pierston, celebrated sculptor, tries to create an image of his ideal woman — his imaginary «Well-Beloved» — in stone, just as he tries to find her in the flesh. Powerful symbolism marks this romantic fantasy that Hardy has grounded firmly in reality with a characteristically authentic rendering of location, the Isle of Slingers, or Portland as we know it. Overt exploration of the relationship between erotic fascination and creativity makes this novel a nineteenth-century landmark in the persistent debate about art, aesthetics and gender. Подробнее

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