Wordsworth

Four Plays

Ibsen Henrik, 2014

With an Introduction by Ellen Rees, Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo. The plays of Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) are critically acclaimed throughout the world. The father of modern drama, Ibsen broke with theatrical conventions and created a more realistic form of drama that used the stage as a forum for debating social problems, notably the rights of the individual, and the damaging effects of orthodoxy. This collection of four plays contains, A Doll's House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1890), his most striking depictions of the struggle by individuals — especially women — to realize their full potential; it also presents Peer Gynt (1867), an early verse tour-de-force, not originally intended for the stage, on the nature of the self, and The Master Builder (1892), a play that explores the clash between the old and the new in richly metaphorical language. This collection returns to the acclaimed translations of William Archer (1856-1924), who through these renditions played a major role in promoting Ibsen's reputation outside Norway. Archer was also a critic, who with actress Elizabeth Robbins and dramatist George Bernard Shaw was central in the modernisation of English theatre. Подробнее

Government Inspector and Other Works

Gogol Nikolai, 2014

Gogol's works constitute one of Russian literature's supreme achievements, yet the nature of their brilliant originality, comic genius, and complex workings is difficult to summarize precisely. The Government Inspector, a perennial favourite on stage and screen, is considered a national institution in Russia, and Gogol's stories present us with one of the most marvellous worlds a writer has ever created. His quirky characters — the lowly official who imagines himself to be the King of Spain, the man committed to chase his nose around St. Petersburg, a whole village paralyzed at the prospect of being visited by an authority from the capital — are immortal. Although Gogol's fiction was commandeered by Russia's progressive critics as the work of an important social commentator, he was in many ways an arch-conservative, and there is a madcap strain in it that makes him a precursor of Kafka and absurdist drama. Подробнее

The Essential Kafka: The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Kafka Franz, 2014

Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a relentless atmosphere of disorientation. Superficially about bureaucracy, it is in the last resort a description of the absurdity of 'normal' human nature. Still more enigmatic is The Castle. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal system giving way to a new freedom for the subject? The search by a central European Jew for acceptance into a dominant culture? A spiritual quest for grace or salvation? An individual's struggle between his sense of independence and his need for approval? Is it all of these things? And K? Is he opportunist, victim, or an outsider battling against elusive authority? Finally, in his fables, Kafka deals in dark and quirkily humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties. Подробнее

Three Theban Plays The story of Oedipus has captured the human imagination as few others. It is the story of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother, a man who by a cruel irony brings these things to pass by his very efforts to avoid them. But these plays are not about fate, and not about irony. They are about character, choice and consequence. In Antigone, we see a woman who will defy human law, and die for it, rather than transgress the eternal, unwritten laws of the gods. Oedipus the Tyrant is the story of a ruler destroyed by those qualities — pride, determination and belief in his own abilities — which made him ruler in the first place. Finally, in Oedipus at Colonus, written late in Sophocles' life, the aged and blinded king achieves a personal reconciliation, but at a cost — a son who will die in battle against his country, and a daughter who will die burying her brother. Подробнее

Sense and Sensibility

Austen Jane, 1992

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. 'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival. Подробнее

Сага о Форсайтах: На английском языке

Galsworthy John, 2001

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Подробнее

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Hugo Victor, 1993

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Set in 1482, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a compelling story of love and betrayal, brutal deeds and one of the most famous acts of revenge in world literature. Quasimodo, the hunchback of the title, is one of fiction's most extreme characters — beneath his monstrous disfigurement, his love for the beautiful Esmerelda reveals a heart full of intense emotion. The novel is set in the great cathedral of Notre-Dame and had a profound influence on the Romantic Movement. Подробнее

Vanity Fair

Thackeray William Makepeace, 1992

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled 'A Novel without a Hero', Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world. Подробнее

Villette

Bronte Charlotte, 1993

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. This novel is based on the author's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels. It is a moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection to cruel circumstance and position, borne with heroic fortitude. It is also the story of a woman's right to love and be loved. Подробнее

Tales from the Arabian Nights

Andrew Lang, 1993

The beautiful Scheherazade's royal husband threatens to kill her, so each night she diverts him by weaving wonderful tales of fantastic adventure, leaving each story unfinished so that he spares her life to hear the ending the next night. This is the background to the Arabian Nights. In this selection made by that master of folklore and fairy-tale Andrew Lang, the reader meets Aladdin with his wonderful lamp, the Enchanted Horse, the Princess Badoura, Sinbad the Sailor, and the great Caliph of Bagdad, Haroun-al-Raschid. Подробнее

100 избранных рассказов: На английском языке

O Henry, 1995

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Подробнее

The Pickwick Papers: На английском языке

Dickens Charles, 1992

The Pickwick Papers is Dickens first novel and widely regarded as one of the major classics of comic writing in English. Originally serialised in monthly instalments, it quickly became a huge popular success with sales reaching 40,000 by the final number. In the century and a half since its first appearance, the characters of Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller and the whole of the Pickwickian crew have entered the consciousness of all who love English literature in general, and the works of Dickens in particular. Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Подробнее

Little Women and Good Wives: На английском языке

Alcott Louisa May, 1993

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. «Little Women» is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community; Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Lawrence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever. «Good Wives» takes up the story of the March sisters, some three years later, when, as young adults, they must face up to the inevitable trials and traumas of everyday life in their search for individual happiness. Подробнее

Emma: На английском языке

Austen Jane, 2000

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', but Emma is irresistible. 'Handsome, clever, and rich', Emma is also an 'imaginist', 'on fire with speculation and foresight'. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married. Her matchmaking maps out relationships that Jane Austen ironically tweaks into a clearer perspective. Judgement and imagination are matched in games the reader too can enjoy, and the end is a triumph of understanding. Подробнее

Great Expectations: На английском языке

Dickens Charles, 2008

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Подробнее

The Lost World and Other Stories

Doyle Arthur Conan, 1995

The science fiction stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stand alongside those of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. The protagonist, the 'cave-man in a lounge suit', is the maddening, irascible and fascinating Professor George Edward Challenger. In these collected tales he faces adventures such as that high above the Amazon rain forest in «The Lost World» and the challenges of «The Land of Mist». Подробнее

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Verne, 1992

Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the «monster» turns out to be a giant submarine, commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, by whom they are soon held captive. So begins not only one of the great adventure classics by Jules Verne, the 'Father of Science Fiction', but also a truly fantastic voyage from the lost city of Atlantis to the South Pole. Подробнее

Adam Bede

George Eliot, 1997

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the eighteenth century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in 'the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis'. But it is also a rich and pioneering record — drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory — of a rural world that we have lost. The movement of the narration between social realism and reflection on its own processes, the exploration of motives, and the constant authorial presence all bespeak an art that strives to connect the fictional with the actual. Подробнее

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1992

This edition of The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes contains the earliest cases of the greatest fictional detective of all time. It comprises the complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, newly reprinted from the original text of The Strand Magazine. It is illustrated by Sidney Paget, the finest of illustrators, and the man from whom our images of Sherlock Holmes and his world derive. This is the first of three volumes of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. The three books present all the Holmes stories arranged chronologically in order of first publication. Подробнее

The Aeneid

Virgil, 1995

The Aeneid is Virgil's Masterpiece. His epic poem recounts the story of Rome's legendary origins from the ashes of Troy and proclaims her destiny of world dominion. This optimistic vision is accompanied by an undertow of sadness at the price that must be paid in human suffering to secure Rome's future greatness. The tension between the public voice of celebration and the tragic private voice is given full expression both in the doomed love of Dido and Aeneas, and in the fateful clash between the Trojan leader and the Italian hero, Turnus. Hailed by T.S. Eliot as 'the classic of all Europe', Virgil's Aeneid has enjoyed a unique and enduring influence on European literature, art and politics for the past two thousand years. Подробнее

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