The Golden Bowl comes in the first years of the 20th-century: the publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, decided never to serialise it and published it in New York in December 1904 in two volumes. After just a few months, in February 1905, also Methuen published the novel in London in a one-volume edition. In 1909, a revised edition appeared as volumes 23 and 24 of the New York edition, and James this time also prepared the preface, in which he reflected...

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

In The Pickwick Papers we are introduced not just to one of the greatest writers in the English language, but to some of fiction's most endearing and memorable characters, starting with the illustrious, immortal and colossal-minded Samuel Pickwick himself. It is a rollicking tour do force through an England on the brink of the Victorian era. Reform of government, justice and commercial life are imminent, as are rail travel, social convulsion and...

Englishman Phileas Fogg races around the world on a daring wager in the seemingly impossible time of eighty days.

Captains Courageous is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers,...

A mysterious visitor to his parent’s inn precipitates a chain of events that plunges Jim Hawkins into an unforgettable adventure among ruthless pirates seeking a fabulous treasure hidden on a desert island. Initially serialized in a magazine, Treasure Island first appeared as a book in 1883. Narrated primarily by young Jim Hawkins, the book can be seen as a coming of age story or a thriller for younger readers, but it is a swashbuckling delight...

Captain MacWhirr cannot fathom anything outside the facts of his own life. His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced...

Enter a magical realm of fantasy and adventure...a world of brave heroes, daring quests, and fabulous monsters! A sleepy village is thrown into a flurry when the local man-eating monster decides to pay a call in "The Griffin and the Minor Canon." A gentle beekeeper undertakes a dangerous journey to solve a sorcerer's mysterious riddle in "The Bee-man of Orn." Having angered the ruthless king of a faraway land, a young hero is forced to face the ultimate...

It was so cold that his spit froze in the air before it hit the ground. He was so far above the Artic Circle that the sun never rose. Seventy below zero, and there was nothing but whiteness in every direction: ice and snow. No trees, no houses, no wood, no warmth. He had only a few matches and a handful of frozen fingers. And yet, to survive, he had to build a fire... Jack London's tales of adventure were unsurpassed because London was there. From...

In Spoon River Anthology, the American poet Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950) created a series of compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dream of their lives. First published in book form in 1915, the Anthology was the crowning achievement of Masters' career as a poet, and a work that would become a landmark of 20th-century American literature....