Wyoming State Law Library

This classic work presents the candid wit and wisdom of George Washington Plunkitt (1842—1924), a longtime state senator from New York who represented the Fifteenth Assembly District and was especially powerful in New York City. Plunkitt was part of the city's Tammany Hall organization and a cynical practitioner of what today is generally known as "machine politics," a patronage-based system in which politicians openly exercise power for personal...

Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention. Trapped...

When young Fanny Price comes to live with her aunt and uncle Bertram at Mansfield Park, it is because of the outcast state of her own parents. Her dreadful aunt and three cousins become her enemies, making her life miserable and causing Fanny to grow up quiet and shy. When the arrival of the Crawfords upsets the Bertram household, the young people become involved in dangerous plots to marry to better their station. Fanny has fallen in love with her...

Romeo and Juliet was the first drama in English to confer full tragic dignity on the agonies of youthful love. The lyricism that enshrines their death-marked devotion has made the lovers legendary in every language that possesses a literature.

"The Way of the World" by William Congreve is a quintessential Restoration comedy, renowned for its witty dialogue and intricate plot. Set in the fashionable society of London in the early 18th century, the play is a satirical exploration of love, marriage, and money. Congreve's masterpiece centers on the relationship between Mirabell and Millamant, two lovers who must navigate a maze of intrigue, deception, and societal expectations to be together. Congreve's...

"In an age of ferment, following the American and French revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft took prevailing egalitarian principles and dared to apply them to women. Her book is both a sustained argument for emancipation and an attack on a social and an economic system. As Miriam Brody points out in her introduction, subsequent feminists tended to lose sight of her radical objectives. For Mary Wollstonecraft all aspects of women's existence were interrelated,...

Though it tells the stories of the defeated, Prometheus Bound and Other Plays features four tragedies that depict both unfortunate demises and the essence of the fighting human spirit. The Suppliants, the first play of the collection, follows the daughters of Danaus as they flee from the loveless marriages that had been forced upon them. The Persians, perhaps the oldest surviving play in existence, portrays the defeat of the Persian King Xeroxes....

"Jane Austen's final novel is her most mature and wickedly satirical. It follows the story of Anne Elliott, a teenager engaged to a seemingly ideal man, Frederick Wentworth. But after being persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that he is too poor to be a suitable match, Anne ends their engagement. When they are reacquainted eight years later, their circumstances are transformed: Frederick is returning triumphantly from the Napoleonic War, while Anne's...