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Overview: The Man who would be King', the tale of two vagabonds who attempt to establish a kingdom among primitive tribesmen, is both a classic of high adventure and a searching parable of Empire. This collection brings together seventeen of Kipling's early stories, written between 1885 and 1888, when Kipling was working as a journalist in India. Wry comedies of British officialdom alternate with glimpses into the harsh lives of the common soldiers...
122) Ghosts
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First performed in 1882, "Ghosts" is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father's immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately...
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Treasury of 44 poems evokes stirring images of British character and attitudes at the height of the Empire. "Gunga Din," "Danny Deever," "If-," "The White Man's Burden," "The Female of the Species," many others, filled with character study, dramatic incident and rousing language New Notes to the Text. Alphabetical lists of titles and first lines.
126) Great speeches
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For someone who claimed he had been educated by "littles"-a little now and a little then-Abraham Lincoln displayed a remarkable facility in his use of the written word. The simple yet memorable eloquence of his speeches, proclamations and personal correspondence is recorded here in a representative collection of 16 documents. This volume contains, complete and unabridged, the Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (1838), which...
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Features 41 of Poe's most memorable poems - among them "The Bells," "Ulalume," "Israfel," "To Helen," "The Conqueror Worm," "Eldorado" and "Annabel Lee" - reveal the extraordinary spectrum of Poe's personality and his virtuoso command of poetic language, rhythms and figures of speech. Alphabetic lists of titles and first lines.
129) Favorite poems
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was the most popular American poet of his time, and one of the most famous American poets of all time. It has been said that certain of his poems-the long narratives Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha most notably-were once read in every literate home in America. A former teacher who fulfilled his dream to make a living as a poet, Longfellow taught at Bowdoin and Harvard, was eventually honored for his poetry...
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Here are sixteen of the best stories by one of America's most popular storytellers. For nearly a century, the work of O. Henry has delighted readers with its humor, irony and colorful, real-life settings. The writer's own life had more than a touch of color and irony. Born William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1862, he worked on a Texas ranch, then as a bank teller in Austin, then as a reporter for the Houston "Post." Adversity struck,...
134) Miss Julie
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In Miss Julie, a willful young aristocrat, whose perverse nature has already driven her fiancé to break off their engagement, pursues and effectively seduces her father's valet during the course of a Midsummer's Eve celebration. The progress of that seduction and the play's stunning denouement shocked Swedish audiences who first attended the play in 1889. Despite its controversial debut, this now-classic drama, inspired by the new ideas of naturalism...
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Opulence is sometimes deceiving. Madame Mathilde Loisel is displeased, she cannot go to a fancy party because she doesn't have anything to wear. Her husband tries to help her and gives her money to buy a new dress. She insists she also needs jewels so she borrows a diamond necklace from her friend, Madame Jeanne Forestier. After the party, Mathilde realizes that she lost the stunning necklace.
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Darkly fascinating short novel depicts the struggles of a doubting, supremely alienated protagonist in a world of relative values. Seminal work introduced moral, religious, political and social themes that dominated Dostoyevsky's later masterworks. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction. A minor official brutally scrutinizes himself and decides to go "underground, " away from society. This is a strange...
137) Selected poems
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Presents "Song of Myself" and forty-six other works by nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman, and includes an introduction by Harold Bloom, a biographical note, and an index of titles and first lines.
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Written between 1845 and 1846 and first published in 1850, "Sonnets from the Portuguese" is a series of love poems written by the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her husband, the famous English poet and playwright, Robert Browning, which was critically acclaimed and instantly popular upon its publication and has remained so to this day. Referring to her olive-skinned complexion, Robert called his wife "his little Portuguese". It is from...
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Among the most important and influential philosophical works in Western thought: Euthyphro, exploring the concepts and aims of piety and religion; Apology, a defense of the integrity of Socratesʹ teachings; Crito, exploring Socratesʹ refusal to flee his death sentence; and Phaedo, in which Socrates embraces death and discusses the immortality of the soul.
