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Public Domain
Classics SOON To Be Accessible Exclusively To Our
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 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's great novel, one of his last works of fiction, tells the
story of a harmless flirtation that gradually develops into a
destructive passion: the love affair between Anna Karenina and Count
Vronsky. Anna turns to Vronsky, a dashing military man, as a refuge
from her passionless marriage to a pompous, chilly bureaucrat--a
move that results in social ostracization, the loss of her position
in the world, and the relentless self-doubt that destroys her
confidence and leads to her sad end. A parallel plot follows the
contrasting fortunes of Levin (Tolstoy's alter ego, with his deep
love of the land) and Kitty, whose marriage thrives and prospers
because of mutual commitment, sympathy, and respect. In ANNA
KARENINA, Tolstoy reaches deep into his own experiences and his
observations of family and friends to create a picture of Russian
society that reaches from the high life in St. Petersburg and Moscow
to the idyllic rural existence of Kitty and Levin. Sketched on a
smaller canvas than the vast panorama of WAR AND PEACE, ANNA
KARENINA is a profound examination of human psychology. At its heart
is its heroine, the flawed, vulnerable, lovable Anna--a woman whom
Tolstoy never judges adversely, despite her follies, but whom he
views with compassionate understanding throughout. Published two
decades after Flaubert's groundbreaking MADAME BOVARY, Tolstoy's
novel is a further exploration of adultery and its effects not only
on individuals but on the society at large. Vladimir Nabokov called
it "one of the greatest love stories in world literature," a view
that has been echoed by critics since its publication in the 1870s.
 Crime & Punishment - Fyodor M Dostoevsky
About this title: This 1866 novel is Dostoevsky's great fictional
study of the criminal mind, in the character of the student
Raskolnikov, who murders an aged pawnbroker. Initially, Raskolnikov
believes that the killing was entirely justified, but as the novel
proceeds he becomes tortured by his guilt, and begins to question
all his most passionately held beliefs. Eventually, while the wily
police inspector Porfiry Petrovich simply waits, Raskolnikov--prompted
by Sonia, a prostitute who is devoted to him--breaks down and
confesses. Despite its bleak subject matter, the novel holds out the
possibility of redemption; it is also an indictment of the social
conditions in which the action unfolds.
 Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stephenson
In Stevenson's classic adventure tale, David Balfour is kidnapped by his
grasping uncle who has usurped his inheritance. The ship on which David is to be
transported is wrecked, and he escapes with the Jacobite rebel Alan Breck. The
two flee across the Highlands, eventually exposing the evil uncle and finding
freedom as well as wealth.
 The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
The classic frontier adventure story: Deep in the forests of New
York State, the woodsman Hawkeye (a.k.a. Natty Bumppo) and his loyal
Mohican friends become involved in the bloody French and Indian War.
This is a fanciful and romantic tale of the Mohicans, a disappearing
tribe of Native Americans in the frontier. The romantic action
centers on a frontier scout during the French and Indian Wars, who
plays a part in the wresting of a continent from nature and the
original inhabitants.
 Pride & Prejudice -
Jane Austen
It's hard to believe that Jane Austen wrote the sophisticated and
acerbic PRIDE AND PREJUDICE when she was only 21 years old, in 1797.
Originally entitled FIRST IMPRESSIONS, the novel was rejected,
revised, retitled, and finally published--anonymously--in 1813, only
four years before Austen's untimely death. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,
Austen calls on her sharp observations of vanity, venality,
pomposity, and downright nuttiness in a story about a respectable
but far from wealthy family full of daughters--girls who desperately
need to find husbands if they are to have any kind of economic
security. The eldest of the Bennett family, Elizabeth, is a bright,
opinionated, and complacent young woman whose reaction to an offer
of marriage from her wealthy but impossibly arrogant suitor,
Fitzwilliam Darcy, is revulsion. But in the course of the story both
Elizabeth and Darcy learn important lessons about their own folly
and blindness, and about the dangers of superficial judgements. As
the two perform their elaborate courtship dance, Austen surrounds
them with some of her most uproariously clueless characters--from
the wacky Mrs. Bennett to the wonderfully unctuous Mr. Collins,
another of Elizabeth's admirers. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is, of course,
a highly satisfying and offbeat love story, but it is also an
unparalleled examination of human nature at both its best and its
hilarious worst.
 Sense and Sensibility -
Jane Austen
In SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen writes about two ways of looking at the
world in the personalities of two sisters, Elinor the determinedly practical and
Marianne the madly romantic. Forced to live in reduced circumstances with their
widowed mother and younger sister, the Dashwood girls must rely on marrying well
if they are to survive in the world, and the way in which this goal is
eventually accomplished provides the plot of this delightful novel, the first of
Jane Austen's to be published (1811). As SENSE AND SENSIBILITY progresses to the
requisite happy ending, Elinor and Marianne and their suitors are subjected to a
volley of misunderstandings, jealousies, and manipulations--and to Jane Austen's
mercilessly satirical look at provincial life. As she herself stated, "Three or
four families in a country village is the very thing to work on"--and in doing
so, Austen perfected the comedy of manners, zeroing in on her characters and
their relationship to the society in which they live--an achievement that
brought her closer to the later novels of the Victorian era and the 20th century
than to those that preceded her.
 Women in Love -
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence considered WOMEN IN LOVE, his sequel to THE RAINBOW, to be his
best novel. It traces the stories of Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, particularly
their romantic entanglements and dilemmas. Ursula marries Rupert Birkin--Lawrence's
alter ego--a thoroughly modern and enlightened young man who believes in ideal
love based on passion, equality, and mutual respect. Gudrun falls for Gerald
Crich, a formidably competent businessman, owner of the local mine. Gerald is a
weak, possessive reactionary who is unable to work out his feelings for Gudrun,
and who, when Rupert offers his friendship--the kind of profound male friendship
that Lawrence considered necessary to a man's life--rejects it. Lawrence's
heavily symbolic story is an overt statement of his beliefs about men and women
in modern society. Written in 1916, it didn't find a publisher until 1920, and
was considered by many readers and reviewers to be depraved. Lawrence attributed
much of the despair and bitterness of the novel to the travails of World War I,
a war to which he was violently opposed.
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert's portrait of an adulteress who seeks freedom from a prosaic,
disappointing life and ultimately is destroyed by her selfishness was considered
scandalous when it was published. Flaubert chose his subject to illustrate his
belief that any aspect of life, however trivial or vulgar, could be a subject
for literature, and could be raised to the status of art by the quality of the
writing.
 Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
A novel that marks not only the frontier between 19th- and 20th-century
literature but the divide between two centuries' notion of the self. This highly
philosophical work was the beginning of Dostoyevsky's serious literary career.
This is the psychologically nightmarish novella that inspired literary works as
diverse as Franz Kafka's "The Burrow" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man.
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