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Скачать книгу (размер 1 136 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 224) Аннотация: Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative years includes the haunting elegy to his young sister and the grieving lyric at the death of his father. The religious drama of his romance with Rome is captured here, as well as its resolution in his renewed love…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 197 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 432) Аннотация: W. B. Yeats was Romantic and Modernist, mystical dreamer and leader of the Irish Literary Revival, Nobel prizewinner, dramatist and, above all, poet. He began writing with the intention of putting his ‘very self’ into his poems. T. S. Eliot, one of many who proclaimed the Irishman’s greatness, described him as ‘one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the…

Скачать книгу (размер 646 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 128) Аннотация: On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondriacal wife Zeena. When Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, the only place she can go is Ethan's farm. An embittered man and an enchanting young woman meeting in such circumstances unleash predictable consequences as passions are…

Скачать книгу (размер 891 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 176) Аннотация: «Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure», better known as «Fanny Hill», is one of the most notorious texts in English literature. As recently as 1963 an unexpurgated edition was the subject of a trial, yet in the eighteenth century John Cleland's open celebration of sexual enjoyment was a best selling novel. Fanny's story, as she falls into prostitution and then rises to respectability, takes the form of…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 197 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 432) Аннотация: «The Shakespeare comedies collected in this text are frequently known as «the romances». It is argued that they conclude in a spirit of hope as the main characters are reunited in an aura of reconciliation, wrongs are righted, and exiles returned to their homes.»

Скачать книгу (размер 2 441 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 480) Аннотация: Henry James's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl, is the story of two flawed marriages. The lives and relationships of Maggie Verver and her widowed American millionaire father, Adam, are changed and challenged by the beautiful and charming Charlotte Stant, who is the former lover of Maggie's husband, the impoverished Italian, Prince Amerigo. The narrative is underpinned by complex symbolism.…

Скачать книгу (размер 809 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 160) Аннотация: Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry himself, astute and charismatic, who led his 'band of brothers' to victory in the Battle of Agincourt, could indeed seem to be 'this star of England'. In recent decades the play has attracted…

Скачать книгу (размер 646 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 128) Аннотация: The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may well seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. He is a character so intense that he can dominate the play, challenging abrasively its romantic and lyrical…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 033 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 400) Аннотация: Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes — grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. Oliver Twist features some of the author's most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (Who dares to…

Скачать книгу (размер 1 054 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 208) Аннотация: The Peninsular War was a war of contrasts; a war fought in the icy passes of the high Pyrenees and on the burning wastes of the Sierra Morena; a war of infinite cruelty yet remarkable courtesy; a war in which debonair British officers fought alongside ragged Spanish partisans. It began in 1808 with Napoleon at the height of his power and ended with his attempted suicide in 1814. This narrative…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 849 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 560) Аннотация: The plays collected in this text provide the reader with a clear picture of Marlowe as a radical theatrical poet of great linguistic and dramatic daring, whose characters constantly strive to break out of the social, religious, and rhetorical binds within which they are confined.

Скачать книгу (размер 2 115 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 416) Аннотация: William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Ruskin, W.B.Yeats, and more recently beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the 'flower power' generation. He is one of England's most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies…

Скачать книгу (размер 973 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 192) Аннотация: «'I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot', Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, «The Waves». Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children — Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis — meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the…

Скачать книгу (размер 1 870 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 368) Аннотация: «The Well-Beloved» completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art, and the suffering that ensues. Jocelyn Pierston, celebrated sculptor, tries to create an image of his ideal woman — his imaginary «Well-Beloved» — in stone, just as he tries to find her in the flesh. Powerful symbolism marks this romantic…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 686 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 528) Аннотация: Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder. From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 441 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 480) Аннотация: Oscar Wilde took London by storm with his first comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan. The combination of dazzling wit, subtle social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. This volume includes all Wilde's plays from…

Скачать книгу (размер 1 217 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 240) Аннотация: Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies, featuring tales by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, RL Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Anthony Trollope and many others.

Скачать книгу (размер 2 523 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 496) Аннотация: Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, it became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. Beginning with an intriguing wager between God and Satan, it charts the life of a deeply flawed individual, his struggle against the nihilism of his diabolical companion Mephistopheles. Part One presents…

Скачать книгу (размер 2 227 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 438) Аннотация: Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe’s rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes that only 'repentance, justice and mercy' will prevent the onset of 'the wrath of Almighty God!'.

Скачать книгу (размер 3 176 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 624) Аннотация: Focusing on two families, the Gibsons and the Hamleys, this novel describes the habits, loyalties, prejudices, petty snobberies, rumours and adjustments of a whole countryside hierarchy.