Szépirodalom

Tout n'est pas liberté dans le monde, et quand ce monde est le Wild, pays farouche et terre glacée, meme le loup se sent prisonnier. Jack London, dans ce décor sauvage et cette nature hostile, nous conte l'histoire d'un louveteau qui vient petit a petita la civilisation et se fait chien. La vie ƒpre des animaux sauvages et des chasseurs indiens ou blancs de l'Alaska a rarement été peinte avec autant de force et de vérité. Pour écrire ce récit, qui est devenu un classique de la littérature, Jack Londons'est inspiré des souvenirs de son séjour dans le Grand Nord.

'I wonder what will become of her!'So speculate the friends and neighbours of Emma Woodhouse, the lovely, lively, wilful,and fallible heroine of Jane Austen's fourth published novel. Confident that she knows best, Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, onlyto discover that she understands thefeelings of others as little as she does her own heart. As Emma puzzles and blunders her way through the mysteries of her social world, Austen evokes for her readers a cast of unforgettable characters and a detailed portrait of a small town undergoinghistorical transition.Written with matchless wit and irony, judged by many to be her finest novel, Emma has been adapted many times for film and television. This new edition emphasises the novel's extraordinary technical audacity. While apparently conservative in its choiceof setting and range of characters, it was -and is - a formally revolutionary work.

The first modern translation and critical edition of The Bright Side of Life, the twelfth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart seriesThis major new translation by Andrew Rothwell restores the allusions to sexual passion and childbirth cut from the 1888 translation, which formed the basis for all subsequent editionsThe first opportunity for over sixty years to read the novel in English as Zola intended itIntroduction and notes look at the conflict between Zola's positivist faith and the developing sciences of the day, the relationship of Pessimism with Naturalism, and the effect censorship had on the novel's reception in the English-speaking worldIncludes an up-to-date bibliography, chronology of the author, and helpful explanatory notesOrphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens thehousehold and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually Madame Chanteaustarts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head.The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulentrelations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.

Henry of Huntingdon's narrative covers one of the most exciting and bloody periods in English history: the Norman Conquest and its aftermath. He tells of the decline of the Old English kingdom, the victory of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, andthe establishment of Norman rule. His accounts of the kings who reigned during his lifetime--William II, Henry I, and Stephen--contain unique descriptions of people and events. Henry tells how promiscuity, greed, treachery, and cruelty produced a seriesof disasters, rebellions, and wars. Interwoven with memorable and vivid battle-scenes are anecdotes of court life, the death and murder of nobles, and the first written record of Cnut and the waves and the death of Henry I from a surfeit of lampreys.Diana Greenway's translation of her definitive Latin text has been revised for this edition.

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.'The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.'At the peak of European Imperialism, steamboat captain Charles Marlow travels deep into the African Congo on his way to relieve the elusive Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader renowned for his fearsome reputation. On his journey into the unknown Marlow takes aterrifying trip into his own subconscious, overwhelmed by his menacing, perilous and horrifying surroundings.The landscape and the people he meets force him to reflect on human nature and society, and in turn Conrad writes revealingly about the dangers of imperialism.

This is a new annotated translation of the B-text, Langland's own extensive revision of his original text. One of the greatest poems of the English Middle Ages, Piers Plowman remains of enduring interest for its vivid picture of the whole life ofmedieval society, its deeply imaginative religious vision, and its passionate concern to see justice and truth prevail in our world.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealthof other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Billy Budd is among the greatest of Melville's works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is anautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. In this edition are also eight shorter tales, reprinted from the most authoritative recenteditions and are supplemented by a penetrating introduction and full notes.

The Revenge Tragedy flourished in Britain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy helped to establish the popularity of the genre, and it was followedby The Revenger's Tragedy, published anonymously andascribed first to Cyril Tourneur and then to Thomas Middleton. George Chapman's The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois and Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy appeared soon after.Each of the four plays printed here defines the problems of the revenge genre, often by exploiting its conventions in unexpected directions. All deal with fundamental moral questions about the meaning of justice and the lengths to which victimizedindividuals may go to obtain it, while registering the strains of life in a rigid but increasingly fragile social hierarchy.Under the General Editoriship of Dr Michael Cordner, of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailedannotation.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama. Best known for his tragedies, he alsowrote many successful comedies of city life. This volume offers the best of these comedies: A Mad World, My Masters

Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The anti-hero, Aeneas Manston, as physically alluring as he is evil, even fascinates the innocent Cytherea, though she is in love with another man. When hecannot seduce her, Manston resorts to deception, blackmail, bigamy, murder, and rape. Yet this compelling story also raises the great questions underlying Hardy's major novels, which relate to the injustice of the class system, the treatment of women,probability and causality. This edition shows for the first time that the sensation novel was always Hardy's natural genre. It is based on the first edition text, and includes later prefaces and the Wessex Poems dissolved into prose.

During a trip to Europe, Christopher Newman, a wealthy American businessman, asks the charming Claire de Cintré to be his wife. To his dismay, he receives an icy reception from the heads of her family, who find Newman to be a vulgar example of theAmerican privileged class. Brilliantly combining elements of comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama, this tale of thwarted desire vividly contrasts nineteenth-century American and European manners. Oxford's edition of The American, which was firstpublished in 1877, is the only one that uses James' revised 1907 text.

The Pastons of Norfolk left behind them an incomparable picture of life in fifteenth-century England in the earliest great collection of family letters in English. The letters span three generations and most were written during the reigns of Henry VI,Edward IV, and Richard III, in a period of political turmoil, local anarchy, and war abroad and at home. They reveal personal hopes and anxieties, and contain as well as business matters a wealth of information on leisure pursuits, education, anddomestic life. The writers express themselves with clarity and vigor that is remarkable at this early date, and the letter illustrate, as no other documents can, the state of the language in daily use immediately before and after the introduction ofprinting. This modernized selection prepared from the original manuscripts is designed to present the full range of the Pastons' principle concerns.

The York Corpus Christi cycle is the oldest and best-known of the English mystery cycles, and its depth and scope are reflected in the selection of twenty-two pageants offered in this volume. Included are plays on the Creation, the Fall of Man, theIncarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, and the Last Judgement. The Passion sequence has been expanded by six of the eight plays generally attributed to the great poetic dramatist known as the York realist

'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater'This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphorisms, examining the pleasures of revenge, the falsity of pity, and the incompatibility of marriage with the philosophical life.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride overVictorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Winston Smith rewrites history. It's his job. Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, he helps the Party, and the omnipresent Big Brother, control the people of Oceania.Winston knows what a good citizen of Oceania must do: show his devotion for Big Brother and the Party

In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansionis haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of thefamily's salvation-or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables a Romance, and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is apowerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel.