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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere

John Webster was a radically and creatively experimental dramatist. This volume offers his two great Jacobean tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, together with his brilliant tragicomedy, The Devil's Law-Case, and the comedy written withWilliam Rowley, A Cure for a Cuckold. The texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation.

Eleven tales from the Celtic Mytkology.+ Guide to pronunciation+ Bibliography+ Map+ Explanatory notes+ Indexes

'She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth'A selection of Rossetti's most famous poems, from the hallucinatory 'Goblin Market' to 'In the bleak mid-winter'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

Japan's modernist master explores family, art and the fear of madness in exquisite autobiographical pieces and a short story.Japan's modernist master explores family, art and the fear of madness in exquisite autobiographical pieces and a short story.

The Shadow of the Wind is a stunning literary thriller in which the discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not still be alive...

'All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages...'A selection taken from Walt Whitman's Leaves of GrassIntroducing 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

Renowned 19th-century author Nathaniel Hawthorne writes fully in his own time, not haunting his characters with the American past as in his more famous works THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES and THE SCARLET LETTER. Published in 1852, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCEremains a captivating work about

The introduction includes an examination of the Quarto and texts, and of the relationship between them

`I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds.' So begins Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532), the culmination of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France. It is a brilliantly wittyparody of the medieval romances, and a fitting monument to the court society of the Italian Renaissance which gave them birth. This unabridged prose translation faithfully captures the narrative entire andis a kaleidoscope of scenes and emotions of fact and fantasy.

Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive and romantic young man, meets and falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Although he realizes that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion for her and his infatuation tormentshim to the point of absolute despair. The first great 'confessional' novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther draws both on Goethe's own unrequited love for Charlotte Buff and on the death of his friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. The book was an immediatesuccess and a cult rapidly grew up around it, resulting in numerous imitations as well as violent criticism and even suppression for its apparent recommendation of suicide. Goethe's sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist at odds with societyand ill-equipped to cope with life is now considered the first great tragic novel of European literature. This edition includes notes and an introduction by Michael Hulse who explores the origins of the novel in the author's life and examines its impacton European culture.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genresand disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In While Mortals Sleep men and machines, art and artifice, fortune and fame become curiously twisted. A travelling salesman falls in love a robot, Jenny, a refrigerator with personality. A man plays with his model trains too much until the women in hislife decide to take matters into their own hands.A young typist receives a plea for help on her Dictaphone - it is from an escaped, dying murderer hiding somewhere in the works of her company's factory. In the title story, a hard-nosed reporter is calledupon to judge the annual Christmas lights competition - a job that leads him to learn something about the true meaning of Christmas.Január 25-én jelent meg Amerikában Kurt Vonnegut eddig sehol sem publikált novelláit tartalmazó - újabb - posztumusz kötete While Mortals Sleep (Míg a halandók alszanak) címmel.Dave Eggers (nálunk az Ahol a vadak várnak című mesekönyv regényváltozatának szerzőjeként ismert) a kötetelőszavában Vonnegut brilliáns, szórakoztató és gyakran kegyetlenül csípős stílusát egy egész írógeneráció számára példaként és inspiráló forrásként jellemzi. A novelláskötetben az ember és a gépek, a művészet és a lelemény kapcsolata, valamit az jelenikmeg, hogyan hat a szerencse és a hírnév az átlagemberek életére.Az egyik novella egy ambiciózus útépítőről szól, aki ideje nagy részében buldózereket és útépítő munkásokat igazgat, szabadidejében vonatmakketezéssel foglalkozik, egészen addig míg álmai asszonya gyökerestül fel nem forgatja az életét. Egy másiktörténetben egy zsémbes újságkihordó szinte akaratán kívül egy csodálatos karácsonyi mesébe csöppen, egy disznótenyésztő özvegyét pedig furcsa, mágikus levelekkel bombázza egy titokzatos férfi, akivel még sosem találkozott élőben.

Cities, nations, civilization, progress-it's all over. That game's up. We're beat.'One of the most important and influential invasion narratives ever written, The War of the Worlds (1897) describes the coming of the Martians, who land in Woking, and make their way remorselessly towards the capital, wreaking chaos, death, anddestruction. The novel is closely associated with anxiety about a possible invasion of Great Britain at the turn of the century, and concerns about imperial expansion and its impact, and it drew on the latest astronomical knowledge to imagine a desertplanet, Mars, turning to Earth for its future. The Martians are also evolutionarily superior to mankind.

Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context ofpolitical theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be transgressed, and what should be reverently preserved. Burke's generation was much in need of advice on thesematters. The Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and catastrophically, the French Revolution presented challenges of terrible proportions. They could promise paradise or threaten anarchy. Burke was acutely aware of how high the stakes were.The Reflections on the Revolution in France was a dire warning of the consequences that would follow the mismanagement of change.

Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town isboth an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farcewhich urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore.'Shipwrecked in a storm at sea, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a remote and desolate island. As he struggles to piece together a life for himself, Crusoe's physical, moral and spiritual values are tested to the limit. For 24 years he remains in solitudeand learns to tame and master the island, until he finally comes across another human being. Considered a classic literary masterpiece, and frequently interpreted as a comment on the British Imperialist approach at the time, Defoe's fable was and stillis revered as the very first English novel.

Cuando yo tenía seis anos vi en un libro sobre la selva virgen que se titulaba Historias vividas, una magnífica lámina. Representaba una serpiente boa que se tragaba a una fiera. En el libro se afirmaba: La serpiente boa se traga su presa entera, sinmasticarla. Luego ya no puede moverse y duerme durante los seis meses que dura su digestión. Reflexioné mucho en ese momento sobre las aventuras de la jungla y a su vez logré trazar con un lápiz de colores mi primer dibujo. Ensené mi obra de arte a laspersonas mayores y les pregunté si mi dibujo les daba miedo. -?por qué habría de asustar un sombrero?- me respondieron. Mi dibujo no representaba un sombrero. Representaba una serpiente boa que digiere un elefante. En mi dibujo número dos, dibujéentonces el interior de la serpiente boa a fin de que las personas mayores pudieran comprender. Siempre estas personas tienen necesidad de explicaciones.

Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range from inventing the lightning rod to publishing PoorRichard's Almanack to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime he knew prominence not only in America but in Britain and France as well.This volume includes Franklin's reflections on such diverse questions as philosophy and religion, social status, electricity, American national characteristics, war, and the status of women. Nearly sixty years separate the earliest writings from thelatest, an interval during which Franklin was continually balancing between the puritan values of his upbringing and the modern American world to which his career served as prologue.This edition provides a new text of the Autobiography, established with close reference to Franklin's original manuscript. It also includes a new transcription of the 1726 journal, and several pieces which have recently been identified as Franklin's ownwork.

Includes a complete reprint of Shakespeare's source, Robert Greene's PandostoThe Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most perfectly realized tragi- comedy, as notable for its tragic intensity as for its comic grace and, throughout, for the richness and complexity of its poetry. It concludes, moreover, with the most daring and movingreconciliation scene in all Shakespeare's plays.Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realist psychology and a powerful commentary on the violence implicit in family relationships and deep, longlasting friendships. Stephen Orgel's editionconsiders the play in relation to Renaissance conceptions of both dramatic genre and the family, traces the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards it, and places its psychological and dramatic conflicts within the Jacobean cultural andpolitical context. The commentary pays special attention to the play's linguistic complexity, and the edition also includes a complete reprint of Shakespeare's source, Pandosto, by Robert Greene.