This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1877 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated...

"The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the exploits of Fabrizio del Dongo, an ardent young aristocrat who joins Napoleon's army just before the battle of Waterloo. Yet perhaps the novel's most unforgettable characters are the hero's beautiful aunt, the alluring Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, Count Mosca, who plot to further Fabrizio's political career at the treacherous court of Parma in a sweeping story that illuminates an entire epoch of...

"A Diary From Dixie" is Mary Boykin Chesnut's celebrated firsthand account of life in the Confederate South during the Civil War years of 1861-1865. Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate Senator and Brigadier General described the life of an upper-class planter society confronting the encroaching realities of the end of slavery and her peers' way of life. Full of important personages and eminently readable, the Diary was quoted extensively in Ken Burns'...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Francis Bacon once wrote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested... " This is a book to be chewed and digested, and these essays make as satisfying a meal today as when the first edition was published in 1597. Indeed, the present-day reader is amply rewarded for the effort of taking in the old-fashioned English...

Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldier Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with...

German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche was one the most controversial figures of the 19th century. His evocative writings on religion, morality, culture, philosophy, and science were often polemic attacks against the established views of his time. First published in 1872, "The Birth of Tragedy" is the author's classic work on dramatic theory. It was the author's first published work in which he exhibited his enthusiasm for the dramatic works of Aeschylus...

Uncovering a governmental conspiracy to frame a friend for murder puts David Balfour on the run and striving to protect the woman he's come to love. Released with the title David Balfour when originally released in the United States, Catriona is Robert Louis Stevenson's follow-up to Kidnapped. David Balfour, hero of both books, is made a target by his willingness to testify in favor of a friend falsely accused of murder. His stubborn sense of justice...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. When Evan MacIan, a fervent Catholic, becomes enraged by an atheist newspaper, he challenges the editor, James Turnbull, to a duel. Turnbull, just as passionate in his atheism as MacIan is in his Catholicism, eagerly accepts. Their sword fight interrupted wherever they go, MacIan and Turnbull duel with words. The more MacIan and Turnbull debate, the more they realize...

First published in 1799, Charles Brockden Brown's "Edgar Huntly, Or Memoirs of a Sleep Walker" is the story of its title character, who upon learning of the death of the brother of his friend and love interest, Mary Waldegrave, visits where he died in the woods in rural Pennsylvania. There he discovers a man, Clithero, a servant from a nearby farm, suspiciously lurking about near the scene of Waldegrave's murder. Suspecting Clithero, Edgar begins...