The Ark

Today, British author and essayist Aldous Huxley is best remembered for the bleak dystopian vision he set forth in the classic novel Brave New World . In the engaging short pieces collected in Mortal Coils , Huxley spreads his creative wings, dabbling in murder mysteries, romance, and satire.

"The five stories brought together in Tales of Unrest (1898) mark a turning point in the writer's career. Conrad's first short story collection evidences a writer firmly in control of his new craft staking a claim to diverse cultural and fictional territories.

Among the masterpieces of world literature, this great verse drama by Norway's famed playwright humorously yet profoundly explores the virtues, vices, and follies common to all humanity as it follows the roguish life of a charming but arrogant young man. A literary delight since it was first published in 1875.

The Voyage Out (1915) is the story of a rite of passage. When Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship she is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage. Virginia Woolf knew all too well the forms that she was supposed to follow when writing of a young lady's entrance into the world, and she struggled to subvert the conventions, wittily and assiduously, rewriting and revising the novel many...

Dorothy, the heroine of this novel, performs good works, cultivates good thoughts, and pricks her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She then has a series of unexpected and degrading adventures after becoming a victim of amnesia. Though she regains her life as a clergyman's daughter, she has lost her faith.

When a noble youth arrives unannounced to request the hand of the matchless Laura, it seems their future is one of contentment and bliss -- that is until his family learn of the marriage and, one by one, they reject the new bride. So begins the series of unspeakable events that Laura must confront and overcome, by way of the occasional fainting fit and bout of delirium. Tragedy and comedy here go hand in hand as a very foolish young heroine is placed...

"Let us not be led astray: they say 'judge not' and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way." The Antichrist by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, was originally published in 1895. In it, Nietzsche expresses his dissatisfaction with modernity, listing his dislike of "lazy peace", "cowardly compromise", "tolerance" and "resignation". Mankind, according to Nietzsche, is corrupt and its highest values are depraved because nihilistic values...

This "jewel at the heart of English comic literature" chronicles the daily fortunes and misfortunes of a middle-age, middle-class clerk (William Trevor, The Mail on Sunday). Since its original publication in 1892, The Diary of a Nobody has become a much-loved classic. It is a fictional man's dissection of the everyday drama of his life as an office worker in a London firm. With dry wit, the authors step into the character of Charles Pooter as...

"This 1818 novel is set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock's contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry's son Scythrop (also modelled on a famous Romantic, Peacock's friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies...

Ann Veronica is a New Woman novel by H.G. Wells. Ann Veronica describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, "a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty," against her middle-class father's stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It is set in Victorian era London and environs, except for an Alpine excursion. Ann Veronica offers vignettes of the Women's suffrage movement in Great Britain and features a chapter...