It is the mid-seventeenth century in Boston. Hester Prynne, dignified and silent, is led through prison doors to her public shaming by members of the Puritan town. Holding her illegitimate child to her breast, and bearing a bright scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her bodice, Hester must now struggle to create a new life for herself and her child within this censorious community. When her missing spouse reappears, reveals himself to her, and takes...

"Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is both an important historical document and Franklin's major literary work. It was not only the first autobiography to achieve widespread popularity, but after two hundred years remains one of the most enduringly popular examples of the genre ever written. It provides not only the story of Franklin's own remarkably influential career, but maps out a strategy for self-made success in the context of emerging American...

A translation of Thucydide's history of the wars between Athens and Sparta is critically introduced.

George Eliot's last, most ambitious novel, Daniel Deronda aroused scandal when it first appeared in 1876. What begins as a passionate love story takes a surprising turn into the hidden world of the early Zionist movement in Victorian England. The story opens memorably at a roulette table, where we first meet the young and idealistic Daniel Deronda and the enchanting Gwendolen Harleth, whom many critics consider to be George Eliot's finest creation....

The mysterious financier Augustus Melmotte buys a great house in London, where he succeeds in persuading many prominent Londoners to invest in his fictitious railroad, the South Central Pacific and Mexican. Melmotte also attempts to secure for himself a place in the House of Commons and to marry his daughter to a titled aristocrat. Trollope's masterpiece is a scathing indictment of the materialism and greed that permeated the Victorian Age.

Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington is freed when he is nine years old. To help support his family, he then works as a salt packer, coal miner, and house servant. All the while, he longs to become educated and to educate others. Poverty, racism, and other obstacles stand in his way. Will he overcome them all, or will the many barriers prove stronger than his unwavering determination?

"As one of the many installments in Jules Verne's Voyage Extraordinaire series, Journey to the Center of the Earth promises high stakes and thrilling adventure. When Professor Otto Lidenbrock bought an ancient runic manuscript, which chronicles the lives of Norwegian Kings, he did not expect to learn of anything but the history of Icelandic leaders. However, upon further inspection, Lidenbrock and his nephew, Axel, find that the manuscript includes...

1906 best-seller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page. Published privately by Sinclair in 1906 after commercial...

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with discussion questions, role-playing scenarios, and other study activities. Marc Antony comes "to bury Caesar, not to praise him," and his funeral oration unleashes a power struggle among the Roman Empire's mightiest generals and statesmen. Books in this new, illustrated series present complete texts of Shakespeare's plays. However, the lines are set up so students...