with introduction by david masson

In post-World War I America, Alice Adams, a small-town girl with big ambitions, welcomes the attention of Arthur Russell, a handsome, eligible bachelor from the upper echelons of society. Alice and her family embark on a delicate game of pretense to conceal their desperate financial position and lower social standing. As she oscillates between fantasy and reality, Tarkington reveals Alice's inner turmoil and the shame, longing, and desperation that...

First published in 1883, this charming book includes many of James Whitcomb Riley's signature poems, including "Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer" and "When the Frost Is on the Punkin." Also graced by noted Brown County artist Will Vawter's folksy illustrations of farm scenes from our past, this Library of Indiana Classics edition faithfully reproduces the 1905 edition. A must-have for Riley enthusiasts everywhere, it offers a warm look at how farm...

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) is a collection of sonnets by English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Written between 1845 and 1846, Sonnets from the Portuguese is a series of love poems written by Browning to her husband, the prominent Victorian poet Robert Browning. Although Elizabeth was initially unsure of the poems, Robert encouraged their publication, suggesting she title them to make readers believe they were translations and not personal...

Edward Waverly enjoyed a privileged upbringing, despite his family's drama. Coming of age during a political uprising, Edward's time is split between his father and his uncle, who each have opposing political views, which causes a rift in the family. His uncle is a traditional British subject that wishes to overthrow the government so that Charles Edward Stuart is restored to power, commonly known as a Jacobite. However, Edward's father is a Hanoverian,...

Samuel Butler was the iconoclastic English author of the Utopian satirical novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903. Both have remained in print ever since. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted today. He was

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The Great God Pan (1894) is a novella by Arthur Machen. Condemned as decadent and obscene upon publication, The Great God Pan earned praise from Oscar Wilde and H. P. Lovecraft, and is now regarded as one of Victorian literature's finest-and most unsettling-stories of horror and the occult. Throughout the years, it has influenced such figures as Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Josh Malerman with its depiction of the god Pan and unsettling blend...

Eugene is not only naive in the ways of the world, having been isolated and cosseted by his father for twenty-seven years, but he is also symbolically short-sighted. He is unable to ‘see’ Madam Blumenthal as the rogue female seductress. She is glamorous, experienced, bohemian, an author, and something of an adventuress. What this tale represents then is yet another warning to men about the dangers of forming romantic relationships with women....

When Jack Kells kidnaps the beautiful Joan Randle, he takes her to an isolated canyon where his legion are plotting to acquire a gold fortune. The woman becomes an unexpected accomplice to an intricate robbery. Jack Kells is the cold-hearted leader of a group of mountain bandits. Despite his rough exterior, he develops a soft spot for their latest victim-Miss Joan Randle. She was captured by the men and taken to their hideout where she encounters...

The western is one of America’s most important and influential contributions to world culture. And it was Owen Wister’s The Virginian, first published in 1902, that created the familiar archetypes of character, setting, and action that still dominate western fiction and film.