In his last years Mark Twain had become a respected literary figure whose opinions were widely sought by the press. He had also suffered a series of painful physical, economic, and emotional losses.
Jack London (1876-1916), the critically acclaimed and widely read author of The Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906), and The Sea Wolf (1904), produced this collection of twelve short stories to
A punch in the face of the puritanism and conservatism he raged against, My Life and Loves is the highly charged, erotic autobiography of Frank Harris (1856-1931), an Irish writer and editor who foun
In his quest for a truly native idiom, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) incarnated the American geography and its people in a new and transcendent poetic form. His monumental work, Leaves of Grass, celebrates
Originally published in 1907, this little-known novel by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), the author of The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, was considered controversial for its frank treatment of such iss
In The Star Rover London indicts the savagery of prison life: San Quentin death row inmate Darrell Standing can escape his confinement and torture only by withdrawing into dreams of past lives during
In a quiet rural village in late-nineteenth-century France, an eleven-year-old boy is found dead in his room, sexually molested and strangled by an unknown assailant. The shocked townsfolk erupt in ou
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) has been generally acknowledged as the greatest English satirist. In a prodigious stream of letters, pamphlets, tales, and essays, he assailed, with irony, erudition, and sa
This volume contains two acclaimed short works by the great American writer Henry James (1843-1916). His famous novella The Turn of the Screw, concerning the governess of two small children, brilliant
Poorly received when first published in 1857, The Confidence Man is now considered Herman Melville's "most nearly perfect work," and one that occupies a central place in the American literary traditio
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) championed the belief that people of conscience were at liberty to follow their own opinion. In these selections from his writings, we see Thoreau the individualist and
Theodore Wieland hears mysterious voices. Are these the result of delusions, ventriloquism, or divine forces? In this Gothic thriller, novelist Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) portrays a man beset
