Modern Library

(A Modern Library E-Book)Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timeWith Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker,H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West,Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer"e;Main Street is the climax of civilization,"e; Sinclair Lewis...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timePublished in 1916, James Joyce's semiautobiographical tale of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, is a coming-of-age story like no other. A bold, innovative experiment with both language and structure, the work has exerted a lasting influence on the contemporary...

In The Confidence-Man, writes John Bryant in his Introduction, Melville found a way to render our tragic sense of self and society through the comic strategies of the confidence game. He puts the reader in the game to play its parts and to contemplate the inconsistencies of its knaves and fools. Set on a Mississippi steamer on April Fools Day and...

At the age of eighteen, Mary Shelley, while staying in the Swiss Alps with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, conceived the tale of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life. The resulting book, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a dark parable warning against the risks of scientific and creative endeavor, the...

The first of Trollopes popular Barsetshire novels, set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester, The Warden centers on the honorable cleric Septimus Harding, one of Trollopes most memorable characters. When Harding is accused of mismanaging church funds, his predicament lays bare the complexities of the Victorian world and of...

'The best thing I've done is My Antonia,' recalled Willa Cather. 'I feel I've made a contribution to American letters with that book.' Set against the vast Nebraska prairie, Cather's elegiac novel features one of the most winning heroines in American fictionAntonia Shimerdaa young woman whose strength and passion...