Penguin

One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as...

For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie`s life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he`s enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a...

The tales told be Shahrazad over a thousand and one nights to delay her execution by the vengeful King Shahriyar have become among the most popular in both Eastern and Western literature. From the epic adventures of `Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp` and `Sinbad the Sailor` to the farcical `Young Woman and her Five Lovers` and the social criticism of...

The plays in this volume, each written a decade apart, demonstrate different sides of Henrik Ibsen` genius, but all deal with themes of alienation from society and the breaking down of convention. A Doll?s House (1879) portrays a woman questioning her duty to her husband and seeking to escape from the stifling confines of her marriage ? a theme...

Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate...

Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband`s gamekeeper and embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled...