A Signet Classic

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.

[The title short story]... wrestles with questions of God and evil. It tells of a callous angel who drops in on a village and wreaks havoc. The angel makes tiny clay people come alive and then, for amusement, destroys them with a storm, a fire and an earthquake..." - Nicholas D. Kristof Contains: The mysterious stranger A horse's tale Extract from Captain Stormfield's visit to heaven A fable My platonic sweetheart Hunting the deceitful turkey The McWilliamses and the burglar alarm.

"For many days we had been tempest-tossed...the raging storm increased in fury until on the seventh day all hope was lost." From these dire opening lines, a timeless story of adventure begins. One family will emerge alive from this terrible storm: the Robinsons--a Swiss pastor, his wife, and four sons, plus two dogs and a shipload of livestock. Inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, this heartwarming tale portrays a family's struggle to create a new life on a strange and fantastic tropical island. There each boy must learn to utilize his own unique nature as their adventures lead to difficult challenges and amazing discoveries, including a puzzling message tied to an albatross's leg. But it is in the ingenuity and authenticity of the family itself, and the natural wonders of this exotic land that have made The Swiss Family Robinson, first published at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the most enduring and imitated stories of shipwreck and survival.From the Paperback edition.

Forty-nine fairy tales by the Danish author whose name is synonomous with stories for children and adults.

«Se è indubbio che Thoreau abbia trascorso gran parte della sua vita nella natura libera, per lo più in solitudine, lontano dal consorzio civile, è altrettanto vero che nella sua personalità così poliedrica e contraddittoria si manifesta anche una tendenza alla critica sociale: tutte le sue opere, sia le principali che le minori, testimoniano questo aspetto e lo confermano come estensione dei princìpi del trascendentalismo emersoniano, portati alle loro estreme conseguenze. Nei due saggi qui presentati, esempi tra i più straordinari della saggistica e dell’oratoria di tutta la tradizione culturale americana, l’esigenza di una critica delle istituzioni assume un vigore decisivo, configurandosi come precisa richiesta di fondamentali riforme nella sfera più strettamente politica. Con un eloquio di rara forza espressiva e trasparente lucidità dichiarativa, la coscienza individuale viene posta al di sopra di ogni tradizione e di ogni istituzione.» (Dallo scritto di Franco Meli)

"The unfinished novel from which this collection of sketches, stories, and novellas takes its title was Wolfe's final effort. It tells the story of the Joyner family, Goerge Webber's maternal ancestors, in pre - Civil War North Carolina and illustrates Wolfe's fine sense of family traits rooted in a traceable past. "Chickamauga" is the superb Civil War tale that Wolfe received from his great-uncle; "The Lost Boy" renders a second, more tender treatment of the death of young Grover Gant; and "The Return of the Prodigal" describes Eugene Gant's imagined and then actual revisit to Altamont when he is a famous author."--BOOK JACKET.

The Master of Irony. Readers the world over recognize O. Henry as the best short story writer of the early twentieth century. Widely known as a master of irony, O. Henry also displays here dazzling wordplay and a wry combination of pathos and humor.

Contains: [Pride and Prejudice]( [Wuthering Heights]( Silas Marner

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. The children are put in deep holes in the ground and then shot. The Queen of The Fairies was going to save them but she fell a sleep in the bushes.

Theodor Storm's novella is a gripping dramatization of the bloody reckonings that lie beneath the surface of civilization.

Contains: - The Picture of Dorian Gray - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - The Happy Prince - The Birthday of the Infanta

"The Underdogs is the first great novel about the first great revolution of the twentieth century. Demetrio Macías, a poor, illiterate Indian, must join the rebels to save his family. Courageous and charismatic, he earns a generalship in Pancho Villa's army, only to become discouraged with the cause after it becomes hopelessly factionalized. At once a spare, moving depiction of the limits of political idealism, an authentic representation of Mexico's peasant life, and a timeless portrait of revolution, The Underdogs is an iconic novel of the Latin American experience and a powerful novel about the disillusionment of war."--The publisher.