Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading

The first gothic novel in America, Wieland (1798) is now available in a Norton Critical Edition. Wieland, the story of religious delusion and horrific violence on the eve of the American Revolution, is a cornerstone of the Early American literary canon. A family living on an estate outside Philadelphia is visited by a set of mysterious voices, seemingly coming out of thin air, that are followed soon after by an itinerant rustic named Carwin. Violence erupts when the family's young patriarch believes he hears God's voice demanding a human sacrifice as a sign of faith. Testing the limits of religious and literary authority in the new United States, Brown's novel has for more than two centuries kept readers debating questions of agency, accountability, and revolutionary politics. The editor provides explanatory annotations throughout the volume. This Norton Critical Edition also reprints Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, Brown's fragmentary sequel to Wieland. A section of "Sources and Contexts" presents inspirations for Brown's work, including an account of the real-life Yates family murders, an excerpt from Christoph Martin Wieland's The Trial of Abraham, and religious and medical accounts of delusion, spontaneous combustion, and ventriloquism. Brown's outline for Wieland and his letter to Thomas Jefferson are also reprinted. "Criticism" includes contemporary responses to Wieland from both the United States and the United Kingdom, along with fourteen essential modern critical approaches. Contributors include Shirley Samuels, Christopher Looby, Nancy Ruttenberg, Laura Korobkin, David Kazanjian, Bryan Waterman, and Stephen Shapiro, among others. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included. --Book Jacket.

The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale is one of Stevenson's darker, more political novels. Two brothers are brought into conflict by the Jacobite rising of 1745, which tears their family apart.

A unique work of 20th Century prose following the epic power struggle and conflict between two peoples, the Demons and the Witches. Pre-dating the much better known works of Tolkein, it involves quests and battles on land and sea, heroic acts and deceits, love, lust and infidelity; all in settings so lavishly and extravagantly described as to stretch even the most vivid imagination. Although this work has been described as 'flawed' by many critics, because of a few minor glitches, if read with an open mind, and heart, it will transport the reader to realms of delight of a kind few authors are able to engender in these modern, almost monosyllabic times. To try it is most adviseable, to ignore it is to miss out on a rare treat.

A collection of fourteen short anecdotes, Bliss & Other Stories captures the human spirit in a way few writers have ever dreamed of doing. Mansfield’s ability to string together words approaches poetry. Her stories are free from the over-dramatic writing style that many women writers have been criticized for using, and instead candidly touch on the human experience. Whether writing about the awakening of sexuality in the title story or the bond of a family in “Prelude,” Mansfield explores the search for contentment in life.

H. H. Munro belongs to an enduring body of British writers who, born during the Victorian era, came to criticize and satirize its way of life as they passed into the Edwardian era and beyond, prolifically producing serial novels and short stories for periodical publication. The Complete Works of Saki gathers over 125 short stories by Munro, as well as his three novels and three plays. Whether read for his inventive plots, his wittiness of dialogue and character description, or even as a detailed overview of Victorian society throughout the world, The Complete Works of Saki preserves a unique voice from a unique time.

Allegorical fantasy novel about a Catholic and an atheistic socialist who argue passionately with each other. For political reasons, both are forced into an insane asylum.

Determined to leave behind the dull values of her small hometown, an opera singer devotes increasing amounts of energy to developing her art.

"Georges Munier is a sensitive boy growing up in the nineteenth century on the island of Mauritius. The son of a wealthy mulatto, Pierre Munier, Georges regularly sees how his father's courage is tempered by a sense of inferiority before whites and Georges vows that he will be different." "When Georges matures into a man committed to "moral superiority mixed with physical strength," the stage is set for a conflict with the island's rich and powerful plantation owner, Monsieur de Malmedie, and a forbidden romance with Sara, the beautiful woman engaged to Malmedie's son." "Swordplay, a slave rebellion, a harrowing escape, and a vow of vengeance - Georges is unmistakably the work of the master who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Yet it stands apart as the only book Dumas ever wrote that confronts the subject of race - a potent topic, since Dumas was of African ancestry himself." "This edition also features a Foreword by Jamaica Kincaid and an Introduction and notes by Werner Sollors, who addresses key themes such as colonialism, racism, African slavery, and interracial intimacy."--Jacket.

Sweet friends, receive my offering. You will find

"The Subjection of Women (1869) by john Stuart Mill contributed to liberal political theory by extending and developing the ideology of individualism to women. Mill's thesis was that 'the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality.' His feminist analysis was radical in nineteenth-century England, but it provided the roots of liberal feminist theory in the twentieth-century United States."--Back cover.