Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Here is quite simply the most handsome edition of one of the finest and most popular novels of all time. It features an elegant cloth binding, attractive full-color dust wrapper, handsome typography, and more than 100 delightful illustrations (plus 61 witty illustrated initial letters at chapter openings) by famed English Victorian artist Hugh Thomson.

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Bronte, Emma Fielding

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Manor, where she falls in... (more)

Wuthering Heights

by Emily Bronte

There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of love than Wuthering Heights. This is the story of a tormented foundling who falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other.

Little Women

or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy

by Louisa May Alcott, Isabel Anders

In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy come of age while their father is off to war.

Emma

by Jane Austen

New chronology and further reading; Tony Tanner's original introduction reinstated Edited with an introduction and notes by Flora Stafford.

Sense and Sensibility

by Jane Austen

'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. "Sense and Sensibility" is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two... (more)

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations , by Charles Dickens , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars... (more)

Persuasion

by Jane Austen

Austen's last novel is the crowning achievement of her matchless career. Her heroine, Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity, breeding and great depth of emotion, stands in stark contrast to the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England. Includes a new Introduction by Margaret Drabble, famed novelist and editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Language.

Dracula: Book 1

Dracula

by Bram Stoker

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying and unbelievable discoveries in his client's castle. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker presents a classic gothic horror that continues to inspire vampire myths to this day.

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

Translated by Constance Garnett, Introduction by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. Though some of the situations in Huckleberry Finn are... (more)

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP Dostoyevsky's penetrating study of a man for whom the distinction between right and wrong disappears, and a riveting portrait of guilt and retribution. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that... (more)

Northanger Abbey

by Jane Austen

Catherine is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not... (more)

Gemma Doyle Trilogy: Book 1

A Great and Terrible Beauty

by Libba Bray

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her.... (more)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

by Lewis Carroll

Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole without giving a thought about how she might get out. And so she tumbles into Wonderland: where animals answer back, a baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a disorderly tea party, croquet is played with hedgehogs and flamingos, and the Mock Turtle and Gryphon dance the Lobster Quadrille. In a land in which nothing is as it seems and... (more)

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life -- and the monster that became his legacy. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's... (more)

Oliver Twist

or, The Parish Boy's Progress

by Charles Dickens

A young boy flees from an orphanage to London, only to be captured by thieves.

Mansfield Park

by Jane Austen

This title contains introduction and notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex. Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned... (more)

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities , by Charles Dickens , is considered a classic of English literature. It is an early nineteenth century Romantic novel set in the period of the French Revolution.

The Luxe: Book 1

The Luxe

by Anna Godbersen

Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn. Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions. White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups. This is Manhattan, 1899. Beautiful sisters Elizabeth and Diana Holland rule Manhattan's social scene. Or so it appears. When the girls discover their status among New York City's elite is far from secure, suddenly everyone—from the... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Browse Subjects: 19th century

Top Books

by Jane Austen

by Charlotte Bronte, Emma Fielding

by Emily Bronte

or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy

by Louisa May Alcott, Isabel Anders

by Jane Austen

by Jane Austen

by Charles Dickens

by Jane Austen

by Bram Stoker

by Leo Tolstoy

by Mark Twain

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Jane Austen

by Libba Bray

by Lewis Carroll

by Mary Shelley

or, The Parish Boy's Progress

by Charles Dickens

by Jane Austen

by Charles Dickens

by Anna Godbersen