Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Emma

by Jane Austen

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

Each edition includes: • Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play • Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play • Scene-by-scene plot summaries • A key to famous lines and phrases • An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language • An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play • Illustrations from the Folger... (more)

King Lear

by William Shakespeare

The Oxford School Shakespeare is a well-established series which helps students understand and enjoy Shakespeare's plays. As well as the complete and unabridged text, each play in this series has an extensive range of students' notes. These include detailed and clear explanations of difficult words and passages, a synopsis of the plot, summaries of individual scenes, and notes on the main characters. This work... (more)

The Phaedra of Seneca

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Seneca's Phaedra occupies an important and influential position in the tradition of European drama. This new edition concentrates on the play's dramatic qualities, examining its Greek and Roman background. The introduction presents discussion of dramaturgy and rhetoric as well as style and textual transmission. An unusual feature is the tracing of the influence of Phaedra's story on later European literature and... (more)

Candide (A Norton Critical Edition)

by Voltaire, Robert Martin Adams

Robert M. Adams’s superlative revised translation of Candide provides the basis for this widely adopted Norton Critical Edition. The accompanying apparatus has been revised in accordance with recent biographical and critical materials. The Backgrounds and Criticism sections provide important essays that shed light on major critical issues relevant to Candide and to the intellectual climate of the period. In... (more)

A Room of One's Own

by Virginia Woolf

Originally published in 1929, A Room of One's Own eloquently states Woolf's conviction that in order to create works of genius, women must be freed from financial obligations and social restrictions.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895) was born into slavery by a slave mother and an unknown father. At the age of 8, he started to educate himself with the help of his master's wife. In 1838, he fled Baltimore for the North. There he soon became a noted author and speaker on slavery. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845), "My Bondage and My Freedom" (1855)... (more)

Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient , Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century... (more)

A Distant Shore (Vintage International)

by Caryl Phillips

Dorothy is a retired schoolteacher who has recently moved to a housing estate in a small village. Solomon is a night-watchman, an immigrant from an unnamed country in Africa. Each is desperate for love. And yet each harbors secrets that may make attaining it impossible. With breathtaking assurance and compassion, Caryl Phillips retraces the paths that lead Dorothy and Solomon to their meeting point: her failed... (more)

Lucy: A Novel

by Jamaica Kincaid

The coming-of-age story of one of Jamaica Kincaid's most admired creations--newly available in paperback Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, alomst at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled... (more)

Purple Hibiscus: A Novel

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A haunting tale of an Africa and an adolescence undergoing tremendous changes by a talented young Nigerian writer. Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls of her family compound and the frangipani trees she can see from her bedroom window. Her wealthy Catholic father, although generous and well-respected in the community, is repressive and fanatically religious at home. Her life is... (more)

The Lady of the Lake

by Sir Walter Scott

A kindly heart had brave Fitz-James; Fast poured his eyes at pity's claims, And now, with mingled grief and ire, He saw the murdered maid expire. "God, in my need, be my relief, As I wreak this on yonder Chief!" -from The Lady of the Lake Wildly successful with readers and critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1810, this is Scott's renowned romantic poem about love and honor... (more)

Seneca's Hercules Furens: A Critical Text With Introduction and Commentary (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology)

Seneca's Hercules Furens: A Critical Text With Introduction and Commentary (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A State of Independence

by Caryl Phillips

When Bertram Francis returns to his native St. Kitts after a twenty-year sojourn in England, the mangy, flamboyant island that greets him is astonishingly unchanged. Yet time and the bitternes of his island-bound family and friends have made him a stranger among familiar faces and landsmarks. A State of Independence recounts the first three days of Bertram's inauspicious homecoming, which coincides with the... (more)

The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

Often classified as a 'tragicomedy' - if it is classified at all - this play blends some of Shakespeare's most entertaining and most dismal elements, depicting the destructive power of jealousy and the restorative potential of love. When Leontes, King of Sicily, believes his wife, Hermione, to be having an affair with his friend King Polixenes of Bohemia, he imprisons his wife and sends her - and, contrary to his... (more)

Interesting Narrative and Other Writings

Interesting Narrative and Other Writings

by Olaudah Equiano

An exciting and often terrifying adventure story, as well as an important precursor to such famous nineteenth-century slave narratives as Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, Olaudah Equiano's Narrative recounts his kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766, and his... (more)

Cows, pigs, wars & witches;: The riddles of culture

Cows, pigs, wars & witches;: The riddles of culture

by Marvin Harris

This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.

Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.

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)

Gorboduc Or Ferrex and PorrexThomas Sackville, Thomas Norton

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: college course reading

by Jane Austen

by William Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

by Voltaire, Robert Martin Adams

by Virginia Woolf

by Frederick Douglass

by Michael Ondaatje

by Caryl Phillips

by Jamaica Kincaid

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

by Sir Walter Scott

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

by Caryl Phillips

by William Shakespeare

by Olaudah Equiano

by Marvin Harris

by Daniel Defoe

by Mary Shelley

by Thomas Norton