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First published in 1857, The Life of Charlotte Bronte presents an intimate portrait of the celebrated author through the eyes of Elizabeth Gaskell, a personal friend of Bronte’s and fellow trailblazer of Victorian-era literature. Drawing from hundreds of Bronte’s letters, Gaskell illuminates what she described as a "wild, sad life and the beautiful character that grew out of it."
Beginning with Bronte’s lonely childhood as a student at the...
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A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
13) Little Dorrit
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The daughter of an imprisoned debtor suffers injustices of nineteenth-century English society.
14) Les Miserables
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After nineteen years in prison, Jean Valjean has difficulty adjusting to the outside world, which scorns and shuns him.
16) Roughing it
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Originally published over one hundred years ago, "Roughing It" tells the (almost) true story of Mark Twain's rollicking adventures across the United States. A hilarious account of how the author tried finding wealth in the rocks of Nevada, it was published before his most famous works and shows why he would grow to become one of the most beloved American writers of all time. The story follows many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to...
17) Daniel Deronda
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Deronda, a high-minded young man searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a series of dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the English country-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beauty trapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives of a poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers the long-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving and suspenseful narrative opens up a...
19) The golden bowl
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Henry James' story of a pair of adulterous lovers who are married, respectively, to a rich American collector of European art and to his inexperienced daughter provides--beyond its expensive, burnished, beautifully appointed exteriors--an understanding of the rises and betrayals inherent in society that is unparalleled in literature.
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Published in 1880, Ben-Hur is a fictionalization of the events of Christ's life, beginning with the Nativity and ending with the Crucifixion. The story uses a parallel structure to simultaneously explore the life of Judah Ben-Hur, a Hebrew prince who lived in the time of Christ. This remarkable work of historical fiction reshaped the landscape of American popular literature and prompted millions of readers to reevaluate their personal views of Christianity....