This study reflects recent feminist interest in Wharton as a critic of American materialism and as a woman who personally escaped from the confines of the conventional, prosperous Eastern urban society of her time. Building upon the work of R. W. B. Lewis and C. G. Wolff, the author gives close readings of Wharton's best-known novels and traces her interpretation of changing social mores from the 1870s through the 1920s. Concludes that Wharton was not a "fossilized old New Yorker" but an independent, fearless seeker of the intelligent, creative life. ISBN 0-8386-3126-6 : $24.50.

Ironically, now that she is becoming recognized as a Modernist by some, and as perhaps the greatest American writer of her generation, the criticism often obfuscates more than it reveals. The reasons reside in critics' loyalties to various theoretical approaches, the objectivity of which are often compromised by political hopes. This volume not only traces and analyzes the development of Whartonian literary criticism in its historical and political contexts, but also allows Edith Wharton, herself a literary critic, to respond to various concepts through the author's deductions and extrapolations from Wharton's own words.

American novelist Edith Wharton (1862–1937) is best known today for her tales of the city and the experiences of patrician New Yorkers in the “Gilded Age.” This book pushes against the grain of critical orthodoxy by prioritizing other “species of spaces” in Wharton’s work. For example, how do Wharton’s narratives represent the organic profusion of external nature? Does the current scholarly fascination with the environmental humanities reveal previously unexamined or overlooked facets of Wharton’s craft? I propose that what is most striking about her narrative practice is how she utilizes, adapts, and translates pastoral tropes, conventions, and concerns to twentieth-century American actualities. It is no accident that Wharton portrays characters returning to, or exploring, various natural localities, such as private gardens, public parks, chic mountain resorts, monumental ruins, or country-estate “follies.” Such encounters and adventures prompt us to imagine new relationships with various geographies and the lifeforms that can be found there. The book addresses a knowledge gap in Wharton and the environmental humanities, especially recent debates in ecocriticism. The excavation of Wharton's words and the background of her narratives with an eye to offering an ecocritical reading of her work is what the book focuses on.

Edith Wharton's wide reading in the nascent disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary theory of her day plays a role in her social fictions. She understands her world in binary terms of belonging and exile, of spatial boundaries and exclusions, and tribal behaviour. She applied that intellectual framework to the struggle to preserve the Old World from the territorial and cultural threat of the Great War. In linked thematic sections, Claire Preston considers ideas of tribal inclusion and banishment, buccaneer figures whose money-energy overcomes tribal demarcations, and expatriatism, the self-imposed mode of exile which fed Wharton's apparently chilly empiricism and was the origin of some of her most important work. She suggests that, against the claims of realism, Wharton should in fact be included in the early Modernist canon.

Jimmie Dale is a fictitious character created by Packard, and he appears in many mystery stories. By day Dale is a playboy, but at night he morphs into a master safecracker and wears the costume of a Grey seal.

The Dream of the Red Chamber provides a detailed, episodic record of life in the two branches of the wealthy, aristocratic Jia clan—the Rongguo House and the Ningguo House—who reside in two large, adjacent family compounds in the capital. Their ancestors were made Dukes and given imperial titles, and as the novel begins the two houses are among the most illustrious families in the city. One of the clan's offspring is made a Royal Consort, and a lush landscaped garden is built to receive her visit. In the novel's frame story, a sentient Stone, abandoned by the goddess Nüwa when she mended the heavens aeons ago, begs a Taoist priest and a Buddhist monk to take it with them to see the world.

King Henry the Fifth is a famous play by William Shakespeare based on a highly controversial and incredibly powerful English king. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War. The First Quarto text was titled The Chronicle History of Henry the fifth, and The Life of Henry the Fifth in the First Folio text.

This novel is a practical guide through different philosophical teachings. A reader learns them by life examples of Marius's fictional personality, whose life sets him in other circumstances to test his changing beliefs. The story is based in Rome, where Greek philosophy and early Christianity live beside. A typical citizen could be closely familiar with Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, or Aristippus. A series of life events, the loss of a mother, studying at boarding school, disease, visiting Rome, and life at the court of Marcus Aurelius, the first acquaintance with Christianity, allows Marius to try out different philosophical teachings prove their flaws and merits. First, Marius is fascinated by epicureanism but thinks it lacks depth. Then, he is fascinated by stoicism but later sees it as too cruel. Finally, Marius comes to learn the doctrines of Christianity, which give him spiritual peace. This story could happen in Rome and is very interesting. It shows how different philosophical teachings can shape ordinary people's real-life routines and behavior now and then.

This carefully crafted ebook: "THE GREATEST DICKENS CLASSICS (Illustrated Edition)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Our Mutual Friend - explores the conflict between doing what society expects of a person and the idea of being true to oneself The Pickwick Papers - To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, Samuel Pickwick suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members. Oliver Twist is an orphan who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin... A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. David Copperfield is a fatherless boy who is sent to lodge with his housekeeper's family after his mother remarries, but when his mother dies he decides to run away... Hard Times is set in the fictional city of Coketown and it is centered around utilitarian and industrial influences on Victorian society. A Tale of Two Cities depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. Great Expectations depicts the personal growth and development of an orphan nicknamed Pip in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century. Bleak House – legal thriller based on true events. Little Dorrit – criticize the institution of debtors' prisons, the shortcomings of both government and society. COLLECTED LETTERS THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS by John Forster

'The Relations of the Sexes' is an essay written by Leo Tolstoy. Here he argues, "In the first place I wished to say that there is a settled conviction, which has taken root in all classes of our society, and is supposed by false science, that sexual intercourse is indispensable to health, and that, as the marriage state is not always practicable, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, imposing on the man no obligation beyond a money payment, is perfectly natural, and therefore deserving of encouragement. This conviction has become so general and confirmed that parents encourage vice among their children by the advice of medical men; governments -whose only meaning consists in care for the moral well-being of the citizens -organize vice, i.e., regulate an entire class of women who are doomed to bodily and spiritual ruin for the satisfaction of the imaginary necessities of men; and unmarried men addict themselves to vice with perfectly quiet consciences."