A carefully selected and annotated selection of Ruskin's work. Extracts are grouped together according to subject and each section is introduced separately. This edition was originally published by Penguin as "Ruskin Today".

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) was a writer of breathtaking range and learning, whose works demonstrate a warm and humorous view of human nature. Religio Medici is a fascinating, witty and intimate exploration of his views on faith and tolerance, while substantial selections from Pseudodoxia Epidemica display Browne's breadth of knowledge and omnivorous curiosity in his account of common errors in a startling array of subjects including sciences, history, literature and philosophy. Hydriotaphia or 'Urn Buriall' is an intriguing meditation on death and the desire for immortality, The Garden of Cyrus considers the mysterious order to be found in nature, and A Letter to a Friend and the aphoristic Christian Morals provide profound spiritual guidance to readers.

The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide. In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation. The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class convention are the themes of this now-classic novel. The book was influenced by French writers ranging from Flaubert to Maupassant, and can be seen as a precursor of the impressionistic, mood-driven novels of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes. Variously called "vulgar, " "unhealthily introspective, " and "morbid, " the book was neglected for several decades, not least because it was written by a "regional" woman writer. This edition also includes selected stories from Kate Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and an introduction and notes by Nina Baym.

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In a novel full of poetry and mysterious settings, Hardy unfolds the story of his beautiful, suffering Tess with unforgettable tenderness and intensity.

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor "The Prince" even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. . . "The Prince" . . .has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.

‘The courtier has to imbue with grace his movements, his gestures, his way of doing things and in short, his every action’

In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldesar Castiglione, a diplomat and Papal Nuncio to Rome, sets out to define the essential virtues for those at Court. In a lively series of imaginary conversations between the real-life courtiers to the Duke of Urbino, his speakers discuss qualities of noble behaviour – chiefly discretion, decorum, nonchalance and gracefulness – as well as wider questions such as the duties of a good government and the true nature of love. Castiglione’s narrative power and psychological perception make this guide both an entertaining comedy of manners and a revealing window onto the ideals and preoccupations of the Italian Renaissance at the moment of its greatest splendour.

George Bull’s elegant translation captures the variety of tone in Castiglione’s speakers, from comic interjections to elevated rhetoric. This edition includes an introduction examining Castiglione’s career in the courts of Urbino and Mantua, a list of the historical characters he portrays and further reading.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

One of Voltaire's earliest tales, Zadig is set in the exotic East and is told in the comic spirit of Candide; L'Ingenu, written after Candide, is a darker tale in which an American Indian records his impressions of France

This volume presents the major works of five poets―George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne.While most of the selections fall under the heading of religious poetry, the important secular verse of Marvell and Crashaw is included.

Eighty poems by Herbert have been selected from The Temple, and two early poems from Isaak Walton's Lives are also included. Crashaw is represented by sixteen poems from Steps to the Temple, Delights of the Muses, and Carmen Deo Nostro; Marvell, by eighteen selections from Miscellaneous Poems; Vaughan, by forty-five poems from Silex Scintillans, Parts I and II; and Traherne, by twelve poems from the Dobell Folio, The Third Century, and the Burney Manuscript.

All of the texts have been freshly edited, and spelling has been modernized. Textual Notes specify the procedures followed and give reasons for certain new readings. The poems are fully annotated in order to clarify unfamiliar allusions and images.

A broad range of critical viewpoints is represented in essays by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aldous Huxley, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Anthony Low, L. C. Knights, E. B. Greenwood, Joseph H. Summers, Douglas Bush, Helen C. White, Austin Warren, Richard Strier, Frank Kermode, William Empson, M. C. Bradbrook, M. G. Lloyd Thomas, Edward S. Le Comte, Karina Williamson, Dennis Davidson, Robert Ellrodt, E. C. Pettet, S. Sandbank, Arthur Clements, H. M. Margoliouth, and Stanley Stewart.

An Annotated Bibliography covers historical and cultural background, the lives and works of the individual poets, and several important aspects of religious belief especially relevant to the poems.

One of the best-selling books of all time, The Pilgrim's Progress holds a unique place in the history of English literature. Bunyan captures the speech of ordinary people as accurately as he depicts their behavior and appearance and as firmly as he realizes their inner emotional and spiritual life.

Dickens' second historical novel, which he considered "the best story I have written," provides a highly-charged examination of human suffering and human sacrifice. Private experience and public history paralled one another as the political activities and personal responsibilities of these fictional characters, during the French Revolution, draw them into the Paris of the Terror.

One of Time’s 100 best English-language novels • A mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous—you’ll recognize it immediately

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.

Praise for Snow Crash

“[Snow Crash is] a cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century.”—William Gibson

“Brilliantly realized . . . Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow.”—The New York Times Book Review