The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel. Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her brother has a vision...

Chronicles the lives of a middle-class family whose values are constantly at war with its passions and love affairs.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience is William James's classic survey of religious belief. With psychological insight and philosophical rigor, James wrote a truly foundational text for modern belief. Matthew Bradley's wide-ranging new edition--the most critically up-to-date and inclusive edition of James's masterpiece available in paperback--showcases ideas that continue to fuel modern debates on atheism and faith. His introduction stresses the...

The enduring love story and satirical comedy by a master of the English novel. A young vicar's ambition drives him into a costly bargain in this classic tale from one of the Victorian era's finest novelists. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, the fourth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire brilliantly examines the intersection of romance and social class. Mark Robarts is a young, ambitious vicar from the village of Framley,...

Returning to the steamy backwater of Costaguana in South America, Charles Gould is determined to make a success of the inherited silver mine. However, his dreams of wealth and power are thwarted when the country is plunged into revolution.

John Ridd, an unsophisticated farmer, falls in love with the beautiful and aristocratic Lorna Doone, kidnapped as a child by the outlaw Doones on Exmoor. Ridd's rivalry with the villainous Carver Doone reaches a dramatic climax that will determine Lorna's future happiness.

Drawn from his stay at Brook Farm, a communal experiment in living the pastoral life, this engaging story touches on many of the issues of Hawthorne's day, from brotherhood to women's rights and socialism to mesmerism and spiritualism.

A man at one with nature finds himself enchanted by a vision in this classic Midwestern romance from the naturalist and author of The Keeper of the Bees. David Langston, the Harvester, allows his dog to decide his fate every year-to join the money-making scramble in the noise and grime of the city, or continue harvesting the goldenseal, mullein, and ginseng in the woods around their country home. Every year, his dog Bel chooses correctly-for...

In Washington Square (1880), Henry James reminisces about the New York he had known thirty years before as he tells the story of Catherine Sloper and her fortune-seeking suitor Morris Townsend. This perceptively drawn human drama is James' most accessible work and an enduring literary triumph. The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is...

The breathtaking love story of an illegitimate girl and the young noble who would choose her above all. Gender issues and economic hardships are dealt with deftly in Doctor Thorne, the third novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire, and arguably the saga's finest love story. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, this Victorian novel is one of Anthony Trollope's most optimistic and engaging works. When Henry Thorne seduces local...