Cranston Public Library

A self-made American goes to Europe to enjoy his fortune and becomes engaged to a French widow from a noble family. Depicts the contrast between American and European culture.

This collection of Emerson's essays covers the contents of two volumes originally published in 1841 and 1844. Annotation. Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Here is a collection of his classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance"...

"Lucy Snowe, in flight from an unhappy past, leaves England and finds work as a teacher in Madame Beck's school in 'Villette'. Strongly drawn to the fiery autocratic schoolmaster Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Lucy is compelled by Madame Beck's jealous interference to assert her right to love and to be loved." "Based in part on Charlotte Bronte's experience in Brussels ten years earlier, Villette (1853) is coloured by her sadness and isolation after the deaths...

"This novel, original published in 1748, tells the story of tragic story of Clarissa Harlowe, a young woman whose family has recently acquired wealth and wants to be part of the aristocracy. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, Clarissa is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague...

Like few novels before it, The Woman in White thrilled readers across England when it debuted in 1860. It famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit road. Engaged as a drawing-master to beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his charming friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the...

An anthology of journals and letters.

Don Juan is a chronicle of the life and the affairs of the main hero. Byron exposes in a satirical tone war, tyranny and the pretense and corruption in society.

Representative writings of the nineteenth-century American poet and philosopher are supplemented by textual notes.

'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.' One of the most popular of the Romantic poets, Keats' poetry is suffused with adoration for natural beauty, exploration of joy and pain, and ideas on the transience of life. This new collection combines many of Keats' well-loved poems - from 'Ode to a Nightingale' to 'Bright Star' - with his letters, often studied, analysed and admired in parallel...