The Mayor of Casterbridge -- Thomas Hardy (with explanatory notes)
Added by: babakinfos | Karma: 2207.37 | Fiction literature | 27 November 2016
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The Mayor of Casterbridge -- Thomas Hardy (with explanatory notes)
'The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her?' Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. Although Henchard is fated to be a modern-day tragic hero, unable to survive in the new commercial world, his story is also a journey towards love.
In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence.
One of the world’s greatest literary cities, London has streets full of stories and buildings steeped in history. The biggest and most beloved names in English literature have all been here, and you can still see or visit their stomping grounds and favorite places. Follow Oscar Wilde from the literary salons to Clapham Junction; roam with Julian McClaren Ross through Fitzrovia, dropping in for a pint or three with Dylan Thomas at the Bricklayers’ Arms; muse darkly over the Thames with Spencer, Eliot, and Conrad; and watch aghast as Lord Byron terrorizes his publisher on Albermarle Street.
Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare (with notes and glossary)
The most formally ambitious and poetically brilliant of Shakespeare's tragedies, Anthony and Cleopatra is also one of his most critically contentious plays in terms of the degree and nature of its success. Antony and Cleopatra is based on the intertwined lives of Roman general Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 bc. For his account of the characters and times, Shakespeare used Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Greek biographer Plutarch's Parallel Lives.
