Classic

This satire on the U.S.A.'s myth of being the "Home of the Oppressed, where all men are free and equal", is unrelenting in its pursuit of justice through exposure. It draws a scathingly shameful portrait of how Chinese immigrants were treated in 19th century San Francisco. 

Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly...

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergymanJonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length...

Eve's Diary is a comic short story by Mark Twain. It was first published in the 1905 Christmas issue of the magazine Harper's Bazaar, and in book format in June 1906 by Harper and Brothers publishing house. It is written in the style of a diary kept by the first woman in the biblical creation story, Eve, and is claimed to be "translated from the original MS." The "plot" of this novel is the...

Hard Times – For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times. Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before...

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is an 1895 essay by Mark Twain, written as a satire and criticism of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Drawing on examples from The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the essay claims Cooper is guilty of verbose writing, poor plotting, glaring inconsistencies, overused clichés, cardboard characterizations, and a host...

Collection of short essays concerning French novelist and critic Paul Bourget. Included: "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us" and "A Little Note to M. Paul Bourget".

Dombey and Son is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in monthly parts from 1 October 1846 to 1 April 1848 and in one volume in 1848. Its full title is Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. Dickens started writing the book in Lausanne, Switzerland, before returning to England, via Paris, to complete it. Illustrations were provided by Hablot Knight...

It is widely believed that Dracula's Guest is actually the deleted first chapter from the original Dracula manuscript, which the publisher felt was superfluous to the story. In the preface to the original edition of Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, Stoker's widow Florence wrote, "To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It...

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by...

Twain is so funny. You forget if you haven't read him in years. This little book includes stories about working at various newspapers and humorous misunderstandings and events.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. In it, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to the court of King Arthur, where he fools the inhabitants of that time into...

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local...

A Dog's Tale is a short story written by Mark Twain. It first appeared in the December 1903 issue of Harper's Magazine. In January of the following year it was extracted into a stand-alone pamphlet published for the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Still later in 1904 it was expanded into a book published by Harper & Brothers. The book is told from the standpoint of a loyal household pet,...

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to...

Doctor Marigold, named for the man who delivered him, is a "cheap-jack" who hawks sundries from a traveling cart. His lonely fortunes reverse when he adopts a deaf and mute girl whose mother is dead and whose stepfather, owner of a traveling circus, beats her.

A Double Barreled Detective Story is a short story/novelette by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), in which Sherlock Holmes finds himself in the American west. The story contains two arcs of revenges. In the primary arc, a woman was abused, humiliated and abandoned by her fiancé Jacob Fuller, while she bore his child. The child was born and named Archy Stillman and when he got older, the mother...

American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June, 1842. Whilst there he acted as a critical observer of North American society, almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style of his Pictures from Italy written four years later, where he wrote far more like a tourist. His...

A Horse's Tale is a novel by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), written partially in the voice of Soldier Boy, who is Buffalo Bill's favorite horse, at a fictional frontier outpost with the U.S. 7th Cavalry. Harper's Magazine originally published the story in two installments in August and September 1906. Clemens wrote the story after receiving a request from actress Minnie Maddern Fiske to assist in...

Anna Karenina (Russian: «Анна Каренина»; Russian pronunciation: [ˈanːə kɐˈrʲenʲɪnə]) is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with editor Mikhail Katkovover political issues that arose in the final installment (Tolstoy's unpopular views of volunteers...