Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë http://www.feedbooks.com/book/144 urn:isbn:1551111802 en 1847 Novels Romance Jane Eyre, the story of a young girl and her passage into adulthood, was an immediate commercial success at the time of its original publication in 1847. Its representation of the underside of domestic life and the hypocrisy behind religious enthusiasm drew both praise and bitter criticism, while Charlotte Brontë's striking expose of poor living conditions for children in charity schools as well as her poignant portrayal of the limitations faced by women who worked as governesses sparked great controversy and social debate. Jane Eyre, Brontë's best-known novel, remains an extraordinary coming-of-age narrative, and one of the great classics of literature. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/144.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/144.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/144.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/144.mobi Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1469 urn:isbn:1593083653 en 1848 Novels “I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year,” observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest—and most appealing—women in all of literature. Becky is just one of the many fascinating figures that populate William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair, a wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From London’s ballrooms to the battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt, his rich sister, Miss Crawley, and Pitt’s dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Becky’s misguided sexual entanglements. Filled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterizations, Vanity Fair is a richly entertaining comedy that asks the reader, “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?” http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1469.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1469.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1469.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1469.mobi The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8 urn:isbn:0553213695 en 1912 Short Fiction Horror The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/8.mobi A Room with a View E. M. Forster http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2068 urn:isbn:0553213237 en 1908 Novels Romance This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion. This work was published before 1923 and is in the public domain in the USA only. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2068.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2068.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2068.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2068.mobi The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6 urn:isbn:0375751513 en 1891 Novels Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps." http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.mobi Anna Karenina Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1487 urn:isbn:1593080271 en 1877 Novels Romance Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1487.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1487.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1487.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1487.mobi Don Quixote Miguel Cervantes http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183 urn:isbn:B001AAWVRY en 1615 Novels Humor/Satire Don Quixote, errant knight and sane madman, with the company of his faithful squire and wise fool, Sancho Panza, together roam the world and haunt readers' imaginations as they have for nearly four hundred years. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.mobi Mansfield Park Jane Austen http://www.feedbooks.com/book/358 urn:isbn:019280264X en 1814 Novels At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzling and sophisticated Crawfords arrive, and amateur theatricals unleash rivalry and sexual jealousy, Fanny has to fight to retain her independence. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/358.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/358.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/358.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/358.mobi Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë http://www.feedbooks.com/book/135 urn:isbn:0553212583 en 1847 Novels Gothic Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective, wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/135.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/135.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/135.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/135.mobi The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton http://www.feedbooks.com/book/93 urn:isbn:0375753206 en 1920 Novels The Age of Innocence centers on one society couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and mores of turn of the century New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for the earlier, more brutal and critical, "The House of Mirth". Not to be overlooked is the author's attention to detailing the charms and customs of this caste. The novel is lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the nineteenth-century East Coast American upper class lived and this combined with the social tragedy earned Wharton a Pulitzer - the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/93.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/93.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/93.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/93.mobi The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1523 en 1850 Novels Romance Gothic The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores questions of grace, legalism, sin and guilt. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1523.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1523.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1523.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1523.mobi Persuasion Jane Austen http://www.feedbooks.com/book/51 urn:isbn:0812565886 en 1818 Novels Romance The final novel by the acclaimed writer places heroine Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity and deep emotion, against the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/51.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/51.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/51.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/51.mobi The Portrait of a Lady Henry James http://www.feedbooks.com/book/413 urn:isbn:0375759190 en 1881 Novels Romance One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, “affront her destiny.” James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish—and then protect—her independence. But Isabel’s pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond. “James’s formidable powers of observation, his stance as a kind of bachelor recorder of human doings in which he is not involved,” writes Hortense Calisher, “make him a first-class documentarian, joining him to that great body of storytellers who amass what formal history cannot.” This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/413.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/413.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/413.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/413.mobi Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure John Cleland http://www.feedbooks.com/book/84 urn:isbn:1840224177 en 1749 Novels Sexuality Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland. Written in 1748 while Cleland was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic novel" in English, and has become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/84.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/84.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/84.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/84.mobi A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce http://www.feedbooks.com/book/222 en 1916 Novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916. It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and a pointed allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus. A Portrait is a key example of the Künstlerroman (an artist's bildungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions he has been brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. The work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The Modern Library ranked Portrait as the third greatest English-language novel of the twentieth century. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/222.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/222.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/222.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/222.mobi The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513 urn:isbn:0553212702 en 1851 Novels Romance Gothic In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family’s salvation—or its downfall. Hawthorne called The House of the Seven Gables “a Romance,” and freely bestowed upon it many fascinating gothic touches. A brilliant intertwining of the popular, the symbolic, and the historical, the novel is a powerful exploration of personal and national guilt, a work that Henry James declared “the closest approach we are likely to have to the Great American Novel.” http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1513.mobi The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180 urn:isbn:0486437914 en 1880 Novels Psychology The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880. Dostoevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner,[1] but he died less than four months after its publication. The book portrays a parricide in which each of the murdered man's sons share a varying degree of complicity. On a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, reason, free will and modern Russia. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.mobi Ulysses James Joyce http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232 urn:isbn:0141182806 en 1922 Novels Sexuality Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature. Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.mobi Little Women Louisa May Alcott http://www.feedbooks.com/book/139 urn:isbn:0517214628 en 1868 Novels Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Written and published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, the novel follows the lives of four sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March — and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first part of the book was an immediate commercial and critical success and prompted the composition of the book's second part, also a huge success. Both parts were first published as a single volume in 1880. The book is an unquestioned American classic. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/139.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/139.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/139.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/139.mobi War and Peace Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83 urn:isbn:067003469X en 1869 Novels History War War and Peace is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russkii Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It is usually described as one of Tolstoy's two major masterpieces (the other being Anna Karenina) as well as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace offered a new kind of fiction, with a great many characters caught up in a plot that covered nothing less than the grand subjects indicated by the title, combined with the equally large topics of youth, marriage, age, and death. Though it is often called a novel today, it broke so many conventions of the form that it was not considered a novel in its time. Indeed, Tolstoy himself considered Anna Karenina (1878) to be his first attempt at a novel in the European sense. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.mobi