Classics

'Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ...' Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.

Oh good God he kept saying with great relish Good GodGooseberries is accompanied here by The Kiss and The Two Volodyas three exquisite depictions of love and loss in nineteenthcentury Russia by Chekhov the great master of the short story formIntroducing Little Black Classics 80 books for Penguins 80th birthday Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics with books from around the world and across many centuries They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan from Tierra del Fuego to 16thcentury California and the Russian steppe Here are stories lyrical and savage poems epic and intimate essays satirical and inspirational and ideas that have shaped the lives of millionsAnton Chekhov 18601904

'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneering feminist horror story scandalized nineteenth\-century readers with its portrayal of a woman who loses her mind because she has literally nothing to do. Also contains The Rocking\-Chair and Old Water.

From the celebrated, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and War and Peace a lavish, masterfully rendered volume of stories by one of the most influential short fiction writers of all time. Chekhov's genius left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now, renowned translators and longtime house authors Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their peerless renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories—a full deck! These stories, which span the full arc of his career, reveal the extraordinary variety and unexpectedness of his work, from the farcically comic to the darkly complex, showing that there is no one type of "Chekhov story." They are populated by a remarkable range of characters who come from all parts of Russia, all walks of life, and who, taken together, have democratized the short story. Included here are a number of never-before-translated stories, including "Reading" and "An Educated Blockhead." Here is a collection that promises profound delight. Contains: Joy—Fat and Skinny—At the Post Office—Reading—The Cook Gets Married—In a Foreign Land—Corporal Whompov—Grief—The Exclamation Point—An Educated Blockhead—A Slip-Up—Anguish—A Commotion—The Witch—A Little Joke—Agafya—Spring—A Nightmare—Grisha—Ladies—Romance with a Double Bass—The Chorus Girl—The First-Class Passenger—Difficult People—On the Road—The Beggar—Enemies—The Letter—Volodya—Luck—The Siren—The Shepherd's Pipe—Costly Lessons—The Kiss—Boys—Kashtanka—The Name-Day Party—A Breakdown—The Bet—The Princess—After the Theater—History of a Business Enterprise—Neighbors—Fear—Big Volodya and Little Volodya—The Teacher of Literature—In a Country House—The Pecheneg—In the Cart—About Love—Ionych—The New Dacha—

A collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating the author's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead (150th Anniversary Edition) The compelling works presented in this volume were written at distinct periods in Dostoyevsky's life, at decisive moments in his groping for a political philosophy and a religious answer. From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying life to the anxious antihero of Notes from Underground—who both craves and despises affection—the writer's often-tormented characters showcase his evolving outlook on our fate. Thomas Mann described Dostoyevsky as "an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul" and Notes from Underground as "an awe- and terror- inspiring example of this sympathy."

Old Arkhip sits every day by the roots of a wizened, hunchbacked willow, fishing and exchanging whispered stories with the ancient tree. One of these takes Arkhip three decades back in time, to a quiet day in early spring when a strange encounter shook him momentarily from the rural bliss in which he lived, catapulting him into a world of crime, corruption, violence and murder. A quintessential example of Chekhov's artistry, 'The Willow' is here accompanied by thirty-two other short stories – some of them never or rarely translated into English – which are representative of the three main phases of the author's the short, light-hearted pieces of the late 1880s, the darker, more pessimistic tales of his maturity and the psychologically nuanced stories he wrote towards the end of his life. Taken together, this collection is further proof of Chekhov's unparalleled skills as a practitioner of the short-story genre.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.

“I’ve had a most amazing time....” So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well. Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.