Publisher's Note Walter Hartright, a drawing instructor, comes to Limmeridge House to teach Laura and Marion Halcombe. He falls in love with Laura, but she is betrothed to someone else, and he must therefore leave Limmeridge. Before he goes, he tells Marian about his encounter with a beautiful woman dressed entirely in white, whom he later discovers escaped from an insane asylum. Here the mystery begins: Who is the woman in white? And is she truly insane? Synopsis Still unsurpassed as a masterpiece of narrative drive and excruciating suspense, 'The Woman in White' is also famous for introducing, in the figure of Count Fosco, the prototype of the suave, sophisticated evil genius. The first detective novel ever written, it has remained, since its publication in 1860, the most admired example of the genre.

Book Description The Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. This novel follows the life of its eponymous heroine through its many vicissitudes, which include her early seduction, careers in crime and prostitution, conviction for theft and transportation to the plantations of Virginia. She ultimately finds redemption and prosperity. Amazon.com The recent adaptation of Moll Flanders for Masterpiece Theater is a book-lover's dream: the dialogue and scene arrangement are close enough to allow the viewer to follow along in the book. The liberties taken with the tale are few (some years of childhood between the gypsies and the wealthy family are elided; Moll is Moll throughout the tale, rather than Mrs. Betty; Robert becomes Rowland, etc.) and the sets avoid the careless anachronism of the movie version released earlier this year. The breasts, raised skirts, tumbling hair and heavy breathing on the small screen might catch you by surprise if you don't read the book carefully (as might Moll's abandonment of her children on more than one occasion). Unlike his near-contemporary John Cleland (_Fanny Hill_), Defoe was trying to keep out of jail, and so didn't dwell on the details of "correspondence" between Moll and her varied lovers. But on the page and on the screen, Moll comes across quite clearly as a woman who might bend, but refuses to break, and who is intent on having as good a life as she can get. E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel considers Moll and her creator's art in some detail. While he finds much to criticize in Defoe's ability to plot (where did those last two children go, anyway?), he is as besotted with Moll as I am. Immoral? Sure -- but immortal, and never, ever dull. We hope at least a few of the viewers of the recent adaptation take a couple hours to discover the original, inimitable Moll Flanders. From AudioFile This recording of Daniel Defoe's 1722 novel features a too skimpy abridgment of the tale of the irrepressible title character, born in London's Newgate Gaol. It's read by accomplished British actress, Jan Francis and is part of Hodder's Classic Collection, with a stately English painting gracing the cover. Francis reads with expression but without ornamentation, choosing not to give unique voices to the different characters. It works well here, since Moll is really a one-woman show, and so much of the performance depends on how well the narrator handles her. D.B. About Author Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a novelist, critic, and essayist whose works include such classics as A Room of One's Own, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Voyage Out (the latter available from the Modern Library in both cloth and paper). Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leontes' murderous jealousy and Perdita's love-relationship with Florizel are eloquently intense. In the theatre, The Winter's Tale often proves to be diversely entertaining and deeply moving.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).

One of Woolf’s most experimental novels, The Waves presents six characters in monologue - from morning until night, from childhood into old age - against a background of the sea. The result is a glorious chorus of voices that exists not to remark on the passing of events but to celebrate the connection between its various individual parts.

Book Description The Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. The diary is that of someone who acknowledges that he is not a "somebody" - Charles Pooter, a clerk in the city of London, chronicles with often hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle classes during the great Victorian Age. From AudioFile The greatness of George and Weedon Grossmith's masterpiece of comic irony, THE DIARY OF A NOBODY, rests to a large extent on perceptions of class. It purports to be the diary of Charles Pooter, a lower-middle-class individual of the mid-nineteenth century who lives at "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway. This address alone, simultaneously poignant and stifling, reverberates with blandly devastating irony--a note sustained at perfect pitch throughout the book. Pooter is house-proud, thrifty, scrupulous in duty, alive to social niceties and given to the occasional punning witticism, but the story he tells is not quite the story he believes he's telling. Frederick Davidson's impeccable reading is truly inspired, in perfect unity with the Pooteresque view of the world. Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6