The Deluge is a literary masterpiece that sweeps across the plains and forests of Poland, Lithuania and Prussia in an epic tale of treasons, faith, selfishness, sacrifice and...

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos produced Dangerous Liaisons in an effort to “write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on this...

Two émigré families petition Emperor Napoleon for the restoration of their lands under the conditional amnesty offered. The first is Monsieur le comte de Courson,...

A woman goes on a secret errand into the far Northwest. Before it is accomplished the usual characters come into the story—Indians, mounted police, and the villain.

With its intense mix of mystery, adventure, and a surprise ending, Benito Cereno at first seems merely a provocative example from the genre Herman Melville created with his early...

The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written in exile in France. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with...

Cecily Parsley lived in a pen, And brewed good ale for gentlemen; Gentlemen came every day, Till Cecily Parsley ran away.

Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer), a castaway who...

Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803, but it wasn't until after her death in 1817 that it was published, along...

The Sea Lady is a fantasy novel that has some of the aspects of a fable. It was serialized from July to December 1901 in Pearson’s Magazine before being published as a...