Books in Everyman's Classics series

Henry James had arrived at such mastery of the forms and uses of fiction by the time he published The Awkward Age in 1899 that this story of a young girl introduced into a casually corrupt circle of sophisticates is at once a universal drama of innocence confronting evil, a detailed examination of a social order, and a stunning picture of a civilization in crisis. On the verge of what was to be his greatest period of creativity, James produced, in The Awkward Age, one of the finest, most rounded, and, in some ways, most intimate and revealing of his long string of masterpieces.Introduction by Cynthia Ozick

By virtue of its casual, off-handedly brilliant wisdom and the easy splendor of its nature writing, Thoreau’s account of his adventure in self-reliance on the shores of a pond in Massachusetts is one of the signposts by which the modern mind has located itself in an increasingly bewildering world. Deeply sane, invigorating in its awareness of humanity’s place in the moral and natural order, Walden represents the progressive spirit of nineteenth-century America at its eloquent best.

The ancient Chinese military classic that is widely admired today by both military and business strategists--in a new translation, with new notes and commentary.For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has provided leaders with essential tactical and management advice. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone in the West for achieving success, whether on the battlefield or in business. This Everyman's Library edition features a brilliant new translation by Peter Harris. Alongside the pithy and powerful ancient text, Harris includes: --Extracts from the canon of traditional Chinese commentators who have explained Sun Tzu's wisdom over the centuries --Notes --A bibliography --A chronology of Chinese dynasties --A map --An illuminating introduction on the warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu and the role of The Art of War in history and today

The most famous of all story collections, The Arabian Nights, also known as The Book of the Thousand and One Nights, is beloved around the world. Composed of Persian, Arabic, Greek, Indian, and other sources that accumulated over hundreds of years, these fabulous stories-within-stories have long fired readers’ imaginations with an enchanted world of flying carpets, magic lamps, genies, demons, magicians and sorceresses, carnivorous giants, and bloodthirsty bandits. Translation has played a key role in the formation of The Arabian Nights as we know it, making it far more prominent in the West than it has ever been in the Arab world. Westerners’ first discovery of some of the tales in the early eighteenth century sparked a feverish thirst for more, which led to compilations that freely adapted, reconfigured, and even added to the originals. The resulting love affair with the art, architecture, literature, cuisine, and culture of the East significantly remapped the European literary landscape. Editor Wen-chin Ouyang has compiled a carefully chosen selection from influential English translations, showcasing the strengths of different translators, including Richard Burton, Edward Lane, Jonathan Scott, and John Payne. Here are Shahrazad, Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin, Ali Baba, and many more, in the most readable and enjoyable versions available.

Hugo's grand medieval melodrama tells the story of the beautiful Esmeralda, a gypsy girl loved by three men: Archdeacon Frollo, his adoptive son Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre-Dame cathedral, and Captain Phoebus. Falsely accused of trying to murder Phoebus, who attempts to rape her, Esmeralda is sentenced to death and rescued from the gallows by Quasimodo who defends her to the last.The subject of many adaptations for stage and screen, this remains perhaps one of the most romantic yet gripping stories ever told. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is an epic of a whole people, with a cast of characters that ranges from the king of France to the beggars who inhabit the Parisian sewers, and at their center the massive figure--a character in itself--of the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of the cathedral; his foster father, the tormented archdeacon Frollo; and the beautiful and doomed Gypsy Esmeralda are caught up in a tragedy that still speaks clearly to us of revolution and social strife, of destiny and free will, and of love and loss. The only widely available hardcover edition of Victor Hugo's masterful historical novel of medieval Paris--one of the most beloved of world classics.

That Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince–the world’s preeminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the literary landmarks of the Italian Renaissance. Written in a vigorous, straightforward style that reflects its author’s realism, this treatise on states, statecraft, and the ideal ruler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how human society actually works.

Charles Dickens’s story of selfless Little Nell and her ailing grandfather and their persecution by the magnificently malignant villain Quilp has seized the imaginations and wrung the hearts of generations of readers. Dickens’s talent was superabundant in every way: in his dramatic force and his massive productivity, in his almost surreal comic power, in his compassion and thirst for justice, and in the imaginative pressure he brought to bear on even the most incidental of his characters. The delightfully various figures in The Old Curiosity Shop range memorably from jaunty Dick Swiveller and his little half-starved Marchioness to the hard-hearted siblings Sampson and Sally Brass, jovial Mrs. Jarley, devoted Kit Nubbles, the hunchbacked Daniel Quilp, and, of course, tragic Little Nell herself. Dickens’s depiction of the fate of his main characters is famously harrowing and unfailingly suspenseful, but not the least of its charms is that it is embellished with a supporting cast of figures as grotesque and colorful as anything in the Old Curiosity Shop itself. This edition reprints the original Everyman’s preface by G. K. Chesterton and features seventy-five illustrations by Cattermole and Phiz.