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Books published by publisher William Collins Pub

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Oscar Wilde

    Paperback (William Collins, April 1, 2010)
    HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young
 If it was only the other way!'Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.
  • The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

    Maya Jasanoff

    eBook (William Collins, Oct. 19, 2017)
    CUNDILL PRIZE 2018 WINNERSHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018‘Enlightening, compassionate, superb’ John le CarrĂ©A visionary life and times of Joseph Conrad, and of our global world, from one of the best historians writing today.Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, the promise and peril of a technological and communications revolution: these forces shaped the life and work of Joseph Conrad at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization as we recognize it today. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaysia to the Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world.Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in London as an author. He saw the surging, competitive ‘new imperialism’ that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places ‘beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,’ and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals.In a compelling blend of history, biography and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works: The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spellbinding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world – and through it to our own.
  • The Swiss Family Robinson

    Johann David Wyss

    eBook (William Collins, July 12, 2018)
    A beautiful story about survival, the Robinson family shows that one does not have to have the usual comforts of life in order to be comfortable and happy.It is also a story about family relations. The book showcases a family of six that has to start all over without the basic amenities that make life easier in the eyes of society. The idea of being in an island with no human neighbors is daunting to say the least.The family was shipwrecked and everyone else on the ship perished when they deserted the ship. When the storm finally abated, they figured out a way to shore and immediately tackled the most urgent needs like food and shelter for the night.The senior Robinson and Franz, the eldest son, explored the island and found that it was well endowed with food and animals that could be killed for meat. On further exploration, they discovered better shelter and even a salt supply. They had supplies and even wax from which they made candles. They made many more amazing discoveries and got quite comfortable on the island which was hither to uninhabited.Later, they found an English girl, Jenny, who had been stranded on a different island for three years. But how did she get there and survive so long? This book tells an endearing survival story and highlights the joys of close family bonds.A beautiful story about survival, the Robinson family shows that one does not have to have the usual comforts of life in order to be comfortable and happy.It is also a story about family relations. The book showcases a family of six that has to start all over without the basic amenities that make life easier in the eyes of society. The idea of being in an island with no human neighbors is daunting to say the least.The family was shipwrecked and everyone else on the ship perished when they deserted the ship. When the storm finally abated, they figured out a way to shore and immediately tackled the most urgent needs like food and shelter for the night.The senior Robinson and Franz, the eldest son, explored the island and found that it was well endowed with food and animals that could be killed for meat. On further exploration, they discovered better shelter and even a salt supply. They had supplies and even wax from which they made candles. They made many more amazing discoveries and got quite comfortable on the island which was hither to uninhabited.Later, they found an English girl, Jenny, who had been stranded on a different island for three years. But how did she get there and survive so long? This book tells an endearing survival story and highlights the joys of close family bonds.
  • My Ántonia

    Willa Cather

    Paperback (William Collins, Nov. 19, 2019)
    HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.My Antonia is Willa Cather’s masterpiece about 19th-century Nebraskan pioneers.My Antonia depicts the pioneering period of European settlement on the tall-grass prairie of the American midwest, with its beautiful yet terrifying landscape, rich ethnic mix of immigrants and native-born Americans, and communities who share life's joys and sorrows.Jim Burden recounts his memories of Antonia Shimerda, whose family settle in Nebraska from Bohemia. Together they share childhoods spent in a new world. Jim leaves the prairie for college and a career in the east, while Antonia devotes herself to her large family and productive farm. Her story is that of the land itself, a moving portrait of endurance and strength.
  • Treasure Island

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    eBook (William Collins, May 17, 2010)
    HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest –Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!'Upon finding a map in his parents' inn, young Jim Hawkins joins a crew on route to the Caribbean to find buried treasure. One of his crew, the charming, yet devious Long John Silver is determined to snag the booty for himself and Jim's swashbuckling voyage becomes a mutinous and murderous adventure – where his own bravery is put to the test and he discovers much about friendship, loyalty and betrayal.
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  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

    Lewis Carroll

    Paperback (William Collins, April 1, 2010)
    HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”’So begins the tale of Alice, who follows a curious White Rabbit down a hole and falls into Wonderland, a fantastical place where nothing is quite as it seems: animals talk, nonsensical characters confuse, Mad Hatters throw tea parties and the Queen plays croquet. Alice’s attempts to find her way home become increasingly bizarre, infuriating and amazing in turn.A beloved classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has continued to delight readers, young and old, for over 150 years.
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  • Tales of the Jazz Age

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    eBook (William Collins, May 9, 2013)
    From Collins Classics, short stories from the author of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and including ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’.In these eleven stories, Fitzgerald depicts the Roaring Twenties as he lived them. He masterfully blends accounts of flappers and the smart set with more fantastical visions of America, always imbuing his narratives with his trademark themes of money, class, ambition and love. In ‘May Day’, Fitzgerald weaves an account of a raucous Yale alumni party, the participants of which are oblivious to the violent socialist demonstration being acted out around them. ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ is an unorthodox account of a man who ages backwards, and ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ tells the story of a young man who discovers that his friend’s family possesses a diamond that is literally larger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. This 1922 collection confirmed Fitzgerald as the voice of his generation.
  • Tales of the Jazz Age: By F. Scott Fitzgerald : Illustrated

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, Remo

    eBook (William Collins, May 9, 2013)
    Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott FitzgeraldHow is this book unique?Tablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionAuthor Biography includedIllustrated versionTales of the Jazz Age (1922) is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had been published earlier, independently, in either Metropolitan Magazine (New York), Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, Chicago Sunday Tribune, or Vanity Fair.
  • Tales of the Jazz Age

    F. Scott

    eBook (William Collins, May 9, 2013)
    A collection of 11 short stories, split into three sections: 'My Last Flappers' (The Jelly-Bean; The Camel's Back; May Day; Porcelain And Pink); 'Fantasies' (The Diamond As Big As The Ritz; The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button; Tarquin Of Cheapside; "O Russet Witch!"); 'Unclassified Masterpieces' (The Lees Of Happiness; Mr. Icky, The Quintessence Of Quaintness In One Act; and, Jemina, The Mountain Girl).
  • Tales of the Jazz Age

    F. Scott

    eBook (William Collins, May 9, 2013)
    A collection of 11 short stories, split into three sections: 'My Last Flappers' (The Jelly-Bean; The Camel's Back; May Day; Porcelain And Pink); 'Fantasies' (The Diamond As Big As The Ritz; The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button; Tarquin Of Cheapside; "O Russet Witch!"); 'Unclassified Masterpieces' (The Lees Of Happiness; Mr. Icky, The Quintessence Of Quaintness In One Act; and, Jemina, The Mountain Girl).
  • Tales of the Jazz Age

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    eBook (William Collins, Aug. 28, 2017)
    Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE: The Original 1922 Edition

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    eBook (William Collins, May 9, 2013)
    "Tales of the Jazz Age" (1922) is the second collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1922. It includes two masterpieces as well as several other stories from his earlier career. The story "May Day" depicts a party at a popular club in New York that becomes a night of revelry during which former soldiers and an affluent group of young people start an anti-Bolshevik demonstration that results in an attack on a leftist newspaper office. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is a fantastic satire of the selfishness endemic to the wealthy and their undying pursuit to preserve that way of life. All of these stories, like his best novels, meld Fitzgerald's fascination with wealth with an awareness of a larger world, creating a subtle social critique.Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.