Books published by publisher Alba Longa

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.

Laurence Sterne was the great-grandson of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York and Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. Laurence's father, Roger Sterne, was a Yorkshire soldier who served as an officer in Flanders under the Duke of Marlborough during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). His mother, Agnes, the widow of another English army officer, married Roger Sterne while he was on campaign in Dunkirk in 1711.Laurence was born on 24 November 1713 at Clonmel, Co. Tipperary (Ireland), where his father's regiment was stationed. Sterne spent his early childhood following the regiment's many transfers both in Ireland and England, and this close contact with military life would later inspire him for the creation of some of his most notable comic characters (especially Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim and Lieutenant Le Fever in Tristram Shandy).This work is regarded as the progenitor of the 20th-cent. stream-of-consciousness novel. The word “shandy” means “crack-brained, half-crazy”, and Tristram, in Volume VI of his book, declares that he is writing a “civil, nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book.” The work consists of a slim line of narrative constantly interrupted by exuberant digressions, exploiting the relativity of time in human experience by deliberately disordering the sequence of events. Parodying the “new novel” form, the narrator mocks the absurdity of development in narrative, insisting on beginning at the moment of his own conception, and deliberately providing no consistent plot or conclusion.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916), was born in New-York. His father was a writer in theology and his elder brother, William, was a philosopher. From 1865 he was a regular contributor of reviews and short stories to American periodicals. His first piece of fiction, “Watch and Ward”, appeared in 1871, followed by “Transatlantic Sketches” and “A Passionate Pilgrim” in 1875. His first important novel was “Roderick Hudson (1876). For more than 20 years he lived in London, and in 1898 moved to Lamb House, Rye, where his later novels were written. At first he was concerned with older civilization of Europe, and to this period belong his novels “Daisy Miller” (1879) and “Portrait of a Lady”(1881). In “The Tragic Muse” (1890), “The Spoils of Poynton”(1897), and “The Awkward Age” (1899), he analyses English character. With “The Wings of the Dove” (1902), “The Ambassadors” (1903), and “The Golden Bowl” (1904), he returned to the theme of the contrast of American and European character. In 1915, Henry James became a British subject, and in 1916 was awarded the OM.

HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754), the son of a lieutenant-general, was born at Sharpham Park, the house of his maternal grandfather in Somerset. His mother died when he was eleven, and, when his father remarried, Henry was sent to Eton. At 19 he determined to earn his living as a dramatist, and in 1728, at Drury Lane, his play “Love in Several Masques” was successfully performed. In the same year he became a student of letters at Leyden, where he remained about 18 months, enlarging his knowledge of classical literature. Between 1729 and 1737 wrote some 25 dramas in the form of farce and satire. Fielding is generally agreed to be an innovating master of the highest originality. Sir W. Scott commended him for his “high notions of the dignity of an art which he may be considered as having founded”. His three acknowledged masters were Lucian, Swift, and Cervantes. His novel, “The History of Tom Jones” was published in 1749. Highly organized, was thought by Coleridge to have one of the three great plots of all literature. The book is regarded as Fielding´s greatest, and as one of the first and most influential of English novels.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), son of a joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Light-houses, was born in Edinburgh. He was admitted advocate in 1875, but had determined to be a writer. Fascinated by Edinburgh low life, he cultivated a Bohemian style. His first work of fiction, “Treasure Island” (1883) brought him fame, which increased with the publication of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886). This was followed by his popular Scottish romances “Kidnapped” (1886), “Catriona” (1893) and “The Master of Ballantrae”(1889). In 1888, Stevenson had set out with his family entourage for the South Seas, and finally settled in Samoa at Vailima, where he temporarily regained his health but died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage, while working on his unfinished masterpiece “Weir of Hermiston” (1896). He suffered from a chronic bronchial condition (possibly tuberculosis).“Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes” (1879), is the description of a tour taken with his donkey, Modestine, across the landscape of the Cevennes, in France.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) was born in Minnesota and educated at Princeton. His first novel, “This Side of Paradise” (1920), made him instantly famous. Shortly after he married the glamorous Zelda Sayre, and together they embarked on a life of big spending and party going. He published stories in fashionable periodicals such as the “Saturday Evening”, “Vanity Fair” and “The Smart Set”, in which he chronicled the mood and manners of the times; these were collected as “Flappers and Philosophers” (1920) and “Tales of the Jazz Age” (1922). “The Beautiful and Damned”(1922), a novel about a wealthy, doomed and dissipated marriage, was followed by “The Great Gatsby” (1925), the story of shady, mysterious financer Jay Gatsby, whose romantic and destructive passion for Daisy Buchanan played against a backdrop of Long Island glamour and New York squalor; the story is narrated by the innocent outsider Nick Carraway. “Tender is the Night” (1934) records, through the story of American psychiatrist Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole, his own sense of impending disaster. He died in Hollywood, of a heart attack, after working as a screenwriter, leaving his last novel, “The Last Tycoon”, unfinished.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), son of a joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Light-houses, was born in Edinburgh. He was admitted advocate in 1875, but had determined to be a writer. Fascinated by Edinburgh low life, he cultivated a Bohemian style. His first work of fiction, “Treasure Island” (1883) brought him fame, which increased with the publication of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886). This was followed by his popular Scottish romances “Kidnapped” (1886), “Catriona” (1893) and “The Master of Ballantrae”(1889). In 1888, Stevenson had set out with his family entourage for the South Seas, and finally settled in Samoa at Vailima, where he temporarily regained his health but died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage, while working on his unfinished masterpiece “Weir of Hermiston” (1896). He suffered from a chronic bronchial condition (possibly tuberculosis).“The Black Arrow” (1888), a historical romance that tells the story of Richard (Dick) Shelton during the Wars of the Roses: how he becomes a knight, rescues his lady Joanna Sedley, and obtains justice for the murder of his father, Sir Harry Shelton.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), née Newbold Jones, American novelist and short story writer, born in New York of a distinguished and wealthy family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885 and they settled in France in 1907. They were divorced in 1913. She devoted her energy to a cosmopolitan social life, which included friendship with H. James, and to a literary career, which began with the publication of poems and stories in “Scribner´s Magazine”. Her first volume of short stories, “The Greater Inclination” (1899), was followed by a novella, “The Touchstone” (1900), but it was “The House of Mirth” (1905), the tragedy of failed social climber Lily Bart, which established her as a leading novelist. Edith Wharton´s chief preoccupation is with the conflict between social and individual fulfilment which frequently leads to tragedy.