Books in Classics series

A rich collection of classic American literature potraying the beauty of a 19th-century New England town.A female writer comes one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town, where she follows the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal communities. Here, lives are molded by the long Maine winters, rock-filled fields and strong resourceful women. Throughout Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel and stories, these quiet tales of a simpler American life capture the inspirational in the everyday: the importance of honest friendships, the value of family, and the gift of community.“Their counterparts are in every village in the world, thank heaven, and the gift to one’s life is only in its discernment.”

The enlightening memoir of the industrialist as famous for his philanthropy as for his fortune. His good friend Mark Twain dubbed him “St. Andrew.” British Prime Minister William Gladstone called him an “example” for the wealthy. Such terms seldom apply to multimillionaires. But Andrew Carnegie was no run-of-the-mill steel magnate. At age 13 and full of dreams, he sailed from his native Dunfermline, Scotland, to America. The story of his success begins with a $1.20-a-week job at a bobbin factory. By the end of his life, he had amassed an unprecedented fortune—and given away more than 90 percent of it for the good of mankind. Here, for the first time in one volume, are two impressive works by Andrew Carnegie himself: his autobiography and “The Gospel of Wealth,” a groundbreaking manifesto on the duty of the wealthy to give back to society all of their fortunes. And he practiced what he preached, erecting 1,600 libraries across the country, founding Carnegie Mellon University, building Carnegie Hall, and performing countless other acts of philanthropy because, as Carnegie wrote, “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” With an Introduction by Gordon Hutner

This is the story of a young woman born in Chicago who came to New York, won fame with her play, A Raisin in the Sun--and went on to new heights of artistry before her tragic death. In turns angry, loving, bitter, laughing, and defiantly proud, the story, voice, and message are all Lorraine Hansberry's own, coming together in one of the major works of the black experience in mid-century America.

The Sorrows of Young Werther brings to life an idyllic German village where a youth on vacation meets and falls for lovely Charlotte. The tragedy unfolds in the letters Werther writes to his friend about Charlotte’s charms, even after he realizes his love will remain unrequited. “Reflections on Werther” and “Goethe in Sesenheim,” collections of excerpts from the author’s own memoirs, reveal the genius who, as Nietzsche said, “disciplined himself into wholeness.” Next is “The New Melusina,”the delightful story of a pixie princess who assumes the form of a woman as she searches for a human mate. Finally, “The Fairy Tale” is a sophisticated but strange story in which the laws of nature and physics do not apply—mingled among its human characters is a cast of two sentient will-o’-the-wisps, a giant and his shadow, a talking green serpent, and four metal statues.With an Introduction by Marcelle Clementsand a New Afterword

The classic story of Abbie and Will Deal—pioneers who left everything behind for a new life on America’s frontier. Abbie Mackenzie dreamed of becoming a fine lady like her aristocratic grandmother, devoting herself to music and art. But at eighteen Abbie found a different dream, turning away from the promise of a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife to marry handsome, quiet Will Deal. Together, they eagerly accepted the challenge of homesteading in Nebraska territory, where the prairies stretched as far as the eye could see, and only the strongest survived for long. For nearly 90 years, reader have cherished Abbie’s story—an inspiring story of struggle against unexpected perils, of love and laughter, of the land she helped conquer and the family she raised.

One of the great novelist’s most popular works, Oliver Twist is also the purest distillation of Dickens’s genius. This tale of the orphan who is reared in a workhouse and runs away to London is a novel of social protest, a morality tale, and a detective story. Oliver Twist presents some of the most sinister characters in Dickens: the master thief, Fagin; the leering Artful Dodger; the murderer, Bill Sikes…along with some of his most sentimental and comical characters. Only Dickens can give us nightmare and daydream together. According to George Orwell, “in Oliver Twist…Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do it without making himself hated, and, more than this, the very people he attacked have welcomed him so completely that he has become a national institution himself.”With an Introduction by Frederick Buschand an Afterword by Edward Le Comte

Harriet Beecher Stowe's timeless and moving novel, an incendiary work that fanned the embers of the struggle between free and slave states into the fire of the Civil War. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the story of the slave Tom. Devout and loyal, he is sold and sent down south, where he endures brutal treatment at the hands of the degenerate plantation owner Simon Legree. By exposing the extreme cruelties of slavery, Stowe explores society's failures and asks a profound question: “What is it to be a moral human being?” And as the novel that helped to move a nation to battle, Uncle Tom's Cabin is an essential part of the collective experience of the American people. With an Introduction by Darryl Pinckney and an Afterword by Jonathan Arac

Featuring an extensive, provocative introduction by historian Martin Malia, this authorized English translation of The Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated by Engels, with prefaces to editions published between 1872 and 1888, provides a new opportunity to examine the document that shook the world.In 1848, two young men published what would become one of the defining documents of modern history, The Communist Manifesto. It rapidly realigned political faultlines all over the world and its aftershock resonates to this day. In the many years since its publication, no other social program has inspired such divisive and violent debate. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world’s first regime to adopt the Manifesto’s tenets, historians have debated its intent and its impact. In the current era of market democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe, nationalism on every continent, and an ever tightening global economy, does the specter of Communism still haunt the world? Were the seeds of Communism’s ultimate destruction already planted in 1848? Is there anything to be learned from Marx’s envisioned utopia? With an Introduction by Martin Maliaand an Afterword by Stephen Kotkin

One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane.The Lottery and Other Stories, the only collection of stories to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range―from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous―and her power as a storyteller.