'I seem to have a life only for other people.' Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs. Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman;...

Consisting of three novels and two interludes, "The Forsyte Saga" chronicles several generations of an upper middle class British family at the beginning of the twentieth century. Full of social satire, "The Man of Property" commences this fictional history and introduces the first generation of Forsytes, prominently featuring Soames and his wife Irene. Keenly aware of their nouveau riche standing and highly desirous of material possessions, Soames...

The first novel of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, this work introduces the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and many of its clerical inhabitants. Originally published in 1855, the story centers on Mr. Septimus Harding who has been granted the comfortable wardenship of Hiram's Hospital, an almshouse from a medieval charity of the diocese. Mr. Harding, a fundamentally good man and an excellent musician, conscientiously fulfills his...

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a Romantic poet of radical imaginings, living in an age of change. His tempestuous life and friendship with Byron, and his tragically early death, at times threatened to overwhelm his legacy as a poet, but today his standing as one of the foremost English authors is assured. This freshly edited collection--the fullest one-volume selection in English--includes all but one of the longer poems, from Queen Mab onwards,...

First published in 1572, this epic poem, which is frequently compared to Virgil's "Aeneid", relates the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's discovery of the maritime route to India by way of Cape of Good Hope. Composed of over 1100 stanzas in ten books, "The Lusiads" is to this day widely regarded as the most important literary work of the Portuguese language. This edition follows the translation of William Julius Mickle.