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Guarded by three Brahmin priests, the Moonstone is a religious relic, the centerpiece in a sacred statue of the Hindu god of the moon. It is also a giant yellow diamond of enormous value, and its temptation is irresistible to the corrupt John Herncastle, a colonel in the British Army in India. After murdering the three guardian priests and bringing the diamond back to England with him, Herncastle bequeaths it to his niece, Rachel, knowing full well that danger will follow. True to its enigmatic nature, the Moonstone disappears from Rachel’s room on the night of her eighteenth birthday, igniting a mystery so intricate and thrilling it has set the standard for every crime novel of the past one hundred fifty years.
Widely recognized, alongside the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, as establishing many of the most enduring conventions of detective fiction, The Moonstone is Wilkie Collins’s masterwork and one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.
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The night before he leaves London for a temporary engagement in the North of England, drawing instructor Walter Hartright walks home on an empty, moonlit road. Suddenly a hand reaches out of the darkness and touches him on the shoulder. Terrified, he turns to find a woman, dressed all in white, who begs him for help in getting to a friend’s place in the city. By a strange coincidence, the woman knows Limmeridge House, the country estate to which Walter is traveling in the morning. Stranger still, she refuses to reveal anything else about herself, including her name. Only after he sees her safely into a cab does Walter learn the truth—the woman in white has just escaped from an insane asylum.
In Limmeridge, Walter falls in love with one of his students, the beautiful and virtuous Laura Fairlie. An orphan in the care of her invalid uncle, Laura is engaged to Sir Percival Glyde, a baronet. She follows through with the marriage despite her feelings for Walter, but soon realizes her mistake. Sir Percival will stop at nothing to gain complete control of Laura’s inheritance, and his diabolical plot hinges on her astonishing resemblance to the mysterious woman in white. It is up to Walter and Marian, Laura’s devoted half-sister, to rescue fair Laura from a fate worse than death.
With its shocking twists and spine-chilling suspense, The Woman in White charted a whole new course for popular fiction. Devilishly entertaining and deadly serious in its indictment of Victorian marriage laws that impoverished women, it is widely recognized as one the nineteenth century’s finest novels.
This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Collins’ life and works
* Concise introductions to the novels and other texts
* ALL 24 novels, with individual contents tables
* Includes rare novels often missed out of collections
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original Victorian texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories
* Rare tales from periodicals and magazines, appearing here for the first time in digital publishing
* Easily locate the short stories you want to read
* Includes Collins’ rare plays – available in no other collection
* Includes Collins’ non-fiction – spend hours exploring the author’s rare magazine essays and articles
* Special biographical section, with essays and biographical pieces evaluating Collins’ literary and private life
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
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CONTENTS:
The Novels
ANTONINA
BASIL
HIDE AND SEEK
A ROGUE’S LIFE
THE DEAD SECRET
THE WOMAN IN WHITE
NO NAME
ARMADALE
THE MOONSTONE
MAN AND WIFE
POOR MISS FINCH
THE NEW MAGDALEN
THE LAW AND THE LADY
THE TWO DESTINIES
THE HAUNTED HOTEL
THE FALLEN LEAVES
JEZEBEL’S DAUGHTER
THE BLACK ROBE
HEART AND SCIENCE
“I SAY NO”
THE EVIL GENIUS
THE GUILTY RIVER
THE LEGACY OF CAIN
BLIND LOVE
The Short Story Collections
AFTER DARK
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
MISS OR MRS.? AND OTHER STORIES IN OUTLINE
THE FROZEN DEEP AND OTHER STORIES
LITTLE NOVELS
MISCELLANEOUS SHORT STORIES
The Short Stories
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Plays
THE FROZEN DEEP
NO THOROUGHFARE
BLACK AND WHITE
NO NAME
THE WOMAN IN WHITE
THE NEW MAGDALEN
MISS GWILT
THE MOONSTONE
The Non-Fiction
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM COLLINS ESQ, RA
RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS
MY MISCELLANIES
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
The Biographies
WILKIE COLLINS’ CHARMS by Olive Logan
MEN OF MARK: W. WILKIE COLLINS by Edmund Yates
WILKIE COLLINS by William Teignmouth Shore
Extracts from ‘MEMORIES OF HALF A CENTURY’ by Rudolph Chambers Lehmann
Extracts from ‘LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS’ by John Forster
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At a party celebrating her eighteenth birthday, Rachel Verinder wears the stunning yellow diamond she unexpectedly inherited from her uncle, Colonel John Herncastle.
She is not aware that the precious gem, known as the Moonstone, has been missing since it was plundered from a sacred Hindu shrine in southern India where her uncle had served with the British army fifty years ago.
But someone knows the secret of the Moonstone and will go to desperate measures to retrieve it. When it goes missing later that night, suspicions are raised and accusations fly. Could it be a trio of mysterious Indian jugglers seen near the house? Or a love-struck housemaid suddenly behaving strangely? And there is Rachel herself, who becomes furious when her paramour, Franklin Blake, directs attempts to find it.
As divergent accounts reveal more details, the diamond’s recovery is complicated by unexpected twists and turns. Sifting through a compelling list of suspects, the indomitable Sergeant Cuff must find the truth about the Moonstone and its mysterious disappearance.
The Moonstone features 66 black and-white woodcut illustrations throughout.
‘The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.’
One of the earliest works of ‘detective’ fiction with a narrative woven together from multiple characters, Wilkie Collins partly based his infamous novel on a real-life eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. In 1859, the story caused a sensation with its readers, hooking their attention with the ghostly first scene where the mysterious ‘Woman in White’ Anne Catherick comes across Walter Hartright. Chilling, suspenseful and tense in mood, the novel remains as emotive for its readers today as when it was first published.
One woman's journey through madness, murder, and mistaken identity -- a classic work of Victorian sensationalism.
THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:
• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
• A chronology of the author's life and work
• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
• An outline of the key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
• Detailed explanatory notes
• Critical analysis including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. the scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered.
In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies.
How are these little mysteries connected? Spend the night in Room 14 of Venice’s finest hotel, and find out the truth – if you dare...
INCLUDES THE GHOST STORY ‘THE DREAM WOMAN’
A widowed lawyer named Griffith has been appointed legal guardian of Jessie, a lively young woman. In order for Jessie to claim her inheritance, her late father’s will stipulates that she must spend 6 weeks with Griffith each year. Consequently, Jessie travels to a remote part of Wales to the castle where the lawyer and his 2 brothers reside. To everyone’s surprise and delight, Jessie and the 3 men get along splendidly. Hoping that she will stay to meet Griffith’s son, who is on his way home from the Crimean War, the brothers devise a plan à la Scheherezade: Each night they will tell Jessie a new thrilling story that will enchant her into staying.
This ebook features a new introduction from Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition.
A scheming nobleman, a beautiful heiress, and, of course, the enigmatic woman in white—a mysterious figure confined to an asylum for the insane—are the featured players in an intricate, compelling story that was acclaimed by Henry James and T. S. Eliot. An instant success when it first appeared in 1860, the riveting tale has continued to enthrall readers ever since.
The catalyst for the mystery is Walter Hartright's encounter on a moonlit road with a mysterious woman dressed head to toe in white. She is in a state of confusion and distress, and when Hartright helps her find her way back to London she warns him against an unnamed "man of rank and title." Hartright soon learns that she may have escaped from an asylum and finds to his amazement that her story may be connected to that of the woman he secretly loves. Collins brilliantly uses the device of multiple narrators to weave a story in which no one can be trusted, and he also famously creates, in the figure of Count Fosco, the prototype of the suave, sophisticated evil genius. The Woman in White is still passed as a masterpiece of narrative drive and excruciating suspense.
Introduction by Nicholas Rance
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
From the Hardcover edition.
When their beloved parents die in quick succession, Magdalen and Norah Vanstone find that their world has been torn asunder. Through a legal technicality, their father’s will renders them without a legitimate claim to their inheritance. All of their family’s money goes to their uncle, and the orphaned girls are left reeling. Reduced to utter poverty, Norah takes a job as a governess. But Magdalen is determined to win back what is rightfully theirs.
In this deft and moving story, Wilkie Collins weaves a powerful narrative of justice and familial bonds.
This ebook features a new introduction from Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
‘The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.’
Centred around a glorious yellow diamond that carries with it a menacing history, The Moonstone tells the story of Rachel Verinder, who inherits the stone on her eighteenth birthday. That very evening, the diamond is stolen and there begins an epic enquiry into hunting down the thief. At the same time, three Indian men, Brahmin guardians of the diamond are attempting to reclaim the stone in order to return it to their sacred Hindu Idol.
Told from the perspective of 11different characters, Wilkie Collins’ tale of mystery and suspicion was considered the first modern English detective novel at its time of publication.
When Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville, both families object strongly. Before long, Valeria realizes that they may have been right to voice their concerns. Eustace, it seems, is living under an assumed name. This alone would be enough to rouse his new bride’s suspicions, but worse still, she discovers that he stood trial for the murder of his 1st wife! Although Eustace was not found guilty, the court was unable to find sufficient evidence to exonerate him. Determined to clear her husband’s name and prove—to herself and everyone else—that he is innocent, Valeria takes the sleuthing into her own hands.
Widely considered to be the 1st story featuring a female detective, The Law and the Lady is an intricate and classic tale.
This ebook features a new introduction from Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
From 1859's Christmas edition of All Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, a collection set in an abandoned house where the guests are each asked to take up residence in one of the haunted rooms on the Twelfth Night of Christmas (a night of high magical power when the veil between the mortal and the spirit world was thinnest). Read what lurks in the Cupboard Room.
Tom Stoppard was catapulted into the front ranks of modem playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967. Its subsequent run in New York brought it the same enthusiastic acclaim, and the play has since been performed numerous times in the major theatrical centers of the world. It has won top honors for play and playwright in a poll of London Theater critics, and in its printed form it was chosen one of the “Notable Books of 1967” by the American Library Association.
Winston Smith rewrites history for the Ministry of Truth, but when he’s handed a note that says simply ‘I love you’ by a woman he hardly knows, he decides to risk everything in a search for the real truth. In a world where cheap entertainment keeps the proles ignorant but content, where a war without end is always fought and the government is always watching, can Winston possibly hold onto what he feels inside? Or will he renounce everything, accept the Party’s reality and learn to love Big Brother?
‘Dunster – both in his faithful take on the story and in his sometimes extreme but always enthralling adaptation – gets close to the heart of Orwell’s warning, pointing up but not overemphasising its current political resonances.... Newspeak, Doublethink, Room 101 and Thought Police take on a chilling reality in this compelling production.’ – The Independent
The authoritative edition of Othello from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:
-The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference
-Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading
Essay by Susan Snyder
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
In his epic treatment of the Faust legend, Marlowe retains much of the rich phantasmagoria of its origins. There are florid visions of an enraged Lucifer, dueling angels, the Seven Deadly Sins, Faustus tormenting the Pope, and his summoning of the spirit of Alexander the Great. But the playwright created equally powerful scenes that invest the work with tragic dignity, among them the doomed man's calling upon Christ to save him and his ultimate rejection of salvation for the embrace of Helen of Troy.
With immense poetic skill, and psychological insight that foreshadowed the later work of Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwrights, Marlowe created in Dr. Faustus one of the first true tragedies in English. Vividly dramatic, rich in poetic grandeur, this classic play remains a robust and lively exemplar of the glories of Elizabethan drama.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but, to expand the plot, developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. This text was of poor quality, and later editions corrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare's original.
Shakespeare's use of his poetic dramatic structure, especially effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension, his expansion of minor characters, and his use of sub-plots to embellish the story, has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the sonnet over the course of the play.
Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times for stage, film, musical and opera. During the English Restoration, it was revived and heavily revised by William Davenant. David Garrick's 18th-century version also modified several scenes, removing material then considered indecent, and Georg Benda's operatic adaptation omitted much of the action and added a happy ending. Performances in the 19th century, including Charlotte Cushman's, restored the original text, and focused on greater realism. John Gielgud's 1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare's text, and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th and into the 21st century, the play has been adapted in versions as diverse as George Cukor's comparatively faithful 1936 production, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version, Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet and the 2013non-Shakespearian adaptation by Carlo Carlei.
From Wikipedia
Upon its premiere at the National Theatre, Betrayal was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. It won the Olivier Award for best new play, and has since been performed all around the world and made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge. Betrayal begins with a meeting between adulterous lovers, Emma and Jerry, two years after their affair has ended. During the nine scenes of the play, we move back in time through the stages of their affair, ending in the house of Emma and her husband Robert, Jerry’s best friend.
“[Betrayal] deals with the shifting balance of power in triangular relationships, and with the pain of loss. . . . Pinter probes the corrosive nature of betrayal . . . a world where pain and loss are explored with poetic precision.” —Guardian
“Betrayal is an exquisite play, brilliantly simple in form and courageous in its search for a poetry that turns banality into a melancholy beauty.” —Newsweek
“There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks . . . The play's subject is not sex, not even adultery, but the politics of betrayal and the damage it inflicts on all involved.” —Times (UK)
Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare’s fellow actors in 1623, the First Folio was the original Complete Works. It is arguably the most important literary work in the English language. But starting with Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day, Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, gradually corrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflated textual variations.
Now Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, have edited the First Folio as a complete book, resulting in a definitive Complete Works for the twenty-first century.
Combining innovative scholarship with brilliant commentary and textual analysis that emphasizes performance history and values, this landmark edition will be indispensable to students, theater professionals, and general readers alike.
In depicting a man who murders to become king, Macbeth teases us with huge questions. Is Macbeth tempted by fate, or by his or his wife’s ambition? Why does their success turn to ashes?
Like other plays, Macbeth speaks to each generation. Its story was once seen as that of a hero who commits an evil act and pays an enormous price. Recently, it has been applied to nations that overreach themselves and to modern alienation. The line is blurred between Macbeth’s evil and his opponents’ good, and there are new attitudes toward both witchcraft and gender.
The authoritative edition of Macbeth from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:
-The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference
-Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Newly revised explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading
Essay by Susan Snyder
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
One relationship. Infinite possibilities.
In the beginning Marianne and Roland meet at a party. They go for a drink, or perhaps they don't. They fall madly in love and start dating, but eventually they break up. After a chance encounter in a supermarket they get back together, or maybe they run into each other and Marianne reveals that she's now engaged to someone else and that's that. Or perhaps Roland is engaged. Maybe they get married, or maybe their time together will be tragically short.
Nick Payne's Constellations is a play about free will and friendship; it's also about quantum multiverse theory, love, and honey.
In a time of global anxiety, terrorism, erratic weather and political unrest, a young couple want a child but are running out of time. If they over think it, they’ll never do it. But if they rush, it could be a disaster. They want to have a child for the right reasons. Except, what exactly are the right reasons? And what will be the first to destruct – the planet or the relationship?
Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography