Shakespeare's popular comedy of love and mistaken identity is accompanied by a section on reading Shakespeare's language, information on Shakespeare's life and theater, explanatory notes, annotated reading lists, and an essay.

The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

First published in 1516, Saint Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressing such issues as religious pluralism, women's rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare, Utopia seems remarkably contemporary nearly five centuries after it was written, and it...

Nature was a form of religion for naturalist, essayist, and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–62). In communing with the natural world, he wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and learn what it had to teach. Toward that end Thoreau built a cabin in the spring of 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond, on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed nature, farmed,...

In “The Future of an Illusion”, Freud's psychoanalysis of religion is the culmination of a lifelong thought pattern. Freud examines human nature and the role of religion in society, proclaiming that human instincts are destructive to civilization and must be restrained to maintain an orderly society. Religion, viewed as a set of false beliefs based on human desires, manifests as a God-like father figure to a helpless child, whose survival is dependent...

Treasury of 44 poems evokes stirring images of British character and attitudes at the height of the Empire. "Gunga Din," "Danny Deever," "If-," "The White Man's Burden," "The Female of the Species," many others, filled with character study, dramatic incident and rousing language New Notes to the Text. Alphabetical lists of titles and first lines.

All of author Joseph Conrad's works have an air of loneliness and isolation within the plot. This is now thought to be reflective of the author's life as a Polish immigrant living and writing at the height of the British Empire. His prose strikes a chord that resonates deep within the reader, leaving a feeling of immense despondency. Yet with his deep affinity for the melancholy, Conrad was also a highly skilled prose writer. His words allow the reader...

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went through nine editions. Today it is regarded as a landmark of American literature. This volume contains 24 poems from Leaves of Grass, offering a generous...

A writer travels to a fishing village to complete her book and becomes close friends with many residents including her popular housemate, Mrs. Almira Todd. Throughout her stay, the writer is, inundated with personal stories from her colorful neighbors. In The Country of the Pointed Firs, a Boston native travels to a small Maine town called Dunnet Landing. She finds room and board with an older woman named Almira Todd, a widow and local herbalist....