Literary Collections : Essays

The Fountainhead, which became one of the most influential and widely read philosophical novels of the twentieth century, made Ayn Rand famous. An impassioned proponent of reason, rational self-interest, individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism, she expressed her unique views in numerous works of fiction and non-fiction that have been brought together for the first time in this one-of-a-kind volume. Containing excerpts from all her novels--including Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and We The Living--The Ayn Rand Reader is a perfect introduction for those who have never read Rand, and provides teachers with an excellent guide to the basics of her viewpoint. more...

Price: $23.00

Because I Tell a Joke or Two explores the complex relationship between comedy and the social differences of class, region, age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationhood. more...

Price: $43.95

Billy Budd is a novella begun around 1886 by American author Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891 and not published for the first time until 1924. The work has been central to Melville scholarship since it was discovered in manuscript among Melville''s papers in 1924 and published the same year. It has an ignominious editorial history, as poor transcription and misinterpretation of Melville''s notes on the manuscript marred the first published editions of the text. For example, early versions gave the book''s title as Billy Budd, Foretopman, while it now seems clear Melville intended Billy Budd, Sailor: (An Inside Narrative); some versions wrongly included a chapter that Melville had excised as a preface (the correct text has no preface); some versions fail to correct the name of the ship to Bellipotent (from the Latin bella war and potens power), from Indomitable, as Melville called her in an earlier draft. In 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. established what is now considered the correct text; it was published by the University of Chicago Press, and most editions printed since then follow the Hayford/Sealts text. One of the most influential twentieth-century versions of the story was the libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier for the 1951 opera Billy Budd by Benjamin Britten, which follows the earlier text as prepared for publication by Raymond Weaver. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Intuitive navigation. . Text annotation and mark-up. more...

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The Blockade Runners (French: Les Forceurs de blocus) is a 1865 short story by Jules Verne In 1871 it was published in single volume together with novel A Floating City as a part of the Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). An English translation was published in 1879. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This booktable of contents linked to every chapter, act or story. . more...

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A stellar host of writers explore the cornerstone of fiction writing: character. The Book of Other People is about character. Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight “realism”—if such a thing exists—is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples. The writers featured in The Book of Other People include:. Aleksandar Hemon. Nick Hornby. Hari Kunzru. Toby Litt. David Mitchell. George Saunders. Colm Tóibín. Chris Ware, and more more...

Price: $15.00