An indispensable and provocative compilation of witty essays dealing with Biblical stories and their inconsistencies from America's master satirist, Mark Twain.
"The Bible According to Mark Twain" is a selection of essays spanning forty years of his writing career, which touch on and satirize stories and figures from the Bible. In his characteristic style, Twain illustrates the inherent comedy and inconsistencies found within Holy Scripture, simultaneously entertaining and provoking questions about man's place in the world and his relationship with God. An important installment in the Twain canon, this book is perfect for fans of America's master satirist.

Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Foster’s The Coquette (1797) were two of the earliest novels published in the United States. Both novels reflect the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the young country’s morality.

For almost 150 years, the writings of Branwell Bronte, the tragically self-destructive brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, have remained largely inaccessible, scattered in incomplete manuscript form across the world's libraries and private collections. This is the first publication of two of the longest of Branwell's surviving manuscripts, The Life of...Northangerland and Real Life in Verdopolis. A prolific writer, Branwell's work took the form of chronicles detailing the activities of his central character, Alexander Percy, revolutionary leader and ruthless statesman. These two Angrian Chronicles, newly transcribed, reconstructed, and annotated under the editorship of Robert G. Collins, reveal the dramatic world of the Brontes' Angria, not from the more sentimentalized viewpoint of Charlotte, but focusing instead on the lawless and brutal society of Branwell's robber-king, statesman and self-proclaimed Lucifer. The stories suggest a detailed psychological description of Branwell's own tragic life, and indicate a significant influence on the work of his more celebrated sisters. Read for its own narrative interest, its biographical relevance, and for the many ways in which it reflects significant aspects of the novels his sisters later wrote, The Hand of the Arch-Sinner reveals an astonishing and neglected talent in the fourth Bronte."

Anne Bronte's novel "Agnes Grey", was first published in 1847. This edition incorporates the author's unpublished manuscript revisions to the first edition, together with a textual history and explanatory notes.;Anne Bronte drew heavily on her own experiences as a governess and the novel reflects her sense of the isolation and social ambivalence of the governess's position. Her strongly held religious views are also much in evidence.;Hilda Marsden is also co-editor, with Ian Jack, of "Wuthering Heights" in the same series.

Praise for the Clarendon Edition of the Novels of George Eliot "It is the best available edition....The Clarendon format...establishes the history of the text with impeccable research."--Journal of English and Germanic Philology. "Clarendon editions of nineteenth-century novels are almost invariably without parallel."--Nineteenth-Century Literature Often considered George Eliot's finest novel, Middlemarch is a masterpiece of literary realism. This is the first edition of the novel to be published with full critical apparatus since it appeared in 1871-2. It records all the variants in the main edition as well as many of the deletions in the manuscript. The introduction traces the history of composition, publication, and revision.

George Eliot's first work of fiction, Scenes of Clerical Life, appeared serially in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857. It was immediately recognized as, in the words of the Saturday Review, "the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer whose style showed little or no family resemblances with that of any living author." Using the first edition of 1858 as copy text, this edition records all substantive variants in the manuscript and subsequent editions of the book over which the author had control. The editor's introduction gives a detailed history of the writing and publication of the work, as well as a description of the manuscript and lists of emandations and variant spellings.

The appreciation of Zen philosophy and art has become universal, and Zen poetry, with its simple expression of direct, intuitive insight and sudden enlightenment, appeals to lovers of poetry, spirituality, and beauty everywhere. This collection of translations of the classical Zen poets of China, Japan and Korea includes the work of Zen practioners and monks as well as scholars, artists, travellers and recluses, and covers fifteen centuries of Oriental literature with poets ranging from Xie Lingyun (5th century) through Wang Wei and Hanshan (8th century) and Yang Wan-li (12th century) to Shinkei (15th) Basho (17th) and Ryokan (19th).

Dit is 1950 en Pasgatyd in Oudtshoorn. Leah Abrams, ’n jong entoesiastiese navorser in antieke tale, kuier by haar Joodse rabbi pa en sy tweede vrou, Daniela. Hulle is albei navorsers oor, onder andere, die geskiedenis van Israel. Maar daar heers konflik in die huis want Leah wil gesels oor die Messias wie sy leer ken het in haar studies, en haar Joodse gesin is nie ontvanklik daarvoor nie.

Diverse kultuur- en geloofsgroepe en na-oorlogse politieke kwessies skep ook probleme vir die Abrams-gesin en hul tuisdorp. ’n Sluipmoordaanval krap wonde en geheime in die dorp en Leah se gesin oop en die plaaslike polisie se vooroordele help nie die ondersoek na die skuldige aan nie …

Leah is oorweldig deur seer en onsekerheid. Maar sy begin stadig maar seker by mense wie sy nooit sou verwag het leer dat vergifnis, verhoudings en liefde die dinge is wat mense bymekaar bring, ongeag van hulle stand of kultuur. Sy besef ook met die hulp van ander dat God nie tussen die blaaie van ’n boek leef nie, maar in jou hart. Dalk het die Here nog heeltyd ’n ander plan gehad vir die mense in Die huis op die hoek.

In one volume, the two short-story collections that established Kate Chopin as one of America's best-loved realist writers.

The story of a philandering, dishonest Boston journalist and the woman who divorces him, this is the first serious treatment of divorce in American writing and a powerful example of realism in literature.

From the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a domestic comedy that examines slavery, Protestant theology, and gender differences in early America.

First published in 1859, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s third novel is set in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, a community known for its engagement in both religious piety and the slave trade. Mary Scudder lives in a modest farmhouse with her widowed mother an their boarder, Samuel Hopkins, a famous Calvinist theologian who preaches against slavery. Mary is in love with the passionate James Marvyn, but Mary is devout and James is a skeptic, and Mary’s mother opposes the union. James goes to sea, and when he is reportedly drowned, Mary is persuaded to become engaged to Dr. Hopkins.

With colorful characters, including many based on real figures, and a plot that hinges on romance, The Minister’s Wooing combines comedy with regional history to show the convergence of daily life, slavery, and religion in post-Revolutionary New England