Alcott’s enchanting debut novel.

Written in 1849, when Louisa May Alcott was just seventeen years old, The Inheritance is the captivating tale of Edith Adelon, an impoverished Italian orphan who innocently wields the charms of virtue, beauty, and loyalty to win her true birthright. A long lost letter reveals her secret inheritance, nothing less than the English estate on which she is a paid companion. But Edith is loath to claim it – for more important to her by far are the respect and affection of her wealthy patrons, and the love of a newfound friend, the kind and noble Lord Percy.

Her first novel shows a young Alcott writing under the influence of the gothic romances and sentimental novels of her day. In their introduction, Professors Myerson and Shealy, who recovered Alcott’s unpublished manuscript, explore how her unconventional upbringing and early literary influences shaped The Inheritance, and consider it in the light of her mature style, particularly that of her classic, Little Women.

An early masterwork among American literary treatments of miscegenation, Chesnutt’s story is of two young African Americans who decide to pass for white in order to claim their share of the American dream.

Published for the first time as Chopin intended, this is a collection of her most innovative stories, including "The Story of an Hour," "An Egyptian Cigarette," and "The Kiss."

This, the fourth of Cooper's celebrated Leatherstocking Tales, continues the adventures of Natty Bumppo, noble woodsman, champion of the Indians, and hero of the American frontier. In The Pathfinder Cooper undertook the hazardous experiment of resurrecting one of his most popular characters, for he had killed off Bumppo in his previous incarnation, the Trapper, in The Prairie (1827). But in 1839, at his English publisher's instigation, Cooper began work on a romance, setting the story of his hero's unsuccessful courtship on the mist-shrouded shores of Lake Ontario during the French and Indian Wars.

Dostoevsky's autobiographical novel combines aspects of two obsessions: the love of a rejecting woman and the fever of gambling.

The Arion Press Moby-Dick, published in 1979 in a limited edition of 250 copies, has been hailed as a modern masterpiece of bookmaking. It was hand set under the supervision of one of America's finest book designers and printers. The initial letters that begin each chapter were designed especially for this book and christened Leviathan. The illustrations, of places, creatures, objects or tools, and processes connected with nineteenth-century whaling, are original boxwood engravings by Massachusetts artist Barry Moser. The text of Moby-Dick used in this edition is based on that used in the critical edition of Melville's works published by the Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library.
Now this magnificently typeset and illustrated edition of the great American novel is available for all lovers of beautiful books. This luxurious edition of Moby Dick is limited to 750 numbered copies. It is bound in cloth and slipcased in a cloth-covered box. The text is printed in two colors throughout on a 75-pound beautifully textured paper.