Wordsworth classics — Knigausa Bookstore: Russian Books

North and South

Sun, 19 May 2024 17:47:04 +0000

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Patsy Stoneman, University of Hull Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author’s first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine’s movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell’s skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs — of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes. Читать дальше…

Wuthering Heights

Sat, 18 May 2024 13:18:03 +0000

With an Introduction and Notes by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex.Wuthering Heights is the wild, passionate story of intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. After Mr Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine’s brother Hindley and, wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries.The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

Ulysses

Sat, 18 May 2024 13:12:03 +0000

Complete and unabridged, this title comes with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. James Joyce`s astonishing masterpiece, «Ulysses», tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom`s voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its Modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, «Ulysses» offers the reader a life-changing experience.

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Sat, 18 May 2024 13:12:03 +0000

With an Introduction by Dr. Julian WoIfreys’My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know. ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant detective to the readers of The Strand Magazine. The runaway success of this series prompted a second set of stories. The Memoirs. In these twenty three tales, collected here in one volume, you have some of the best detective yarns ever penned. In his consulting room at 22 IB Baker Street, the master sleuth receives a stream of clients all presenting him with baffling and bizarre mysteries to unravel. There is, for example, the man who is frightened for his life because of the arrival of an envelope containing five orange pips; there is the terrified woman who is aware that her life is in danger and cannot explain the strange whistling sounds she hears in the night; and there is the riddle of the missing butler and the theft of an ancient treasure. In the last story, there is the climatic battle between Holmes and his arch enemy, ‘the Napoleon of Crime’ Professor Moriarty. Holmes, with trusty Watson by his side, is equal to these and the other challenges in this splendid collection.This edition contains the original illustrations from Strand Magazine drawn by Sidney Paget.

Robin Hood

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 10:55:03 +0000

Robin Hood is the best-loved outlaw of all time. In this beautifully illustrated edition, Henry Gilbert tells of the adventures of the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest — Robin himself, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale, as well as Maid Marian, good King Richard, and Robin’s deadly enemies Guy of Gisbome and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.Издание на английском языке.

The Tempest

Sun, 21 May 2023 11:04:36 +0000

The Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare’s works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.»The Tempest» is the most lyrical, profound and fascinating of Shakespeare’s late comedies. Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved merciful, he divests himself of that magic, his ‘art’, and prepares to return to the mainland. «The Tempest» has often been regarded as Shakespeare’s ‘farewell to the stage’ before his retirement.In the past, critics emphasised the romantically beautiful features of «The Tempest», seeing it as an imaginative fantasia. In recent decades, however, «The Tempest» has also been treated as a potently political drama which offers controversial insights into colonialism and racism. Frequently staged and diversely filmed, the play has influenced numerous poets and novelists.Издание на английском языке.

War and Peace

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 11:30:03 +0000

This title is translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury, «War and Peace» is a vast epic centred on Napoleon’s war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy’s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy’s philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy’s approval. Читать дальше…

Tender is the Night & The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald F. S.

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 11:20:03 +0000

«Tender is the Night» is a story set in the hedonistic high society of Europe during the 'Roaring Twenties'. A wealthy schizophrenic, Nicole Warren, falls in love with Dick Diver — her psychiatrist. The resulting saga of the Divers' troubled marriage, and their circle of friends, includes a cast of aristocratic and beautiful people, unhappy love affairs, a duel, incest, and the problems inherent in the possession of great wealth. Despite cataloguing a maelstrom of interpersonal conflict, «Tender is the Night» has a poignancy and warmth that springs from the quality of Fitzgerald's writing and the tragic personal experiences on which the novel is based. Six years separate «Tender is the Night» and «The Last Tycoon», the novel Fitzgerald left unfinished at his death in December 1940. Fitzgerald lived in Hollywood more or less continuously from July 1937 until his death, and a novel about the film industry at the height of 'the studio system' centred on the working life of a top producer was begun in 1939. Even in its incomplete state «The Last Tycoon» remains the greatest American novel about Hollywood and contains some of Fitzgerald's most brilliant writing.

Oliver Twist

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 11:28:00 +0000

Dickens had already achieved renown with «The Pickwick Papers». With «Oliver Twist» his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes — grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity.
«Oliver Twist» features some of the author’s most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sykes, Nancy and «the Artful Dodger».
For any reader wishing to delve into the works of the great Victorian literary colossus, «Oliver Twist» is, without doubt, an essential title.
Издание на английском языке.

Crime and Punishment

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 10:31:03 +0000

Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.From that moment on. we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of his terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime.The result is a tragic novel built from a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world’s harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality.Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения.