Серия книг «Modern Library Classics» — 258 книг

For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch’s Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths; and the age of chivalry have been known.
The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet’s Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood.
The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."

Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant’s Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them with literature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.

For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch’s Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and…

To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world,” E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London’s greatest achievement, The Call of the Wild brought him international acclaim when it was published in 1903. His story of the dog Buck, who learns to survive in the bleak Yukon wilderness, is viewed by many as his symbolic autobiography. “No other popular writer of his time did any better writing than you will find in The Call of the Wild,” said H. L. Mencken. “Here, indeed, are all the elements of sound fiction.”
White Fang (1906), which London conceived as a “complete antithesis and companion piece to The Call of the Wild,” is the tale of an abused wolf-dog tamed by exposure to civilization. Also included in this volume is “To Build a Fire,” a marvelously desolate short story set in the Klondike, but containing all the elements of a classic Greek tragedy.
”The quintessential Jack London is in the on-rushing compulsive-ness of his northern stories,” noted James Dickey. “Few men have more convincingly examined the connection between the creative powers of the individual writer and the unconscious drive to breed and to survive, found in the natural world. . . . London is in and committed to his creations to a degree very nearly unparalleled in the composition of fiction.”

To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world,” E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London’s greatest…

In Swann’s Way, the themes of Proust’s masterpiece are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

In Swann’s Way, the themes of Proust’s masterpiece are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous…

First published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann’s Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann’s daughter Gilberte, the narrator visits the seaside resort of Balbec with his grandmother and meets a new object of attention—Albertine, “a girl with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks.”

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

First published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator…

The “Guermantes Way,” in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantes’s château near Combray. It also represents the narrator’s passage into the rarefied “social kaleidoscope” of the Guermantes’s Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantes’s drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

The “Guermantes Way,” in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantes’s château near Combray. It also…

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) left a vast literary legacy in the form of journal entries, notes, addresses, and seventy thousand letters. This extraordinary volume represents many of his most important contributions to American political thought. It features his Autobiography, which contains the original and revised versions of the Declaration of Independence; the Anas, or Notes (1791–1809); Biographical Sketches; selections from Notes on the State of Virginia, the Travel Journals, and Essay on Anglo-Saxon; a portion of his public papers, including his first and second inaugural addresses; and more than two hundred letters. Taken together, these writings offer indispensable insight into the mind of the man who was instrumental in formulating and guiding this nation’s principles.

From the Preface:

This selection from the writings of Thomas Jefferson is planned to be a comprehensive presentation of his thought. The greatest amount of space has been allotted to his letters, in the belief that they are of primary importance in revealing the man and his intellect. Jefferson’s two original full-length works, the Notes on Virginia and the Autobiography, are given virtually complete. Along with his best-known public papers, selections from his minor writings are also included. Together, all these serve to depict the man who more aptly than any of his countrymen might be called the American Leonardo.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) left a vast literary legacy in the form of journal entries, notes, addresses, and seventy thousand letters. This extraordinary volume represents many…

Written during his days as a ranchman in the Dakota Bad Lands, these two wilderness tales by Theodore Roosevelt endure today as part of the classic folklore of the West. The narratives provide vivid portraits of the land as well as the people and animals that inhabited it, underscoring Roosevelt’s abiding concerns as a naturalist.

Originally published in 1885, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman chronicles Roosevelt’s adventures tracking a twelve-hundred-pound grizzly bear in the pine forests of the Bighorn Mountains. Yet some of the best sections are those in which Roosevelt muses on the beauty of the Bad Lands and the simple pleasures of ranch life. The British Spectator said the book "could claim an honorable place on the same shelf as Walton’s Compleat Angler." The Wilderness Hunter, which came out in 1893, remains perhaps the most detailed account of the grizzly bear ever recorded.

Written during his days as a ranchman in the Dakota Bad Lands, these two wilderness tales by Theodore Roosevelt endure today as part of the classic folklore of the West. The…

An immediate success when if was first published in 1653, Walton’s classic celebrtion of the joys of fishing continues to captivate anglers and nature lovers with its timeless advice and instruction. Originally cast in the form of a dialogue between an experienced angler named Piscator and his pupil Viator, the book details methods for catching, eating, and savoring all varieties of fish, from the common chub to the lordly salmon. More than an engaging guide to the subtle intricacies of the sport, Walton’s reflective treatise is a graceful portrait of rural England that extols the pleasures of country life.

‘The Compleat Angler is not about how to fish but about how to be,’ said novelist Thomas McGuane. ‘[Walton] spoke of an amiable mortality and rightness on the earth that has been envied by his readers for three hundred years.’

An immediate success when if was first published in 1653, Walton’s classic celebrtion of the joys of fishing continues to captivate anglers and nature lovers with its timeless…

First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. Soon to be a limited series on Starz.

At its heart lie two families—the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked—some very funny, some very tragic—that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes’ charming country home.

As much about the clash between individual wills as the clash between the sexes and the classes, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, “Only connect,” remains a powerful prescription for modern life.

First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. Soon to be a limited series on Starz.

At its heart lie two…

Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs–tender and impressionable, with equal purity of mind and manners. The engagement was announced discreetly, but all of New York society was soon privy to this most perfect match, a union of families and circumstances cemented by affection.
Enter Countess Olenska, a woman of quick wit sharpened by experience, not afraid to flout convention and determined to find freedom in divorce. Against his judgment, Newland is drawn to the socially ostracized Ellen Olenska, who opens his eyes and has the power to make him feel. He knows that in sweet-tempered May, he can expect stability and the steadying comfort of duty. But what new worlds could he discover with Ellen? Written with elegance and wry precision, Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is a tragic love story and a powerful homily about the perils of a perfect marriage.

Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs–tender and impressionable,…

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton depicts the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York with precision and wit, even as she movingly portrays the obstacles that impeded women’s choices at the turn of the century.

The beautiful, much-desired Lily Bart has been raised to be one of the perfect wives of the wealthy upper class, but her spark of character and independent drive prevents her from becoming one of the many women who will succeed in those circles. Though her desire for a comfortable life means that she cannot marry for love without money, her resistance to the rules of the social elite endangers her many marriage proposals. As Lily spirals down into debt and dishonor, her story takes on the resonance of classic tragedy. One of Wharton’s most bracing and nuanced portraits of the life of women in a hostile, highly ordered world, The House of Mirth exposes the truths about American high society that its denizens most wished to deny. With an introduction by Pamela Knights.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton depicts the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York with…

Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation. As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”

Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of…

“Villette! Villette! Have you read it?” exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë’s final novel appeared in 1853. “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power.”

Arguably Brontë’s most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette, flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital of Villette. Soon Lucy’s struggle for independence is overshadowed by both her friendship with a wordly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Brontë’s strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.

“Villette is an amazing book,” observed novelist Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. “Written before psychoanalysis came into being, Villette is nevertheless a psychoanalytic work—a psychosexual study of its heroine, Lucy Snowe. Written before the philosophy of existentialism was formulated, the novel’s view of the world can only be described as existential. . . . Today it is read and discussed more intensely than Charlotte Brontë’s other novels, and many critics now beleive it to be a true masterpiece, a work of genius that more than fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre.” Indeed, Virginia Woolf judged Villette to be Brontë’s “finest novel.”

“Villette! Villette! Have you read it?” exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë’s final novel appeared in 1853. “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is…

With a new Introduction by Geoff Dyer
Commentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V.S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred Kazin

Of all Lawrence’s work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emotional source of his ideas,” observed Diana Trilling. “The famous Lawrence theme of the struggle for sexual power–and he is sure that all the struggles of civilized life have their root in this primary contest–is the constantly elaborated statement of the fierce battle which tore Lawrence’s family.”

Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama, and it is now widely considered the major work of D. H. Lawrence’s early period. This intensely autobiographical novel recounts the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing to manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict. The author’s vivid evocation of the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction makes this one of his most powerful novels.

For the critic Kate Millett, “Sons and Lovers is a great novel because it has the ring of something written from deeply felt experience. The past remembered, it conveys more of Lawrence’s own knowledge of life than anything else he wrote. His other novels appear somehow artificial beside it.”

With a new Introduction by Geoff Dyer
Commentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V.S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred Kazin

Of all Lawrence’s work,…

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

“It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham,” wrote Gore Vidal. “He was always so entirely there.”
Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man’s yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine, he meets the androgynous but alluring Mildred and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. There is no more powerful story of sexual infatuation, of human longing for connection and freedom.
”Here is a novel of the utmost importance,” wrote Theodore Dreiser on publication. “It is a beacon of light by which the wanderer may be guided. . . . One feels as though one were sitting before a splendid Shiraz of priceless texture and intricate weave, admiring, feeling, responding sensually to its colors and tones.”

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

“It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the…

When eleven-year-old Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables with nothing but a carpetbag and an overactive imagination, she knows that she has found her home. But first she must convince the Cuthberts to let her stay, even though she isn’t the boy they’d hoped for. The loquacious Anne quickly finds her way into their hearts, as she has with generations of readers, and her charming, ingenious adventures in Avonlea, filled with colorful characters and tender escapades, linger forever in our memories.

This Modern Library edition of the first of L. M. Montgomery’s beloved and immensely popular Avonlea novels features the restored original text and an Introduction by the noted children’s literature scholar Jack Zipes.

When eleven-year-old Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables with nothing but a carpetbag and an overactive imagination, she knows that she has found her home. But first she must…

Begun in 1851, when Tolstoy was twenty-three and serving as a cadet in the Russian army, Childhood, the first part of Tolstoy’s first novel, won immediate praise from Turgenev and others, and marked Tolstoy’s emergence as a major writer. Its originality was striking, as Tolstoy sought to communicate with great immediacy the “poetry” of childhood—the intense emotions, confusions, and fears attendant upon a young boy, Nikolenka, as he grows up. In the years following, Boyhood and Youth appeared (a fourth volume was planned but never executed), each replete with psychological and philosophical subtleties hitherto unknown in Russian literature. In Scammell’s resplendent translation, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth remains one of Tolstoy’s major works.

Begun in 1851, when Tolstoy was twenty-three and serving as a cadet in the Russian army, Childhood, the first part of Tolstoy’s first novel, won immediate praise from Turgenev and…

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

It is . . . the world of the poets and the preponderance of the poet in [Lawrence] that is the key to his work. He magnified and deepened experience in the manner of a poet,” wrote Anaïs Nin in 1934.
Privately printed in 1920 and published commercially in 1921, Women in Love is the novel Lawrence himself considered his masterpiece. Set in the English Midlands, the novel traces the lives of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and the men with whom they fall in love. All four yearn for fufillment in their romantic lives, yet struggle in a world that is increasingly violent and destructive. Commenting on the novel, which was composed in the midst of the First World War in 1916, Lawrence wrote, “The bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters.” Rich in symbolism and lyrical prose, Women in Love is a complex meditation on the meaning of love in the modern world.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

It is . . . the world of the poets and the preponderance of the poet in [Lawrence] that is the key to…

A painter and architect in his own right, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) achieved immortality for this book on the lives of his fellow Renaissance artists, first published in Florence in 1550. Although he based his work on a long tradition of biographical writing, Vasari infused these literary portraits with a decidedly modern form of critical judgment. The result is a work that remains to this day the cornerstone of art historical scholarship.
Spanning the period from the thirteenth century to Vasari’s own time, the Lives opens a window on the greatest personalities of the period, including Giotto, Brunelleschi, Mantegna, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. This Modern Library edition, abridged from the original text with notes drawn from earlier commentaries, as well as current research, reminds us why The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects is indispensable to any student interested in Renaissance art.

A painter and architect in his own right, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) achieved immortality for this book on the lives of his fellow Renaissance artists, first published in Florence…

Before Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and Richard Ford, there was Sherwood Anderson, who, with Winesburg, Ohio, charted a new direction in American fiction–evoking with lyrical simplicity quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. In a bed, elevated so that he can peer out the window, an old writer contemplates the fluttering of his heart and considers, as if viewing a pageant, the inhabitants of a small midwestern town. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon. “Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America,” wrote H. L. Mencken. “It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own.”

With Commentary by Sherwood Anderson, Rebecca West, and Hart Crane

Before Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and Richard Ford, there was Sherwood Anderson, who, with Winesburg, Ohio, charted a new direction in American fiction–evoking with lyrical…