"Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. Beginning with the opening "Poem" (prologue poem)--"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"--Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices...

A richly illustrated and annotated version of the adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that is forcibly taken to the Klondike goldfields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack.

In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an idyllic coastal community away from their husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890s' New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her...

The groundbreaking dystopian novel that inspired 1984 and Brave New World. "The best single work of science fiction yet written." -Ursula K. Le Guin When society has programmed you to sleep . . . How do you wake yourself up? The One State is a world where people are merely numbers, and free will itself is a disease. Most are happy in their role as cogs in a huge machine, controlled by the ever-watchful Benefactor. However,...

Perhaps the most powerful and influential black American of his time, Frederick Douglass, cmbodied the tumultuous social changes that transfored the united States during the nineteenth century. In a career of unprecedented breadth, Douglass rose from the oppression of his slave's birth to fame for Abolitionist

Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) is a metatheatrical drama by Luigi Pirandello. Viewed as an important work of absurdist literature, the play was a critical failure when it was first, staged in Rome. Revised by its author and bolstered by successful performances in New York City, Six Characters in Search of an Author has been, recognized as a pioneering examination of the nature of creativity, the relationship of the director and actors...

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went through nine editions. Today it is regarded as a landmark of American literature. This volume contains 24 poems from Leaves of Grass, offering a generous...

First published in 1899, "The Interpretation of Dreams" has come be regarded as Sigmund Freud's most significant work, one in which he would introduce his theory of the unconscious. According to Freud, dreams are forms of wish fulfillment, a sort of conflict resolution through subconscious processing of past and present troubles. Freud reasoned that the thoughts of the unconscious mind, being unruly and disturbing, were censored by the preconscious...

The Professor (1857) is English writer Charlotte Brontë's first novel. Rejected by several publishing houses, Brontë shelved the novel in order to write her masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847). After her death, The Professor was edited by Brontë's widower, Arthur Bell Nichols, who saw that the novel was published posthumously. Based on Brontë's experience as a student and teacher in Brussels-which similarly inspired her novel Villette-The Professor is...

Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry-called in twelfth-century Provencal "the gay science." This volume, which Nietzsche referred to as "the most personal of all my books," features the largest collection of his poetry that he ever chose to publish. It also offers an extensive and sophisticated treatment of the philosophical themes and views most central to his...