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Poets have long treated birds as a captivating source of inspiration, from the Elizabethan era through the twentieth century. They used birds as compelling symbols of beauty, death, eternity, life, love, power, religious beliefs, and superstitions. The engaging and profound selections from classic to contemporary authors include poems by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, William Butler Yeats, and two dozen others. This anthology is ideal for classroom use, independent study, and personal perusal.

William Faulkner is one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century, but success was elusive with his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, in 1926. The promising young author had not yet achieved the reputation that would lead to the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and two Pulitzer Prizes. Soldiers' Pay reflects Faulkner's gift for keen observations, embracing his Southern experience, as well as his experimental narrative techniques blended with literary modernism. He captures the post-World War I atmosphere of the Lost Generation on American soil and explores the war's emotional impact on three weary veterans and their hometown in Georgia.

Wilde's witty and buoyant comedy of manners, filled with some of literature's most famous epigrams, reprinted from an authoritative British edition. Considered Wilde's most perfect work.

Gripping ghost story by great novelist depicts the sinister transformation of 2 innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. An elegantly told tale of unspoken horror and psychological terror.

Nature was a form of religion for naturalist, essayist, and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817 62). In communing with the natural world, he wished to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and learn what it had to teach." Toward that end Thoreau built a cabin in the spring of 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed nature, farmed, built fences, surveyed, and wrote in his journal.One product of his two-year sojourn was this book a great classic of American letters. Interwoven with accounts of Thoreau's daily life (he received visitors and almost daily walked into Concord) are mediations on human existence, society, government, and other topics, expressed with wisdom and beauty of style.Walden offers abundant evidence of Thoreau's ability to begin with observations on a mundane incident or the minutiae of nature and then develop these observations into profound ruminations on the most fundamental human concerns. Credited with influencing Tolstoy, Gandhi, and other thinkers, the volume remains a masterpiece of philosophical reflection."

Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920) was an immediate, spectacular success and established his literary reputation. Perhaps the definitive novel of that "Lost Generation," it tells the story of Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy Princeton student who halfheartedly involves himself in literary cults, "liberal" student activities, and a series of empty flirtations with young women. When he finally does fall truly in love, however, the young woman rejects him for another. After serving in France during the war, Blaine returns to embark on a career in advertising. Still young, but already cynical and world-weary, he exemplifies the young men and women of the '20s, described by Fitzgerald as "a generation grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

Scintillating drawing-room comedy revolves around a blackmail scheme that forces a married couple to reexamine their moral standards. The dialogue between young lovers, society matrons, and a formidable femme fatale keeps the action brisk.

Eleven thrilling tales, featuring works by the finest masters of the genre: Mary E. Wilkins, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Henry James, J. S. LeFanu, Ralph Cram, Mrs. Henry Wood, and more.

Major work on ethics, by one of the most influential thinkers of the last 2 centuries, deals with master/slave morality and modern man's current moral practices; the evolution of man's feelings of guilt and bad conscience; and how ascetic ideals help maintain human life under certain conditions.

Deeply spiritual and profoundly human, this 16th-century masterpiece is the work of a revered saint. Its insights into prayer and meditation as the keys to fulfillment have inspired generations of readers.

Featuring 19 of the finest works in the American short-story tradition, this compilation includes: "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, "Bartleby" by Herman Melville, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway, plus stories by Hawthorne, Twain, Cather, and others.

This book includes memorable (and sometimes shocking) sermons from the most influential Puritans of the 16th to 18th centuries. Included are Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Thomas Shepard's "The Parable of the Ten Virgins," Cotton Mather's "An Hortatory and Necessary Address," and works by 7 other religious leaders.

British economist, ethical theorist, and civil servant John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was one of the most influential English-language philosophers during the Victorian era. Autobiography, published posthumously in 1873, recounts the prolific thinker and writer's rigorous tutelage under a domineering father and his mental health crisis at age twenty. The book explores his struggle to regain joy amid self-reflection as well as a reassessment of theories he once believed to be true. Mill's insights have remained relevant in the century and a half since he published his most important works, including On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism.

Lighthearted farce featuring an American charmed by the British aristocracy and a British earl equally intrigued by his conception of the nature of America's democratic society. Illustrated by Dan Beard.

Intimately connected in themes and regarded as the poet's masterpieces, these verses offer meditations on love, death, God, and the meaning of life. This edition features acclaimed translations by Jessie Lemont.

"One of her greatest achievements, a book whose afterlife continues to inspire new generations of writers and readers." ¿ The Guardian This modernist masterpiece, originally published in 1925, chronicles a day in the life of an upper-class Englishwoman. Revolutionary in its psychological realism, the third-person narrative switches between Clarissa Dalloway and her fictional counterpart, Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked World War I veteran. Virginia Woolf''s pioneering stream-of-consciousness technique portrays the fragmented yet fluid nature of time and illustrates the commonality of perceptions shared across social barriers. A major literary figure of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote such groundbreaking essays as "A Room of One''s Own" in addition to numerous letters, journals, and short stories. Her other novels include To the Lighthouse and Orlando.

Besides a selection of letters by the abolitionist himself, the original collection includes an excerpt from W. E. B. Du Bois's biography, John Brown, addresses by Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson, poetry by Louisa May Alcott, and more.

Laugh out loud with this captivating collection of more than 350 limericks. This volume features selections by legendary poets Robert Frost, Edward Lear, and Carolyn Wells; renowned writers Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain; and world leaders Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Queen Elizabeth I, and President Woodrow Wilson. A limerick is a five-line rhyming poem with a bouncy rhythm. Enjoy common varieties, including geographical and bawdy limericks, as well as tongue twisters and creative misspellings. Travel the world with a man from Nantucket and a young lady of Niger. Explore the animal kingdom with a fly and a flea in a flue and a pelican with food stuffed in his beak. Experience the mundane, such as a tooting tutor tutoring two tooters, and the peculiar, including walking around a room that has no floor. With classics from the golden age and contemporary verse, this irresistible, rib-tickling anthology has something for everyone, from humor buffs to poetry lovers.

In eighteenth-century Peru, a historic bridge collapses, plunging five people to their deaths. A Franciscan monk witnesses the disaster and embarks on a spiritual quest to reconcile free will versus fate and the existence of God in the victims' lives: "Why did this happen to those five?" This thought-provoking, Pulitzer Prize-winning second novel by American writer Thornton Wilder was called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times when it was published in 1927. McCall's praised it as "the philosophical novel brought to perfection." New generations have applied its messages to tragic events, including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Bridge of San Luis Rey remains a compelling literary classic exploring destiny, love, religion, and the meaning of life.