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Among the most influential philosophers of modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) declared in this classic study that Greek tragedy achieved greatness through a fusion of elements of Apollonian restraint and control with Dionysian components of passion and the irrational. In Nietzsche's eyes, however, Greek tragedy had been destroyed by the rationalism and optimism of thinkers like Socrates. Nevertheless, he found in these ancient works the life-affirming concept that existence is still beautiful, however grim and depressing it may sometimes be. These and many other ideas are argued with passionate conviction in this challenging book, called by British classicist F. M. Cornford "a work of profound imaginative insight, which left the scholarship of a generation toiling in the rear."

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This gripping, fast-paced book tells the dramatic story of the epic 1839 voyage of the schooner Amistad and her cargo of Africans bound for slavery in the New World. Under the leadership of Cinque, a young African farmer, the Africans revolt and seize the ship. They start for home, but instead of reaching Africa, they wind up in New England. The story of these events and the resulting trial of the captured Africans was front-page news at the time. Were they rebellious slaves and mutineers  "property" that must rightfully be returned to its owners  or honest men and women trying to regain their freedom?James W. Ivy, editor of the NAACP's official publication, The Crisis, commented at the time of the book's release, "Sterne has written a terse tale of great power. She presents her scenes with force and color and scrupulous sense of character." The subject of a critically acclaimed motion picture, Amistad (1997), the story of the Amistad is retold here  by a well-known author of books and plays for young people  in an exciting, readable style that will thrill young readers with its "you-are-there" flavor, authentic recreation of the facts, and accurate, and dignified portrayal of the central characters.

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When orphaned Pollyanna Whittier comes to live with her stern maiden aunt, the entire town of Beldingsville is affected by the bubbly nature of this lively eleven-year-old. Not only is she perpetually cheerful, she also brightens the lives of everyone she meets.How does Pollyanna manage to be so eternally optimistic? How does she spread her bright outlook among the sick, sad, and abrasive people of the town and transform the life of her lonely aunt? It's the "glad game," she says, describing the antidote to hardship and depressed spirits. But in a serious accident, the town almost loses its "Glad Girl," and everyone looks for a way to make this youngster happy again.Translated into several languages since its original publication in 1913, Pollyanna has been made into a Broadway play, as well as a popular motion picture. One of the best-loved children's stories of all time, this classicalong with its spirited heroinewill inspire readers for years to come.

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Switched at birth by a young slave woman attempting to protect her son from the horrors of slavery, a light-skinned infant changes places with the master's white son. This simple premise is the basis of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a compelling drama that contains all the elements of a classic 19th-century mystery: reversed identities, a ghastly crime, an eccentric detective, and a tense courtroom scene.First published in 1894, Twain's novel bristles with suspense. David "Puddnhead" Wilson, a wise but unorthodox lawyer who collects fingerprints as a hobby, wins back the respect of his townspeople when he solves a local murder in which two foreigners are falsely accused. Witty and absorbing, this novel features a literary first  the use of fingerprinting to solve a crime. This gem was Twain's last novel about the antebellum South; and despite its frequent injections of humor, it offers a fierce condemnation of racial prejudice and a society that condoned slavery.

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Set in England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses, this swashbuckling historical novel by the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped tells the story of young Dick Shelton. Betrayed by his treacherous and brutal guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, Dick seeks the help of John Amend-All, leader of the mysterious fellowship of the Black Arrowand Brackley's sworn enemy. Pitted against fierce fighters, a treacherous priest, and Sir Daniel, Dick seeks to become a knight and rescue his true love. Brimming with adventure, suspense, and romance, this thrilling tale presents a classic portrait of England during one of its most tumultuous eras, as Dick is pulled by his loyalties to the houses of both York and Lancaster. He must make a crucial choice, for his fate and the fate of England hang in the balance.

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Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

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As both painter and poet, William Blake (17571827) was a powerful and visionary artist whose two early collections of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, contain memorable lyric verses embodying the emerging spirit of Romanticism. The two works were published together in 1794 with the subtitle, "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul." The poems of Songs of Innocence describe childhood states of naturalness and purity in delicately beautiful lyrics that reveal a child's unspoiled and beatific view of life and human nature. In Songs of Experience the mood and tone darken, the poems suggesting the bitter corruptions and disillusionment that await the innocent. The contrast between the two sets of lyrics is perhaps at its most acute in the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," the latter ultimately expressing wonderment at the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of good and evil. The full texts of all the poems in the 1794 edition of both collections are included in this volume.

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Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.  W. B. YeatsDown through the millennia the emotion of love has inspired countless poets to great heights of lyrical expression. In this volume readers can sample more than 150 great love poems by English and American poets. Spanning over four centuries of literary creation in the service of amour, the works include a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne's "The Ecstasy," William Blake's "The Garden of Love," Robert Burns's "The Banks o'Doon" and "John Anderson My Jo," Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty," Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee," Robert Browning's "Meeting at Night," as well as works by W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, Matthew Arnold, A. E. Housman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Frost.

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Chicago Poems (1916) was Carl Sandburg's first-published book of verse. Written in the poet's unique, personal idiom, these poems embody a soulfulness, lyric grace, and a love of and compassion for the common man that earned Sandburg a reputation as a "poet of the people."Among the dozens of poems in this collection are such well-known verses as "Chicago," "Fog," "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter," "Who Am I?" and "Under the Harvest Moon," as well as numerous others on themes of war, immigrant life, death, love, loneliness, and the beauty of nature. These early poems reveal the simplicity of style, honesty, and vision that characterized all of Sandburg's work and earned him enormous popularity in the 1920s and '30s and a Pulitzer prize in poetry in 1951.

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Edith Wharton (18621937) wrote carefully structured fiction that probed the psychological and social elements guiding the behavior of her characters. Her portrayals of upper-class New Yorkers were unrivaled. The Age of Innocence, for which Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, is one of her most memorable novels.At the heart of the story are three people whose entangled lives are deeply affected by the tyrannical and rigid requirements of high society. Newland Archer, a restrained young attorney, is engaged to the lovely May Welland but falls in love with May's beautiful and unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. Despite his fear of a dull marriage to May, Archer goes through with the ceremony  persuaded by his own sense of honor, family, and societal pressures. He continues to see Ellen after the marriage, but his dreams of living a passionate life ultimately cease.The novel's lucid and penetrating prose style, vivid characterization, and its rendering of the social history of an era have long made it a favorite with readers and critics alike.

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An ardent activist, champion of political reform, novelist, and progressive journalist, Upton Sinclair is perhaps best known today for The Jungle  his devastating expose of the meat-packing industry. A protest novel he privately published in 1906, the book was a shocking revelation of intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It quickly became a bestseller, arousing public sentiment and resulting in such federal legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act.|The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair. Vulnerable and isolated, the family of Jurgis Rudkus struggles  unsuccessfully  to survive in an urban jungle.A powerful view of turn-of-the-century poverty, graft, and corruption, this fiercely realistic American classic is still required reading in many history and literature classes. It will continue to haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (18061861), English poet and wife of the poet Robert Browning, is perhaps best known for her remarkable series of 44 love poems Sonnets from the Portuguese. Published in 1850, they were written by Mrs. Browning to her husband during the early years of their relationship. Their obvious sincerity, gentleness, and passion and the devotion and gratitude they express have made the poems popular favorites with generations of readers.Mrs. Browning, however, addressed a wide range of other concerns, and this rich selection also includes poems dealing with religion, art, social problems, and political events. Among such works included here are: "Cheerfulness Taught by Reason," "A Curse for a Nation," "The Forced Recruit," "Grief," "A Musical Instrument," "The Cry of the Human," and many others.

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Daisy Miller is a fascinating portrait of a young woman from Schenectady, New York, who, traveling in Europe, runs afoul of the socially pretentious American expatriate community in Rome. First published in 1878, the novella brought American novelist Henry James (18431916), then living in London, his first international success. Like many of James' early works, it portrays a venturesome American girl in the treacherous waters of European society  a theme that would culminate in his 1881 masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady.On the surface, Daisy Miller unfolds a simple story of a young American girl's willful yet innocent flirtation with a young Italian, and its unfortunate consequences. But throughout the narrative, James contrasts American customs and values with European manners and morals in a tale rich in psychological and social insight. A vivid portrayal of Americans abroad and a telling encounter between the values of the Old and New World, Daisy Miller is an ideal introduction to the work of one of America's greatest writers of fiction.

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"The reason Verne is still read by millions today is simply that he was one of the best storytellers who ever lived."  Arthur C. ClarkeAn adventurous geology professor chances upon a manuscript in which a 16th-century explorer claims to have found a route to the earth's core. Professor Lidenbrock can't resist the opportunity to investigate, and with his nephew Axel, he sets off across Iceland in the company of Hans Bjelke, a native guide. The expedition descends into an extinct volcano toward a sunless sea, where they encounter a subterranean world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic marine life  a living past that holds the secrets to the origins of human existence.Originally published in 1864, Jules Verne's classic remains critically acclaimed for its style and imaginative visions. Verne wrote many fantasy stories that later proved remarkably prescient, and his distinctive combination of realism and romanticism exercised a lasting influence on writers as diverse as Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition to the excitement of an action novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth has the added appeal of a psychological quest, in which the sojourn itself is as significant as the ultimate destination.

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"Hafiz has no peer."  GoethePoetry is the greatest literary form of ancient Persia and modern Iran, and the fourteenth-century poet known as Hafiz is its preeminent master. Little is known about the poet's life, and there are more legends than facts relating to the particulars of his existence. This mythic quality is entirely appropriate for the man known as "The Interpreter of Mysteries" and "The Tongue of the Hidden," whose verse is regarded as oracular by those seeking guidance and attempting to realize wishes.A mere fraction of what is presumed to have been an extensive body of work survives. This collection is derived from Hafiz's Divan (collected poems), a classic of Sufism. The short poems, called ghazals, are sonnet-like arrangements of varied numbers of couplets. In the tradition of Persian poetry and Sufi philosophy, each poem corresponds to two interpretations, sensual and mystic.This outstanding translation of Hafiz's poetry was created by historian and Arabic scholar Gertrude Bell, who observed, "These are the utterances of a great poet, the imaginative interpreter of the heart of man; they are not of one age, or of another, but for all time."

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Newspaperman, short-story writer, poet, and satirist, Ambrose Bierce (18421914) is one of the most striking and unusual literary figures America has produced. Dubbed "Bitter Bierce" for his vitriolic wit and biting satire, his fame rests largely on a celebrated compilation of barbed epigrams, The Devil's Dictionary, and a book of short stories (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891). Most of the 16 selections in this volume have been taken from the latter collection.The stories in this edition include: "What I Saw at Shiloh," "A Son of the Gods," "Four Days in Dixie," "One of the Missing," "A Horseman in the Sky," "The Coup de Grace," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Story of Conscience," "One Kind of Officer," "Chickamauga," and five more.Bierce's stories employ a buildup of suggestive realistic detail to produce grim and vivid tales often disturbing in their mood of fatalism and impending calamity. Hauntingly suggestive, they offer excellent examples of the author's dark pessimism and storytelling power.

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Few volumes of poetry in the English language have enjoyed as much success with both literary connoisseurs and the general reader as A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. Scholars and critics have seen in these timeless poems an elegance of taste and perfection of form and feeling comparable to the greatest of the classic. Yet their simple language, strong musical cadences and direct emotional appeal have won these works a wide audience among general readers as well.This finely produced volume, reprinted from an authoritative edition of A Shropshire Lad, contains all 63 original poems along with a new Index of First Lines and a brief new section of Notes to the Text. Here are poems that deal poignantly with the changing climate of friendship, the fading of youth, the vanity of dreams  poems that are among the most read, shared, and quoted in our language.

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Edgar Allan Poe (18091849) holds a unique place in American literature. Famous as a poet, he also penned short stories that are masterpieces of terror and suspense, infused with the horror and dread he knew from his feverish dreams and persistent fears of death. Fortunately for lovers of mystery, Poe was attracted by logic and analysis as well as fantasy. Fascinated by the narrative possibilities of tracking the perpetrator of a crime, he invented the modern detective story.This superb collection of five stories reveals Poe's virtuoso gifts for both crime fiction and the macabre. Two of his most famous tales, "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter," recount the exploits of C. Auguste Dupin, the first important fictional detective. "William Wilson" is a chilling tale of crime and evil. The two remaining stories, "MS. Found in a Bottle" and "The Oblong Box," subtly but relentlessly convey a sense of unease, then dread, then outright terror.

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Of the enormous body of work produced by H. G. Wells  more than a book a year over the course of half a century  the early science fiction novels that first made him famous have proved to be the most enduring and have earned him the sobriquet "the father of modern science fiction."In the 1901 classic The First Men in the Moon, Wells reveals not only a fertile imagination at ease with biological and astronomical phenomena, but also a passionate concern for man and society. His "first men in the moon" prove to be the eccentric Mr. Cavor and his traveling companion, Mr. Bedford, who navigate a gravity-defying sphere through space before executing a rough landing on the moon. As castaways from earth, they practice lunar locomotion, get lost in the wilds of a moon jungle, and confront intelligent life forms living in lunar caverns. Through the adventures of these two earthlings, the author is able to look at mankind from a distance and, in his words, "burlesque the effects of specialization." The result is a delightful tale filled with adventure, romance, and fantasy that is still capable of stirring the imagination of readers in the 21st century."[Wells's science-fiction novels] achieve a near poetry which makes them part of the popular mythology of their age ... the best of his work has a vitality, a verve, an imaginative compulsion unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries."  N. C. Nicholson, author of H. G. Wells.

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The first and greatest of French literature's epics, this 11th-century tale of romance and heroism embodies all the power and majesty of its predecessors from other cultures. Its narrative framework echoes that of Greek and German myths, and it melds historic accounts from the Dark Ages of Europe with folklore from the Far East  along with the legends of the troubadours and stories from Virgil, Hebrew scriptures, and other sources.The timeless tale of the warrior Roland, nephew to Charlemagne and prince of the Holy Roman Empire, ranks high among the chansons de gest, or "songs of deeds." Its first audience, most of whom were illiterate, actually heard The Song of Roland sung to them. This crystalline translation by Leonard Bacon does full lyric justice to the ancient oral tradition.Listeners of a thousand years ago were captivated by this patriotic and poetic story of valor, betrayal, and revenge, and this modern interpretation ensures that readers will continue to fall under its spell.

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Western drama, having all but disappeared during the Dark Ages, reemerged spontaneously in the liturgy and life of the medieval church. Vernacular miracle plays of England's Middle Ages were performed by lay people  many by trade guilds  unschooled in church Latin, but familiar with the biblical events upon which the dramas were based. Morality plays provided moral instruction, their principal characters vivid personifications of virtue and vice. The most durable of the morality plays has proven to be Everyman, whose central character, summoned by Death, must face final judgment on the strength of his good deeds. This venerable drama is reprinted here along with three other medieval classics: The Second Shepherds' Play, Noah's Flood, and Hickscorner.