A self-made American goes to Europe to enjoy his fortune and becomes engaged to a French widow from a noble family. Depicts the contrast between American and European culture.

This collection of Emerson's essays covers the contents of two volumes originally published in 1841 and 1844. Annotation. Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Here is a collection of his classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance"...

Henry Adams (great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams) asserts that his conventional education was defective because it did not prepare him to live in a world transformed by the new science and technology. This autobiography provides an insightful exploration of the tumultuous age in which he lived.

George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the...

The story of a gentleman in 18th century England marrying a servant girl, a challenge to the social hierarchy. This shows a typical representative of the middle class which had already challenged the aristocracy and was beginning to impose its ideal of Protestant respectability and hard work on England and the world.

Moll Flanders has claims to being the first English novel. It is the tale of 'the Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent.' Racy, ironic,...