Washoe County Library System

Collects all of the stories the author wanted to preserve, providing a rich view of his prolific talent, wide-ranging views, and engaging style

The imaginative breadth and the intellectual depth of [this novel] make it one of the greatest of Balzac's "Etudes philosophiques'. With its central symbol of the magic piece of shagreen, it expresses the peculiarly Balzacian idea of the human will and dramatizes with startling urgency the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, between vice and virtue, between dissipation and restraint. The symbolism is powerful but not overpowering:...

Irish tales, first written down in the eighth century, deal with the birth, childhood, courtship, premonitions, and death of gods, goddesses, and mortals

A portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation. Highlights the treatment of marital infidelity and an illicit relationship.

Forced by the death of her parents to seek her fortune in London, Fanny Hill is duped into prostitution by an old procuress. In Mrs Brown's bawdy-house the naïve young woman begins her sexual initiation - progressing from innocence to curiosity and desire - and soon embarks on her own path in pursuit of pleasure, until she at last finds true love. John Cleland's story of Fanny's rise to respectability was denounced after its publication by the then...

aFormer convict Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov recounts his prison experiences in 19th century Siberia. A nobleman alone with coarse peasant criminals who torment him, he compares his experience to being buried alive. The vitality of his crude fellow inmates actually aids in the return and reawakening of his personality. First published in 1862 after Dostoyevsky’s imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp, “The House of the Dead” is a collection...

Henry James conceived the character of Hyacinth Robinson—his 'little presumptuous adventurer with his combination of intrinsic fineness and fortuitous adversity'—while walking the streets of London. Brought up in poverty, Hyacinth has nevertheless developed aesthetic tastes that heighten his awareness of the sordid misery around him. He is drawn into the secret world of revolutionary politics and, in a moment of fervour, makes a vow that he will...