Søgeresultater: 821

Summary: Agnes Grey is the daughter of a minister who faces financial ruin. Agnes decides to take up one of the only professions available to Victorian gentlewomen and become a governess. Drawing on her own, similar experiences, Anne Brontë portrays the desperation of such a position. Agnes' livelihood depends on the whim of spoiled children, and she witnesses how wealth and status can degrade social values

Summary: Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby, a young millionaire with shady business connections and who is love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin

Summary: Jane Eyre is raised in her aunt's house after the death of her parents. Her aunt cannot stand the queer, quiet child and sends her off to a spartan boarding school where she is severely mistreated. She survives, however, and eventually finds herself a situation as a governess in the household of Edward Rochester. She and Rochester fall passionately in love, in one of the great literary love stories. But a dark secret in his house will tear them apart and send her alone into the wilderness before she can find her way back to him

Summary: W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage is generally considered to be an autobiographical fiction where the different events happening to the protagonist, Philip, stand for the hardships that Maugham himself faced throughout his life. The story begins when Phillip successively loses both parents and is sent to stay in his uncle's vicarage in a small Kent village named Blackstable. Being taken from one of Spinoza's works, the title alludes to the novel's deeply-philosophical aspect and pressing existential and theological questions. The narrative recounts Phillip's different experiences with women, mainly his rather masochistic love for the hospital waitress, Mildred, who keeps on disappointing him. It also speaks about his constant wavering between different fields of study, namely theology, art and medicine. His uncle's collection of books provides him with continuous flights into the world of fiction and helps him enrich his imagination and worldly experience. By the end of the novel, Phillip seems to give up his philosophical idealism and to finally apprehend that life should be taken simply in order to be lived fully and happily. The happy resolution parallels Maugham's life achievements as a wealthy and prized playwright and novelist

Summary: In the puritanical Boston of the 17th Century, a woman gives birth after committing adultery. That woman, Hester Prynne, choses to create a new life for herself in the face of adversity rather than succumb to what is expected of her. She will not name the father. Her decision opens up the tension between religious life and the true grace of God, and between personal guilt, religious sin and legal guilt. The novel is prefaced by a "real" account of the author finding notes on a case similar to Hestor's in a Custom House, from which he fashioned the story. The preface is to be read as fictional

Summary: Love A Christmas Carol ? Celebrate the holiday season with the second of Dickens' trio of Christmas classics, The Chimes . This tale of humanity's warring moral impulses and ultimate redemption highlights the true meaning of the holiday season. An uplifting read at Christmastime, or at any time of the year

Summary: Washington Square by Henry James is the story of the gentle, dull Catherine Sloper who falls for the ambivalent Morris Townsend, who her father believes is a fortune hunter. When Catherine's father refuses to countenance the marriage and threatens to disinherit her if she proceeds, the dutiful Catherine is unable to choose between her father and the man of her dreams. Often compared to Austen for the precision and elegance of the prose Washington Square is a beautiful tragicomic story that is one of James' bestloved novels

Summary: The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later is the final book in Dumas' d'Artagnon Romances trilogy. The book is in four parts, of which this is the fourth. According to French academic Jean-Yves Tadie, the real subject of the book is the beginning of King Louis XIV's rule

Summary: What is the true function of the artist in society? Do fame and acclaim help or hinder the artist's pursuit of creative expression? These are the timeless questions underpinning this classic novel from American literary legend Henry James. The story follows the parallel career trajectories of two artists: Nick Dormer, who is trying to juggle both a political career and his love of painting, and Miriam Rooth, an ambitious young actress who will do anything to achieve success

Summary: Rose Tramore, the quietly persistent young woman at the center of Henry James' novella The Chaperon , is every bit as memorable a literary creation as James' Daisy Miller, though she is that character's opposite in many ways. In the aftermath of her mother's bitter divorce, Rose helps her shattered family pick up the pieces and carry on

Summary: Another entrant in his astoundingly popular series of Christmas parables, Dickens revisits many of the themes and plot devices he first explored in A Christmas Carol in The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain . This novella recounts the supernatural experiences of Professor Redlaw, who learns several life-changing lessons from a mysterious spirit

Summary: Adolescence and the transition to adulthood are difficult periods for most people, but the stakes are even higher when you're a well-born young woman at the center of a complex and morally suspect social circle. That's the dilemma facing young Nanda Brookenham in Henry James' The Awkward Age , a dialogue-driven novel that some critics rank among the writer's most accomplished literary feats