"With Lord Jim, first published in 1900, Joseph Conrad transformed a tale of seafaring adventure into a subtle study of the meaning of honor and courage, loyalty and betrayal. When Jim, an idealistic merchant seaman and ship’s officer, abandons the supposedly sinking Patna and its passengers, he dashes his youthful dreams of glory in a single stroke. Condemned in court for his impetuous act of cowardice, Jim relegates himself to a life roaming the...

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in the American South and went on to write one of the most extraordinary slave narratives. First published pseudonymously in 1861,Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes Jacobs's treatment at the hands of her owners, her eventual escape to the North, and her perilous existence evading recapture as a fugitive slave. To save herself from sexual assault and protect her children she is forced to hide for seven years...

"Young Jim Hawkins and his friends set sail for Treasure Island, hoping to find the buried loot of Captin Flint, fiercest of all the pirates. But, unknown to them, the crew of their own ship is made up of Flint's former crew, led by the evil one-legged pirate Long John Silver. Once on the island Jim and his friends must find the buried treasure and escape before the pirates capture them. Robert Louis Stevenson's timeless tale of greed and gold remains...

'Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's ... was more striking' As the title of Jane Austen's first published novel suggests, the difference between two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, lies not only in their appearance but also in their temperament. Yet Sense and Sensibility not only contrasts Elinor's good sense,...

Young Copperfield's life is happy at first, but he is forced to run away from his home following the arrival of his stepfather. David is then adopted by his aunt, Betsey Trotwood, sent to school at Canterbury and meets the unctuous Uriah Heep, whose activities lead eventually to David's self-discovery.

The spirit of satire flourished during the Enlightenment as in no other period, and the crowning achievement of that caustic, brilliantly learned age was Voltaire's Candide, published in 1759, at the height of its author's enormous European fame. Following the worldwide encounters - with shipwrecks, earthquakes, pestilence, and human insanity - of its hero and his incomparably absurd tutor, Dr. Pangloss, Candide is the most entertaining of all philosophical...

From the publisher. Most of what we know about Leonardo da Vinci, we know because of his notebooks. Some 6,000 sheets of notes and drawings survive, perhaps one-fifth of what he actually produced. With an artist's eye and a scientist's curiosity, he recorded in these pages his observations on the movement of water and the formation of rocks, the nature of flight and optics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture, and painting. He jotted down fables, epigrams,...