Hesperus classics

When a New York lawyer needs to take on another copyist, it is Bartleby who responds to his advertisement, and arrives "pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn." At first a diligent employee, he soon begins to refuse work, saying only "I would prefer not to." So begins the story of Bartleby-passive to the point of absurdity yet paradoxically extremely disruptive-which rapidly turns from farce to inexplicable tragedy. Accompanying Bartleby,...

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman, writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga...

When Charlotte's brother Branwell was given a set of 12 toy soldiers, an entire new imaginary world opened before them. The Twelves, or Young Men, became a constant source of inspiration for the Brontë children, spawning tales of swashbuckling adventure, darkest intrigue, doomed romance, and malevolent spirits. The four volumes of tales collected here make delightful reading, while offering a unique insight into Brontë family life and Charlotte's...

Jane Austen's unfinished novel‚ The Watsons tells the story of a widowed clergyman and his two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, returns home after being raised by a wealthy aunt. Better-educated and more genteel than her other sisters, she looks on disapprovingly at the husband-hunting of two of her sisters, and relates better to her more responsible oldest sister, Elizabeth. Various would-be suitors appear, including the boorish...

Herman and the noble and proud Ernestine, two young lovers, find themselves confronted with a pair of libertines who will stop at nothing-not even the confines of the law-to assuage their desires. Count Oxtiern, villainous and dissolute, and his accomplice Madame Scholtz, a widow of lusty temperament, will shrink from nothing, no lie, no treachery is beneath them in their quest for sexual fulfillment. But does crime really never pay? Or can virtue...