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Reading became an increasingly popular entertainment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, Europe and America, reaching an ever wider spectrum of society as the cost of printing came down and levels of literacy rose. The novels avidly consumed in this period were not merely escapist fiction. Many of them drew attention to serious social issues such as slavery, child labour and other forms of exploitation that blighted the age of revolutions and empire, some were thinly disguised autobiographies, while others had clear educational aims: thus the line between fiction and non-fiction was a fluid one. Poetry too flourished across a wide range of genres, and the political and social agendas of the Romantic movement in particular led to its being read and appreciated at all levels of society. In this series, the Cambridge Library Collection offers the texts of fiction and poetry as these works were first published and received by an eager reading public.

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20 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Fiction and Poetry

Tales of Mystery, Imagination, and Humour
  • And Poems
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1852
  • According to even his most forgiving biographers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) was a difficult man. Arrested whilst touring Europe, and expelled from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he tended to lose both work and friends through drunkenness. Best known for his goriest stories, Poe is often presented to the modern reader as a writer of horror. However, this collection, published in 1852, offers a broader selection of his work. It includes one of his first pieces of detective fiction, 'The Gold-Beetle', resulting from his preoccupation with cryptography; 'A Descent into the Maelström', an early example of science fiction; the mesmeric verse of 'The Raven'; and some of his lesser-known love poetry. A pioneer of modern genre fiction, Poe remains important and influential in the American literary canon. This lavishly illustrated collection represents an excellent introduction to his work.

Prometheus Unbound
  • A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with Other Poems
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1820
  • The later works of the radical and visionary Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) include some of his boldest productions, such as the large-scale verse dramas Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, the miniatures 'Ode to a Skylark' and 'Ode to the West Wind', and the sonnet 'Ozymandias'. All have taken their place among the classics of English literature. This one-volume collection contains four editions which were originally published during the poet's lifetime and which feature his prefaces. These are Prometheus Unbound with Other Poems (1820); Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1822), which also includes 'Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon'; The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts (second edition, 1821); and Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue with Other Poems (1819). The fifth and final component is Posthumous Poems (1824), with a preface by Mary Shelley, the poet's second wife.

Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey
  • Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1851
  • The tragic lives of the Brontë sisters hold a romantic fascination as great as that of the stories into which they poured their rich imaginations and experiences. Following their first appearance in 1847 and the deaths of Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), these two classics of English literature - one an impassioned tale of doomed love, the other a quietly intense portrait of the governess in Victorian society - were published together with poems and a biographical notice in this revised 1851 edition. It was prepared by the authors' sister and fellow novelist, Charlotte (1816–55). Wuthering Heights was Emily's only novel, and although it received mixed reviews upon first publication because of its stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty, it has since become an icon of its genre. Agnes Grey, Anne's debut novel, astutely shows the governess to be an often invisible and abused member of the household.

Vanity Fair
  • A Novel without a Hero
  • William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1848
  • The quintessential satire of life in early nineteenth-century Britain, Vanity Fair is a panoramic tour of English social strata, charting the rise and fall of the opportunistic Becky Sharp. Rejected by several publishers before finding a place with Bradbury and Evans, this 'novel without a hero' first appeared as a popular serial. The twenty parts were finally printed together in 1848, incorporating the author's own illustrations. Although William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) was not a debut author, this was the first of his works to bear his name on the title page; the vast scope of the novel gained him immediate critical acclaim, though reviewers often expressed misgivings about the dark portrayal of human nature. In response, Thackeray wrote that 'we are for the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people … I want to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story.'

Poems
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1870
  • Few collections of verse have been associated with such drama as these poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82). Much of this work had disappeared in 1862 when it was buried with Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal, only to be brought back to the light of day in 1869. Rossetti added further poems and the work first appeared in 1870. The full impact of the sexually explicit material was soon felt. In his article 'The Fleshly School of Poetry', the writer Robert Williams Buchanan denounced Rossetti as corrupt and decadent. Others joined the chorus of disapproving voices. Steeped in remorse about his treatment of his wife, and riddled with guilt about his affair with Jane Morris, Rossetti broke down and attempted suicide. Behind all the sensation, however, lies Rossetti's subtle and complex literary intelligence attempting, many years before Freud, to find honest modes of expression for the central importance of the libido.

In Memoriam
  • Alfred Tennyson
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    14 February 2013
    First published in:
    1850
  • 'Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort.' Queen Victoria's reliance, after the death of Prince Albert, on this poem by Alfred Tennyson (1809–92), Poet Laureate from 1850, epitomises its place at the heart of Victorian public and private life. The most famous poem of its age and an instant bestseller, In Memoriam was an elegy for Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's closest friend, who had died young in Vienna in 1833. Its distinctive iambic tetrameter stanzas - begun days after the news reached Tennyson, and reworked for the next seventeen years - explore the nature of grief, religious consolation, and profound anxieties about man's relationship with nature, articulating the quintessential Victorian emotions of mourning and troubled faith. This reissue is of the third edition, published in 1850, the same year as the first.

Silas Marner
  • The Weaver of Raveloe
  • George Eliot
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1861
  • In her third novel, reissued here in its first edition of 1861, George Eliot (1819–80) charts the life of the cataleptic, miserly weaver Silas Marner. Arriving in insular Raveloe after a wrongful expulsion from his Calvinist community in the north, Silas is a foreign and outcast figure, left alone to accumulate a useless fortune through his loom in the dawn of the new industrial age. His unhappy life is rendered unrecognisable when his fortune is stolen and he adopts a child. Eliot's first two novels, Adam Bede and Mill on the Floss, had dealt with tragedy and the injustices faced by fallen women. With its happy ending and suffusion of fairy-tale elements, Silas Marner marks a turning point in her career. Alongside this development, however, the novel continues to raise Eliot's characteristic questions about social inequalities, the effects of extreme religion, and the worth of human experience.

Treasure Island
  • Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1883
  • This classic tale by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) was first published as a serial between 1881 and 1882 in the children's magazine Young Folks, where it received little attention, and then in the form of this book in 1883, which secured its everlasting fame. Telling the story of the young Jim Hawkins' search for the buried treasure of Captain Flint, it had a profound impact on how pirates were perceived in the popular imagination, immortalising treasure maps marked with an 'X', exotic locations, and one-legged seamen with parrots on their shoulders. Vividly drawn, the character of Long John Silver remains one of the most compelling antagonists in all of children's literature. The work of a masterful storyteller at the height of his powers, this coming-of-age adventure has been adapted for film and television countless times, and continues to delight readers of all ages.

The Thirty-Nine Steps
  • John Buchan
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1915
  • This spy story of 1915 by John Buchan (1875–1940) is an archetype of the genre, but may be better known today through its film and television versions (especially that of Alfred Hitchcock in 1935). Curiously, although all keep the theme of German espionage which will trigger a world war, none of them sticks at all closely to Buchan's original plot. This is the first of five novels in which Richard Hannay, formerly a mining engineer in colonial Africa, now a patriotic gentleman of leisure, finds himself pitted against the enemies of the British Empire. Although the book is an exciting, if occasionally implausible, adventure story, it may be marred for a modern readership by the racism and anti-Semitism it expresses, though this was not exceptional for the period. The writing is also noticeable, however, for lyrical descriptions of the Scottish border country in which Buchan himself grew up.

Sons and Lovers
  • David Herbert Lawrence
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1913
  • Born within walking distance of ten Nottinghamshire pits, David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was painfully aware that his frail physique and quiet character were ill suited to the mining industry upon which his community depended. The difficulties of his youth are manifest in Sons and Lovers, his first major novel and an insider's portrayal of the culture of the collieries. Writing to a friend, Lawrence explained the seed of his plot: 'a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life'. Stemming from this are the intricate difficulties in the relationships of Paul Morel, the second son of this unhappy mother, torn between her overpowering influence and two vastly different women - the quiet, old-fashioned Miriam and the modern divorcee Clara. Although initially deemed indecent and rejected for publication, Sons and Lovers appeared for the first time in 1913.

Peter and Wendy
  • James Matthew Barrie
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1911
  • 'All children, except one, grow up.' Mrs Darling half-remembers Peter Pan from her own childhood; he is an insubstantial figure with a baby's laugh and a habit of blowing out stars. She believes him to be imaginary - until he leaves his shadow in her children's nursery. Accompanied by a foul-mouthed fairy, Peter is in search of good stories, and upon learning that the eldest Darling girl, Wendy, knows a great many, he lures her and her two brothers back to the island of Neverland. There, the dreams and imaginings of childhood become real. Lost boys, pirates and warring Indians populate the shifting landscape, which suddenly seems darker and more frightening without the bedside lamps of home. Adapted by J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) from his most famous play, this novelised and illustrated version of the story was first published in 1911.

The Secret Agent
  • A Simple Tale
  • Joseph Conrad
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1907
  • By the time Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) produced this novel in 1907, terrorism had torn its way through London: Victoria station had been partially destroyed, the House of Commons damaged, and Scotland Yard attacked with dynamite. Conrad's story is set in 1886, at the height of these troubles, and was inspired by the 1894 attempt to bomb Greenwich Observatory. Written just after Nostromo (1904), it is a marked departure from Conrad's usual seafaring form and plunges the reader into the claustrophobic, grimy world of late nineteenth-century London. Mr Adolf Verloc - anarchist, spy, and purveyor of pornographic material - heads a cast of shadowy characters all affected directly or indirectly by the anarchist organisation to which he belongs. Although critics acknowledged its power, the novel and its dark subject matter were uneasily received in Conrad's lifetime. This reissue of the first edition confirms the book's place as a classic of twentieth-century fiction.

The Rainbow
  • David Herbert Lawrence
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1915
  • David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) expected The Rainbow to cause a stir. In a characteristically open exploration of sensual and explicit themes, the novel traces more than sixty years of pre-war life and three generations of the Brangwen family. Employing language infused with the rich imagery and repetition of biblical texts to treat all subjects - from the green fields and empty skies of the Brangwen farm through to Ursula's encounter with a female schoolteacher - Lawrence took an assuredly striking approach. However, he was unprepared for the vitriolic attacks of his reviewers. The novel was branded 'utter filth' and 'a mass of obscenity'; it was banned only a month after its publication in 1915, unsold copies being confiscated and destroyed. A second, abridged edition would not appear for another eleven years. Now a landmark in the early modernist canon, the original and unabridged text of 1915 is reissued here.

Dracula
  • Bram Stoker
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1897
  • Since it was first published in 1897, this infamous Gothic horror novel, which brought its author international acclaim, has spawned a global following, inspiring hundreds of films and setting the seaside town of Whitby in North Yorkshire on the map forever. A sickly child, Bram Stoker (1847–1912) developed a fascination with the supernatural during his enforced confinement. He went on to become actor Henry Irving's business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London, yet continued to pursue his literary interests. His iconic villain takes his name from Vlad the Impaler (1431–76), also known as Vlad Dracula, whereas the vampire's appearance and powerful personality is modelled on Irving. Famous for its epistolary form, Dracula went through eleven editions during Stoker's lifetime. Succeeding generations continue to be enthralled and thrilled anew by the tale's dark terror and deeply unsettling undercurrents.

Jude the Obscure
  • Thomas Hardy
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1895
  • Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) wanted his last novel 'to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity, and to point, without a mincing of words, the tragedy of unfulfilled aims'. First published in its present form in 1895 (although post-dated 1896) after appearing as an abridged serial, the work was met with as much opprobrium as admiration. Critics wrote reviews entitled 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate' because of the novel's explicit content and deliberate attacks on the education system and marriage laws; even Hardy's wife took personal offence. Sparse and bleak, the story follows Jude Fawley, a promising self-taught scholar and village stonemason, as he navigates with increasing difficulty between the prejudices of the class system and two very different women: his wife, Arabella, and his ethereal, disturbed love, Sue Bridehead.

Kim
  • Rudyard Kipling
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1901
  • Best known for The Jungle Book and the poem 'If-', Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) became the first British recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His considerable literary output, of both prose and poetry, reflects and interprets his experience of empire, and his great fame during his lifetime was matched by sales of his works. Widely regarded as Kipling's masterpiece, and described by him as 'a labour of great love', this picaresque, nostalgic novel was first published serially and then in the form of this book in 1901. Ten years in gestation, the novel reflects the vastness and diversity of India, combining Kipling's first-hand knowledge of the subcontinent and its people with his highly developed understanding of human interaction. At the heart of the work lies Kim's hybrid nature - a white boy, but Indian in identity - and his action-packed adventures are deftly juxtaposed with the spiritual journey of his travelling companion.

A Christmas Carol
  • Being a Ghost Story of Christmas
  • Charles Dickens
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1843
  • Charles Dickens (1812–70) was an established novelist when he decided to produce a Christmas story, which was written in only six weeks and published at the end of 1843. The book was an immediate bestseller, and had it not been for the very high production costs of the specially commissioned illustrations and the decorative binding, it would have been a great commercial success. This strategic error meant that Dickens did not make the profits he expected, which contributed to his falling out with the publishers, Chapman and Hall. The story, however, has endured to this day as a classic and remains Dickens' best-known and most adapted work. This reissue of the first edition, with its famous illustrations by Punch caricaturist John Leech (1817–64), is printed in black and white, but the four colour illustrations found in the original can be viewed at http://www.cambridge.org/9781108060400.

Cranford
  • By the Author of 'Mary Barton', 'Ruth', etc.
  • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1853
  • In the delicately impoverished town of Cranford, everyone is keen to know everyone else's business. The community is almost devoid of men, and in their place a solid matriarchy has formed. Manners must be observed, house calls must not exceed a quarter of an hour, and neither money matters nor death may be discussed in public. But the peace is often disturbed. Rumoured burglars, literary disagreements, and the arrival of Captain Brown and his tactless daughters all cause ripples, warmly charted by the conversational narrator, Mary Smith. When the past erupts through the fragile class distinctions and disputed tea sales, the customary perspective of the town shifts in small but perceptible ways forever. First published as a magazine serial from 1851 and then in novel form in 1853, Cranford is the best-known work by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65). This reissue is of the 1853 second edition.

Casa Guidi Windows
  • A Poem
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1851
  • In 1847, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) moved with her new husband to an apartment in Florence, in the wake of perhaps the most famous literary courtship of the nineteenth century. She soon took to calling their home the Casa Guidi. From there, she observed the events of the early Risorgimento. It was at this time that she produced some of her finest work, including Aurora Leigh and Casa Guidi Windows. An impressionistic and thoroughly atypical landmark in the Romantic canon, the latter was written in two parts, separated by several years. Beginning with the memory of a singing child and a lush description of Florence's beauty, the first part explores the air of optimism that permeates both the city and the narrator. By the second, disillusionment is rife: Florence has become the scene of demonstrations and broken political promises. This reissue of the 1851 first edition includes Barrett Browning's own introduction.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • Lewis Carroll
  • Illustrated by John Tenniel
  • Published online:
    18 December 2013
    Print publication:
    03 January 2013
    First published in:
    1865
  • An accomplished mathematician and photographer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), writing under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, transformed children's literature with this world-famous classic. First published in 1865, this tale of the topsy-turvy was originally created to entertain the young Alice Liddell and her sisters during a picnic in the summer of 1862. The humour with which Dodgson enlivened his mathematical works is exploited to the full here: many of the now-familiar nonsense songs and poems in the story are parodies of contemporary works, and there are a number of allusions to mathematical concepts in the text. The illustrations by Punch cartoonist Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914) depict the cast of much-loved characters - including the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter - with a brilliance which perfectly enhances Dodgson's gently satirical fantasy. In its universal appeal, the story remains unsurpassed.