Barnes Noble: 2826 books

The New York Times praised this collection as "more than a history of our early literature.  Prosaic it never is; warm with life and general suggestion it always is.” The contents include, “Early Painting and Poetry,” “Thomas Paine,” “President, Preacher, and Poet,” “Sea-Stories and Others,” and, “Washington Irving,” among many other interesting topics.

Twain compiled this collection of thirty-eight short stories, humorous observations, and other writings from his long career in 1906.  The last such volume published during his lifetime, it is a must-read for lovers of American literature and anyone who appreciates the humorist's art.     

In this book of trenchant essays—framed as letters to a fictional nephew, “Bob”—Thackeray documents his variously amusing, annoying, and appalling experiences in Britain’s capital city. He attends balls, dinners, children’s parties, gentlemen’s clubs, the opera, and even a public hanging, and has a wicked observation to make about each.

This 1901 treasury of wit, assembled by Thackeray’s biographer Lewis Melville, covers the great English satirist’s career and collects early sketches of some of his most famous characters. The book includes “Letter from Mrs. Ramsbottom,” “Poles Offering Corn,” “The Choice of a Loaf,” “Little Spitz,” and more.

This 1878 installment in John Morley's English Men of Letters Series sympathetically reviews the life and works of the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith. Black defends Goldsmith by reviewing his education, travel, personal traits, literature, and the difficulties he faced along the way.

In 1851 the English novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray delivered a series of lectures in London on the great English humorists of the previous century (including Swift, Congreve, Pope, Hogarth, and Fielding), which he repeated over the next two years while touring the United States. The lectures were received with great acclaim and published in book form in 1853.

This 1906 collection of short biographies includes chapters on Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Oliphant, Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade, and Walter Besant, among others. Melville asserts that the Victorian period was a time synonymous with “big” writing.

Here is a collection of English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray’s articles, reviews, essays, and sketches for magazines. This volume contains a range of critical reviews on literature and art, invaluable reading for anyone passionate about the arts.

Adopting the persona of an aristocratic London bachelor named George Savage Fitz-Boodle, the English satirist William Makepeace Thackeray wrote these sometimes savage parodies of high society, the institution of marriage, and other aspects of life in his day. They were first printed in Fraser’s Magazine, 1842-43, under the title “Confessions of Fitz-Boodle.”

Published in 1899, this charming autobiography takes readers back to a time when Boston, the largest city in New England, was still just a typical town of the region. While Hale claims here, “I am certainly not writing my autobiography,” he does give a detailed account of being a boy during “the simplicity and ease of a phase of New England life, which has now wholly passed away.”

Lloyd’s 1881 exposé of the Standard Oil Company in the Atlantic Monthly forms the core of Wealth Against Commonwealth, a full-length indictment of John D. Rockefeller and his oil company—calling them prototypes of the industrial monopolies he felt were corrupting American liberty. Appealing to the...

Henry James was an illuminating and masterly literary critic. In this book, James examines the work of Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, and Charles Baudelaire, among others. His in-depth knowledge of the French language and the country’s authors makes for a stunning first book of criticism.

Published in 1906, this first volume of Moore's memoirs scandalized with its frank approach to sex and sensuality.  In these pages is a loving evocation of women and cities loved and lost, of emotions as deeply felt as they proved to be evanescent. 

In his introduction, Hudson explains his book as a series of impressions and essays of bird life. The offerings range from impressions of birds in rural settings to the cruelty of wearing feathers as fashion in Britain. The descriptive section titles include “Birds in a Village,” “Exotic Birds for Britain,” and “In an Old Garden.”