Barnes Noble: 2826 books

This 1896 autobiography is by and about a spiritualist, suffragette, antivivisectionist—a woman who married a journalist seventeen years younger and was known for controversial fiction that shattered stereotypes, challenged social convention, and explored the interior lives of women. She tells her...

Abigail Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, and Louisa May Alcott are among the formidable females who inhabit this engaging collection of profiles, originally published in 1917-1919. Bradford draws on letters and the recollections of his subjects’ friends and families to bring to life these shapers of American history.

Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Henry James, Grover Cleveland, and James McNeill Whistler are among the contemporary figures striding through this winning collection of profiles, originally published in 1920-1922. “To judge what they accomplished,” writes Bradford, “it would be necessary to be expert in their different pursuits. But I am concerned with their souls...”

Published in 1897, this collection of essays includes Twain's scathing demolishment of the literary pretensions of James Fenimore Cooper, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," as well as equally amusing if lighter fare like "The Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story" and the title essay, an insightful description of his own methods.

This fantastic work of fiction is a conversation between an author named John Chateris, and a youthful editor. The two discuss books and editions, which are not yet written, in the setting of a library – a figurative story which comments on the publishing industry, done in a masterful way.

Published in 1889, and revised in 1890, this essay was a clarion call by Pater for art criticism based on subjective emotional, rather than moralistic, criteria.  It was met with controversy, with some critics going so far as to accuse Pater of immorality and outright hedonism.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is the first modern autobiography, and arguably the most influential autobiography ever written. What we think of as the "self," our self-sufficient identity, finds its roots in the Confessions. Rousseau's great autobiography speaks to us with a voice that is as relevant today as it was revolutionary and unsettling in the eighteenth century.

A twist on the Prodigal Son parable, A Far Country follows young Hugh Paret as he sees his morals and principles gravely challenged by corporate life. While it is technically the story of one man, A Far Country also parallels America’s struggles between ethical ideals and the realities of capitalism in the early 20th century.

In Hieroglyphics, published in 1902 and written in the guise of “an obscure literary hermit,” Machen states his creed as a writer. He discourses on the nature of art, concluding that true literature must convey a sense of ecstasy. This is a pioneering and influential work of literary theory.

Published in 1880, this volume in the English Men of Letters series is enlivened by the author's personal acquaintance with many intimates of the poet, including his son and grandson, who provided Myers with as-yet-unpublished material.  As such, this biography is essential reading for Wordsworth enthusiasts.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote the famous poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” but he was also an influential philosopher, literary critic, and forerunner of transcendentalism. This 1884 biographical study explores his life and works, divided into Coleridge’s “Poetical,” “Critical,” and “Metaphysical and Theological” periods.

Published in 1912, this scholarly exploration of meter and rhythm begins with ancient Greece and Rome; moving through Old and Middle English; Chaucer; the ornate and plain styles; Edmund Burke; the great novelists of the nineteenth century such as Austen, Dickens, and Thackeray; the lyrical prose of John Ruskin; and more. It is one of the very few full-length studies of prose rhythm.

Distinguished critic and essayist Thomas Carlyle turns his keen intellect to a range of subjects in this collection of eleven essays. Volume One contains studies of Goethe, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Diderot, the death of Edward Irving, and more.

In this haunting autobiography, De Quincey describes the pleasures and pains of his addiction to opium, the surreal visions and hallucinations that accompanied his nocturnal wanderings through London, and the despair, nightmares, and paranoia he suffered. First published in 1821, this remarkable volume...