Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

Mansfield Park – Jane Austen

This version includes a detailed introductory annotation on how the book and the plot were created.

How well I recall the greatest literary pleasure of my life, its time and place ! A dreary winter’s day without, within a generous heat and glow from the flaming grate, and I reclining at my ease on the library lounge, ”Mansfield Park” in hand. Then succeed four solid hours of literary bliss, and an absorption so great that when I mechanically close the book at the last page it is only by the severest effort that I come back to the real world of pleasant indoors and bleak outdoors. I was amazed that I, a hardened fiction reader, … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Pride And Prejudice – Jane Austen

This version includes a detailed introductory annotation on how the book and the plot were created. To say nothing of the supreme excellence of the dialogue, there is scarcely a page but has its little gem of exact and polished phrasing; scarcely a chapter which is not neatly opened or artistically ended ; while the whole book abounds in sentences over which the writer, it is plain, must have lingered with patient and loving craftsmanship. . . . Criticism has found little to condemn in the details of this capital novel.- Austin Dobson Never was there a book written which has given more harmless pleasure to those who have come under its spell. As … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Sense & Sensibility – Jane Austen

This version includes a detailed introductory annotation on how the book and the plot were created. To contend, however, for a moment that the present volume is Miss Austen’s greatest, as it was her first published, novel, would be a mere exercise in paradox. There are, who swear by “Persuasion;” there are, who prefer “Emma” and ” Mansfield Park ;” there is a large contingent for “Pride and Prejudice;” and there is even a section which advocates the pre-eminence of ”Northanger Abbey.” But no one, as far as we can remember, has ever put “Sense and Sensibility” first, nor can I believe that its author did so herself. And yet it is she herself … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...