Classics. Welcome to America at the turn of the twentieth century, where the rhythms of ragtime set the beat. Harry Houdini astonishes audiences with magical feats of escape, the mighty J. P. Morgan dominates the financial world and Henry Ford manufactures cars by making men into machines. Emma Goldman preaches free love and feminism, while ex-chorus girl Evelyn Nesbitt inspires a mad millionaire to murder the architect Stanford White. In this stunningly original chronicle of an age, such real-life characters intermingle with three remarkable families, one black, one Jewish, and one prosperous WASP, to create a dazzling literary mosaic that brings to life an era of dire poverty, fabulous wealth, and incredible change in short, the era of ragtime.

"If readers are to come to Shakespeare and to Chekhov, to Henry James and to Jane Austen, then they are best prepared if they have read Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling," writes Harold Bloom in his introduction to this enchanting and much-needed anthology of exceptional stories and poems selected to inspire a lifelong love of reading. As television, video games, and the Internet threaten to distract young people from the solitary pleasures of reading, Bloom presents a volume that will amuse, challenge, and beguile readers with its myriad voices and subjects. Here are old favorites by beloved writers of children's literature, as well as exciting rediscoveries and wonderful works penned by writers better known for their adult classics, such as Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, and Walt Whitman. Encompassing the natural world and the supernatural; childhood, romance, and death; pets, wild animals, and goblins; mystery, adventure, and humor; the selections reflect the passion and erudition of our most revered literary critic. Arranged by season, Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages is a must-have anthology, sure to delight readers young and old for years to come.

''A sonnet is a moment's monument, '' said Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a sonnet about sonnets. The sonnets in this collection - whether they capture moments of perception, recognition, despair or celebration - reveal how great an amount of feeling, insight and experience can be concentrated into a mere fourteen lines. Here are classics such as Milton's ''On His Blindness'', Yeats's ''Leda and the Swan'' and Frost's ''The Oven Bird'', juxtaposed with the mischievous wit of Rupert Brooke's ''Sonnet Reversed'', the lyric defiance of Mona Van Duyn's ''Caring for Surfaces'' and the comic poignancy of Philip Larkin's ''To Failure''. From the lovelorn laments of Dante and Petrarch to the artful heights of Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare, from the masterpieces of Wordsworth and Keats to the innovations of Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens and James Merrill, the sonnet has proved both versatile and enduring. This delightful anthology displays the incredible range and power of the verse form that has inspired poets across the centuries.

The Iliad, or: The Poem of Force was written in the summer and fall of 1940, after the fall of France. It may thus be read as an indirect commentary on that tragic event, which signalized the triumph of the most extreme modern expression of force. It was originally published, under the acrostical pseudonym “Emile Novis,” in the December 1940 and January 1941 issues of the Marseilles literary monthly, Cahiers du Sud. The present translation is by Mary McCarthy. The quotations from Homer were first translated from the French manuscript by Miss McCarthy and then checked and revised by Dwight Macdonald in accordance with the Greek text. “The Iliad” appeared in the November 1945 issue of Politics and was later issued in pamphlet form. It is the only one of Weil’s writings on ancient Greek literature which is commonly used in university courses on the Classics. Pendle Hill is grateful to Dwight Macdonald for his permission to reprint the Politics pamphlet edition of Simone Weil’s essay.

The Book of Dede Korkut is a collection of twelve stories set in the heroic age of the Oghuz Turks, a nomadic tribe who had journeyed westwards through Central Asia from the ninth century onwards. The stories are peopled by characters as bizarre as they are unforgettable: Crazy Karchar, whose unpredictability requires an army of fleas to manage it; Kazan, who cheerfully pretends to necrophilia in order to escape from prison; the monster Goggle-eye; and the heroine Chichek, who shoots, races on horseback and wrestles her lover. Geoffrey Lewis's classic translation retains the odd and oddly appealing style of the stories, with their mixture of the colloquial, the poetic and the dignified, and magnificently conveys the way in which they bring to life a wild society and its inhabitants. This edition also includes an introduction, a map and explanatory notes.

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

First published in 1933, Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein contains three prose pieces written in the stream-of-consciousness style that Stein was famous for. A modernist classic not to be missed by fans and collectors of Stein's seminal work. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American poet, novelist, art collector, and playwright who famously hosted a Paris salon frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. Before she was a patron to "The Lost Generation" artists, Stein was an esteemed author who influenced many 20th-century writers with her innovative and experimental prose. Other notable works by this author include: Three Lives (1909), White Wines (1913), and An Exercise in Analysis (1917). Featuring an introduction by Sherwood Anderson, this volume is an essential read for fans of Gertrude Stein's work and those with an interest in Jazz Age literature.

Provides the first broad introduction to feminist work in classical studies. Including lesbian theory, black feminist theory, American and French feminist theory, classics will never be the same again.

" ... not a large book, but that makes all the more admirable the way the author succeeds in doing justice to so many of the most important subjects in folkloristics. This book is a key work, and should be made compulsory reading in every university in which folkloristics is studied." --Jon Hnefill Aoalsteinsson, Asian Folklore Studies "With this book Alan Dundes has once again demonstrated what a brilliant essayist he is: learned, thought-provoking and entertaining. He has much inspiration to give to anthropologists, and he is quite indispensable to folklore scholarship." --Bengt af Klintberg, Ethnos "If there were still a question whether Alan Dundes is America's leading folklorist, then the essays in this volume ... should dispel it once and for all. An internationally acclaimed scholar is at work here, for whom foUclore really matters in all of its varied aspects." --Wolfgang Mieder, University of Vennont "A maverick folklorist, Alan Dundes challenges his colleagues and readers with erudition and candor. His essays are insightful and entertaining, exploring folklore with an amazing breadth. " --Dan Ben-Amos, University of Pennsylvania "As always, a reader is dazzled by the range of Dundes erudition. He doesn't just cite things, he digests them."-Gary Alan Fine, University of Minnesota "For over two decades, he has been a major voice urging folklorists (and historians and literary critics, for that manner) to move beyond mere description to true interpretation of cultural texts in their contexts. These essays continue that message, and they do so with fresh power." --Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis "These recent essays from the pen of a passionate folklorist include two classics on the history of the field. The Fabrication of 'Fakelore' and The Anthropologist and the Comparative Method in Folklore' are required reading for anyone seriously interested in folklore as a discipline." --Barbara Kirshenblan-Gimblett, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

The first fifteen pages of this learned study are the ones of chief interest to students of the classics. In the Memoirs of the Four Worthies or Lords of the Liang Dynasty , written by Chang Yüe (667-730 A.D.), a story is told about an island in the Western Sea (Mediterranean) where there is an inaccessible ravine in which precious stones lie. The inhabitants throw flesh into this ravine. Birds pick up the flesh in their beaks and as they fly, they drop the precious stones. The men of the country are clever workers of gems, which are called Fu-lin after the name of the country. Fu-lin is the Chinese name for some part of the Roman Empire, probably Syria. A legend similar in all its essential features is found in Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus in the fourth century. Dr. Laufer points out the close likeness of this legend to the story of the Arabians and their curious method of obtaining cinnamon told by Herodotus iii. 111, and to a somewhat similar tale in Pliny N.H. xxxviii. 33, but prudently refrains from attempting to link them closely. The source of the legend he finds in the Hellenistic Orient. To one already impressed with the fact that Hellenistic artistic motives influenced early Chinese and even Japanese art in a marked degree, the thesis is in itself reasonable, and Dr. Laufer's proofs are convincing. There are two further points of interest in this study for the classicist and archaeologist. The author is convinced (pp. 42-46) that the adamas of the ancients was actually the diamond, but concludes that ancient gem-workers did not understand the process of cutting and polishing diamonds to add to their luster (pp. 46-50). The study contains other information which will be attractive chiefly to Sinologists and to those interested in the history of the diamond. In this pamphlet Dr. Laufer has presented another useful link of the broken chain of evidence which connects Hellenistic-Roman civilization with the Far East. Curiously enough the classical archaeologist and the classicist seem to regard the evidence upon this new sphere of Greek influence either with suspicion or with apathy. - Classical Philology [1918]