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39 records found. Displaying 1 - 24.
A Journal of the Plague Year
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
First published in 1722, this unabridged edition of Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year covers events in London, England, in 1665 as the bubonic plague spread throughout the city.… Read More →
Faust
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Faust, a once-godly scholar, is beginning to suspect that his efforts to learn the secrets of the universe will never be successful. Desperate, frustrated, and suicidal, he makes a deal with… Read More →
Leviathan
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
During the upheaval of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century, political philosopher Thomas Hobbes composed his masterwork, Leviathan. It was first published in 1651, between the… Read More →
On the Origin of Species
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
In 1831 British naturalist Charles Darwin joined a five-year expedition on the ship HMS Beagle. As the crew explored the southern hemisphere, Darwin took extensive notes on the organisms he… Read More →
The Communist Manifesto
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential political books in the world, despite being over one hundred years old. German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels authored the… Read More →
Middlemarch
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Middlemarch's society is a complex web, and those who do not learn to navigate the intricate threads soon find themselves hopelessly entangled. In 1830s England, social status is no longer… Read More →
Hard Times
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Mr. Gradgrind, views himself as the most practical man in Coketown. He has raised his children, Tom and Louisa, to be no-nonsense, unimaginative, and unsentimental. His friend—obnoxious,… Read More →
King Henry IV, The First Part
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
The year is 1402, and King Henry IV sits uneasily on the throne that he wrested from his predecessor, Richard II. King Henry disapproves of his son, Prince Henry, and his habit of hanging… Read More →
King Henry IV, The Second Part
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
In this second part of Henry IV, the Battle of Shrewsbury is over, the rebels temporarily beaten but not defeated. Prince Henry defeated "Hotspur" Percy in single combat, but other rebel… Read More →
Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
The wizard Merlin foretells that King Arthur's bastard son Mordred will one day bring about the ruin of Camelot. At Merlin's urging, Arthur tries to have the boy killed. Arthur then marries… Read More →
Persuasion
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Anne Elliot was once engaged to Captain Frederick Wentworth, but she broke off the engagement when a family friend persuaded her that it was an imprudent match. Several years later, Captain… Read More →
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Between 1771 and 1790, American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin sat down to record the important events of his life, from his childhood in Boston to his work as a printer in Philadelphia,… Read More →
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
The only survivor of a shipwreck during a slaving expedition, plantation-owner Robinson Crusoe is forced to fight for survival on a deserted Caribbean island. At first he curses his fate, but Read More →
The Life of King Henry V
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
In the wake of his father's death, Prince Henry has ascended to the throne as King Henry V. The rebels have finally been overthrown and the civil war has ended. Henry continues to distance… Read More →
The Souls of Black Folk
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
This collection of essays by American author W. E. B. Du Bois highlights the trials and tribulations facing African Americans in the early twentieth century, as they came to terms with the… Read More →
The Tragedy of King Lear
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
King Lear is growing old, and in an effort to preempt an inheritance war, he decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters while he is still living—dependent on which one loves… Read More →
War and Peace
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Part historical fiction, part philosophical treatise, and part romance novel, this genre-transcending epic follows the increasingly intertwined fates of the children of five prominent Russian Read More →
Leaves of Grass
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
In Leaves of Grass, American poet Walt Whitman assembled most of his poetic works. Included in this collection are some of Whitman's most famous poems, including "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Read More →
Les Misérables
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Jean Valjean has endured nineteen years in jail for stealing bread. Fantine is an unwed mother who resorted to prostitution in order to support her daughter. Marius is a young revolutionary… Read More →
Richard II
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
The year is 1398, and the people of England are in a state of unrest. Richard II is not a popular king, as he puts his own interests before the interests of his people. Now he's gone a step… Read More →
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
Legend has it that the town of Sleepy Hollow is haunted by the ghost of the terrifying Headless Horseman. Ichabod Crane, the town's superstitious new school teacher, is about to find out if… Read More →
The Republic
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
What is justice? And what is its relation to happiness? These two questions form the central themes of this philosophic text, written by the Greek philosopher Plato around 380 BCE. It is… Read More →
Beowulf
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
King Hrothgar of Denmark has a problem: though his land prospers, his great mead-hall is plagued nightly by a horrible beast, Grendel, that pillages and kills his men. Leaving his home in… Read More →
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757
From the Series First Avenue Classics ™
In the midst of the French and Indian War, young Alice and Cora Munro set out to visit their father, a colonel in the British army. It's a dangerous journey through the western New York… Read More →