When it appeared in 1887, H. Rider Haggard's She caused a sensation and became one of the best-selling novels of the nineteenth century. The idea of a powerful woman endowed with immortal beauty and penetrating intellect ruling a savage people among the ruins of a vanished civilization in the heart of Africa captivated Victorian readers. Freud recommended the book to his patients. Jung equated its imaginative power with Dante's Inferno and Wagner's Ring. Continuing to fascinate later twentieth-century readers, the book has never been out of print and has won new audiences through numerous film versions. This is the first annotated edition of She. Locating the novel within the context of late-Victorian fiction and British imperialism, Norman Etherington provides biographical information regarding Haggard and elucidates references in the text of this archaeological romance.

Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel, in a lushly illustrated hardcover edition with illuminating commentary from a brilliant young Oxford scholar and critic. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” So begins Virginia Woolf’s much-beloved fourth novel. First published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway has long been viewed not only as Woolf’s masterpiece, but as a pivotal work of literary modernism and one of the most significant and influential novels of the twentieth century. In this visually powerful annotated edition, acclaimed Oxford don and literary critic Merve Emre gives us an authoritative version of this landmark novel, supporting it with generous commentary that reveals Woolf’s aesthetic and political ambitions—in Mrs. Dalloway and beyond—as never before. Mrs. Dalloway famously takes place over the course of a single day in late June, its plot centering on the upper-class Londoner Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing to throw a party that evening for the nation’s elite. But the novel is complicated by Woolf’s satire of the English social system, and by her groundbreaking representation of consciousness. The events of the novel flow through the minds and thoughts of Clarissa and her former lover Peter Walsh and others in their circle, but also through shopkeepers and servants, among others. Together Woolf’s characters—each a jumble of memories and perceptions—create a broad portrait of a city and society transformed by the Great War in ways subtle but profound ways. No figure has been more directly shaped by the conflict than the disturbed veteran Septimus Smith, who is plagued by hallucinations of a friend who died in battle, and who becomes the unexpected second hinge of the novel, alongside Clarissa, even though—in one of Woolf’s many radical decisions—the two never meet. Emre’s extensive introduction and annotations follow the evolution of Clarissa Dalloway—based on an apparently conventional but actually quite complex acquaintance of Woolf’s—and Septimus Smith from earlier short stories and drafts of Mrs. Dalloway to their emergence into the distinctive forms devoted readers of the novel know so well. For Clarissa, Septimus, and her other creations, Woolf relied on the skill of “character reading,” her technique for bridging the gap between life and fiction, reality and representation. As Emre writes, Woolf’s “approach to representing character involved burrowing deep into the processes of consciousness, and, so submerged, illuminating the infinite variety of sensation and perception concealed therein. From these depths, she extracted an unlimited capacity for life.” It is in Woolf’s characters, fundamentally unknowable but fundamentally alive, that the enduring achievement of her art is most apparent. For decades, Woolf’s rapturous style and vision of individual consciousness have challenged and inspired readers, novelists, and scholars alike. The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, featuring 150 illustrations, draws on decades of Woolf scholarship as well as countless primary sources, including Woolf’s private diaries and notes on writing. The result is not only a transporting edition of Mrs. Dalloway, but an essential volume for Woolf devotees and an incomparable gift to all lovers of literature.

The first fully annotated edition of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 classic The Big Sleep features hundreds of illuminating notes and images alongside the full text of the novel and is an essential addition to any crime fiction fan’s library. A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep helped to define a genre. Today it remains one of the most celebrated and stylish novels of the twentieth century. This comprehensive, annotated edition offers a fascinating look behind the scenes of the novel, bringing the gritty and seductive world of Chandler's iconic private eye Philip Marlowe to life. The Annotated Big Sleep solidifies the novel’s position as one of the great works of American fiction and will surprise and enthrall Chandler’s biggest fans. Including: -Personal letters and source texts -The historical context of Chandler’s Los Angeles, including maps and images -Film stills and art from the early pulps -An analysis of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in the novel

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

When a party commemorating the anniversary of a gruesome killing at the infamous Boy Meets Girl Inn ends in a bloodbath, Noelle Dixon’s diary becomes the key piece of evidence. But the cryptic entries suggest there’s more to the bizarre case than can be rationally explained.

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Emma that makes her beloved tale of an endearingly inept matchmaker an even more satisfying read. Here is the complete text of the novel with more than 2,200 annotations on facing pages, including: - Explanations of historical context - Citations from Austen’s life, letters, and other writings - Definitions and clarifications - Literary comments and analysis - Maps of places in the novel - An introduction, bibliography, and detailed chronology of events - Nearly 200 informative illustrations Filled with fascinating information about everything from the social status of spinsters and illegitimate children to the shopping habits of fashionable ladies to English attitudes toward gypsies, David M. Shapard’s Annotated Emma brings Austen’s world into richer focus.

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that makes the beloved novel an even more satisfying and fulfilling read. Here is the complete text of Persuasion with hundreds of annotations on facing pages, including: ● Explanations of historical context ● Citations from Austen’s life, letters, and other writings ● Definitions and clarifications ● Literary comments and analysis ● Plentiful maps and illustrations ● An introduction, a bibliography, and a detailed chronology of events Packed with all kinds of illuminating information—from what Bath and Lyme looked like at the time to how “bathing machines” at seaside resorts were used to how Wentworth could have made a fortune from the Napoleonic Wars—David M. Shapard’s delightfully entertaining edition brings Austen’s novel of second chances vividly to life.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of Louisa May Alcott illuminates the world of Little Women and its author. Since its publication in 1868–69, Little Women, perhaps America’s most beloved children’s classic, has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. It has been translated into more than fifty languages and inspired six films, four television shows, a Broadway musical, an opera, and a web series. This lavish, four-color edition features over 220 curated illustrations, including stills from the films, stunning art by Norman Rockwell, and iconic illustrations by children’s-book illustrators Alice Barber Stevens, Frank T. Merrill, and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Renowned Alcott scholar John Matteson brings his expertise to the book, to the March family it creates, and to the Alcott family who inspired it all. Through numerous photographs taken in the Alcott family home expressly for this edition—elder daughter Anna’s wedding dress, the Alcott sisters’ theater costumes, sister May’s art, and Abba Alcott’s recipe book—readers discover the extraordinary links between the real and the fictional family. Matteson’s annotations evoke the once-used objects and culture of a distant but still-relevant time, from the horse-drawn carriages to the art Alcott carefully placed in her story to references to persons little known today. His brilliant introductory essays examine Little Women’s pivotal place in children’s literature and tell the story of Alcott herself—a tale every bit as captivating as her fiction.

A most unlikely life. “Marc Estrin” discovers that another writer’s novel — The Nose — not only has spawned a bizarre cult among the nation’s youth, but is based on the extraordinary life of a real person—an outcast named Alexei Pigov. “Estrin” searches Alexei out and asks him to provide annotations to The Nose. Alexei says that—although the events of the novel might, for the most part, be real—the purported reasons for them are all damnable lies. On the left-hand page of The Annotated Nose we read The Nose itself, and take in its beautifully unsettling illustrations. On the right-hand page we follow Alexei’s complaints – always surprising and often far-reaching. The layers in Estrin’s remarkable comic book are as multiple, eclectic, and outrageous as the sequence of masks Alexei wears to hide his face from the world over the caroming trajectory of his most unlikely life. The Annotated Nose is at once Marc Estrin’s most playful and his most ambitious work to date. A signed and numbered limited edition of 75 copies is also available.