This classic study of the working life of a professional writer is one of the best - and also one of the strangest - autobiographies ever written. After a miserable childhood and misspent youth, Trollope turned his life around at the age of twenty-six. By 1860 the 'hobbledehoy' had become both a senior civil servant and a best-selling novelist. He worked for the Post Office for many years and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Best-known for the two series of novels grouped loosely around the clerical and political professions, the Barsetshire and Palliser series, in his Autobiography Trollope frankly describes his writing habits. His apparent preoccupation with contracts, deadlines, and earnings, and his account of the remorseless regularity with which he produced his daily quota of words, has divided opinion ever since. As the Introduction to this edition shows, Trollope selected and exaggerated to create his compelling narrative of initial failure and eventual success, and the inspiration that fuelled his creative imagination has too easily been overlooked. The only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, Trollope's record offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions. This edition also includes a selection of his critical writings to show how subtle and complex his approach to literature really was.

A tightly constructed and passionate study of enforced marriage in the world of Radical politics and social inequality. The novel records the lifelong attempt of Countess Lovel to justify her claim to her title, and her daughter Ann's legitimacy, after her husband announces that he already has a wife. Anna falles in love with the journeyman tailor and young Radical, Daniel Thwaite, but her mother wishes her to marry her cousin, heir to her father's title. Can Anna be allowed -- can she allow herself -- to change her mind? ...Trollope's ambivalence on the question is profound.

An inspirational book that is “a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy. Important for the way it illuminates life today and for the controversial advice it offers on how to live” (The New York Times). “What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” These are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. In their critically acclaimed book, All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly argue that our search for meaning was once fulfilled by our responsiveness to forces greater than ourselves, whether one God or many. These forces drew us in and imbued the ordinary moments of life with wonder and gratitude. Dreyfus and Kelly argue in this thought-provoking work that as we began to rely on the power of our own independent will we lost our skill for encountering the sacred. Through their original and transformative discussion of some of the greatest works of Western literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Melville’s Moby Dick, Dreyfus and Kelly reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with the things that gave our lives purpose, and show how, by reading our culture’s classics anew, we can once again be drawn into intense involvement with the wonder and beauty of the world. Well on its way to becoming a classic itself, this inspirational book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves.

This Combo Collection (Set of 4 Books) includes All-time Bestseller Books. This anthology contains : The Way We Live Now The Magician Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since Anthem

Trollope is usually seen as a faithful mirror of Victorian England, both in providing intimate details of contemporary life and in endorsing the moral attitudes and certainties of the period. His powers of empathy make his characters convincing and knowable in an astonishing way. Yet the Victorians restricted women to the house and severely limited their rights and opportunities. Trollope and Women examens the conundrum of how a great novelist could both accept the conventional values of the time and yet be able to see and sympathise with the impossible situations in which Victorian women often found themselves. Margaret Markwick shows the individuality of Trollope's women: even conventional Angel in the House heroines, like Mary Lowther in The Vicar of Bullhampton, can surprise us at times. More tellingly, he cannot help giving some of his less angelic characters, such as the vivacious Lizzie Eustace in the Eustace Diamonds, his unwilling admiration. His range extends beyond simple romance to the realistic handling of marriages, both happy and unhappy, and to the treatment of bigamy and scandal. He shows men and women getting on together as well as fighting bitterly. Nor are Trollope's novels as devoid of sex as has often been thought.

A new translation of an important text for Greek mythology used as a source book by classicists from antiquity to Robert Graves, The Library of Greek Mythology is a complete summary of early Greek myth, telling the story of each of the great families of heroic mythology, and the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason and Perseus to Heracles and Helen of Troy. Using the ancient system of detailed histories of the great families, it contains invaluable genealogical diagrams for maximum clarity.