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One of English literature’s most inspiring love stories.

Lucy Honeychurch is a young woman torn between the opposing values of gray old England and vibrant Italy in this unforgettable story of romance and rebellion. On a trip to Florence with her older cousin and chaperone, Lucy becomes enchanted by a freedom unlike any she has known at home. The excitement she feels when she is with George Emerson, a fellow boarder at the Pension Bertolini, is as exhilarating as it is confusing, and their intoxicating kiss in a field of violets threatens to turn her whole world upside down. Back at Windy Corner, her family’s Surrey estate, Lucy must finally decide if the power of passion is greater than the force of expectation.

Widely recognized as one of the finest novels of the twentieth century, A Room with a View is E. M. Forster’s most hopeful work and a truly timeless romance.

The epic fantasy novel that defined the genre, now in one volume.

As the youngest son of a king, Ralph of Upmeads is expected to forsake adventure for the safety of home. But the call of the Well at the World’s End is too powerful to resist, and Ralph disobeys his parents in order to seek out his true destiny in its magical waters. The journey is long and arduous as the well lies on the far side of a distant mountain range and the lands beyond Upmeads are full of treacherous characters. With the help of a beautiful maiden and an ancient hermit, Ralph completes his quest and raises the cup of immortality and wisdom to his lips. The question is, what will he do with his newfound powers?

Widely recognized as the forerunner to modern fantasy, The Well at the World’s End is a magnificent tale of romance and adventure and a major influence on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

The classic story collection by a great American master.

Sherwood Anderson’s unforgettable story cycle has long been considered one of the finest works of American literature. The central character is George Willard, a young
artist coming of age in a quiet town in the heart of the Midwest, but his story is no more extraordinary than those of friends and neighbors such as Kate Swift, a lonely schoolteacher whose beauty inspires lust and confusion; Wing Biddlebaum, a recluse whose restless hands are the source of both his new name and the terrible secret that led him to abandon the old one; and Doctor Reefy, who hides his personal suffering by pouring it onto scraps of paper.

With its uncompromising realism and unique narrative structure—twenty-two short tales linked by their setting and by a large cast of recurring characters—Winesburg, Ohio inspired an entire generation of writers, including William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and forever changed the depiction of small-town life in popular American culture.

Voltaire’s satire of eighteenth-century Europe, hailed as one of the most influential works in the Western canon.

Candide’s misfortunes begin when his uncle, a German baron, banishes him for kissing the baron’s daughter, Cunégonde. Forced to make his own way in the world, Candide goes from conscription in the Bulgar army, to Lisbon, after a harrowing voyage by sea, to the tutelage of the Enlightenment philosopher Pangloss. After an unexpected reunion with his beloved Cunégonde, Candide finds that further misadventure awaits, first through South America and then back in Europe, where he settles in the countryside.

Among the most widely renowned texts of western literature, Candide lives on two hundred fifty years since its first publication as a supreme example of political, philosophical, and religious satire whose wit and power of observation have influenced writers for generations.