Chichikov, an amusing and often confused schemer, buys deceased serfs' names from landholders' poll tax lists hoping to mortgage them for profit

A classic of the sea, telling of the pursuit of Moby Dick, the white whale who defied capture. October 18th, 2001, marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of the greatest novel in American literature. The Modern Library trade paperback edition exclusively features the timeless illustrations of Rockwell Kent, an Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick, commentary by Herman Melville and William T. Porter, contemporary reviews from John Bull and The...

The appointment of a new bishop and the ensuing conflicts and intrigue form the basis of this satire of the clergy.

A 19th-century woman pursues her romantic dreams through a series of lovers.

"Serving on the jury at a murder trail, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devasted when he sees the prisoner - Katyusha, a young woman he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and luxury to devote himself to rescuing Katyusha, even if it means following her into exile in Siberia. But can a man truly find redemption by saving another person? Tolstoy's most controversial...

Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life, abject poverty, incessant gambling, and the death of his firstborn child, Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, just two years after completing Crime and punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent...

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

When the Countess Ellen Olenska returns from Europe, fleeing her brutish husband, her rebellious independence and passionate awareness of life stir the educated sensitivity of Newland Archer, already engaged to be married to her cousin May Welland, "that terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything." As the consequent drama unfolds, Edith Wharton's sharp ironic wit...

Young Carrie Meeber leaves home for the first time and experiences work, love, and the pleasures and responsibilities of independence in late-nineteenth-century Chicago and New York.

Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair...