Alma Books Poems from the Moor Бронте Эмили

Bathsheba Everdene is a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep farmer, a handsome soldier and an older, wealthy landowner. As the men vie for her affections, she struggles to retain her independence of spirit in the face of their declarations • Introducing readers to the fictional county of Wessex, Thomas Hardy's fourth work of fiction was one of his greatest triumphs, both commercially and critically. Its tale of passion, jealousy and unrequited love is now regarded as one of the finest novels of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest love stories of all time

Poems from the Second World War is a moving and powerful collection of poems written by soldiers, nurses, mothers, sweethearts and family and friends who experienced WWII from different standpoints • The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 to collect and display material relating to the 'Great War', which was still being fought. Today IWM is unique in its coverage of conflicts, especially those involving Britain and the Commonwealth, from the First World War to the present. They seek to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and wartime experience

In 1807, Charles Lamb and his sister Mary wrote a collection of stories retelling twenty of Shakespeare's plays for children. While making sure that the pieces were accessible for a younger audience, they took care to stay faithful to the language and vocabulary of the Bard as much as possible • Ranging from the high drama of Romeo and Juliet to the delightful fancy of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the humour of As You Like it, this collection of vivid adaptations - here presented in a lavish new edition - has been a much loved children's classic for more than two hundred years, offering budding readers an accessible route to Shakespeare's works

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy’s earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner’s Morning

The influence of Antonin Artaud on the contemporary theatre has only become evident since the early Sixties, although writers and directors have been directly or indirectly influenced by his thinking and innovations for many years. Today his pre-eminence as a founder of modern theatrical style is rivalled only by Brecht, with whom he has much in common • The man and his work, as Martin Esslin persuasively argues in this perceptive study, are inseparable and must be considered together. Genius or madman, everything about Artaud is fascinating – his extraordinary life, his passions, his wide-ranging interests, the brilliance and originality that he brought to his plays, his productions and his other writings. Artaud died in 1948 at the age of fifty-two, but accomplished a revolution in his short life that is still bearing fruit today

While Charles Dickens is best known and celebrated for his prolific journalistic output and novelistic creations, he also devoted some of his creative energies to verse • At turns sentimental, melancholy, playful, humorous and satirical, and ranging considerably in tone and format - from songs to narrative prologues for novels and squibs for newspapers - the poems in this collection highlight Dickens's gift for language and his unfailing power to touch

In the summer of 1844, taking a break from novel-writing, the thirty-two-year-old Charles Dickens embarked on a journey to Italy with his wife, his five children and his young sister-in-law. Struck by the scenery and the rapid diorama of monuments and novelties around him, the celebrated author of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol captured his experiences and impressions in vivid detail. The result is a travelogue like no other, written by one of the finest writers of all time • Abounding in colour and humour, and interspersed with unforgettable set pieces, such as an eyewitness account of the beheading of a robber in Rome and a hilarious description of a tour guide’s ruinous tumble down the slope of Mount Vesuvius, Pictures from Italy is further proof of Charles Dickens’s genius and versatility

After an accident, Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of impoverished peasants, decides to call on the aristocratic d’Urbervilles, as she believes that she is also descended from their ancient Norman lineage and that they can rescue her family from indigence. Unfortunately she is taken under the wing of the immoral libertine scion Alec d’Urberville, who seduces and scorns her. While she attempts to rebuild her life, she falls in love with the virtuous farmer Angel Clare and must find a way to defeat the demons of her past • Controversial when it was first published for challenging Victorian morals, Tess of the d’Urbervilles has become Thomas Hardy’s most popular novel, catching the imaginations of generations of readers with its high drama, endearing heroine and powerful evocations of the southern English countryside

Published in 1880, one year before Verga’s influential novel The Malavoglias, Life in the Country first marked his stylistic shift towards the verismo school of Italian realism. The collection’s centrepiece, ‘Rustic Honour’ (‘Cavalleria rusticana’) – which was famously adapted into a play by the author before becoming an opera by Mascagni – tells the tale of Turiddu, a poor young man who returns from military service and finds himself embroiled in adultery and a feud with a rival • Also including the well-known stories ‘She-Wolf’ and ‘Foxfur’, Life in the Country captures, in an objective, non-judgemental prose, the difficult conditions and personal struggles of the peasant class in his native Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century • Contains: ‘A Reverie’, ‘Jeli the Herdboy’, ‘Nasty Foxfur’, ‘Rustic Honour’, ‘She-Wolf’, ‘Bindweed’s Lover’, ‘The War of the Saints’ and ‘Crackpot’

When Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancee has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double • A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald’s own dalliance with a French pilot, ‘Image on the Heart’ is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction • Contains: ‘Zone of Accident’, ‘Fate in Her Hands’, ‘Image on the Heart’, ‘Too Cute for Words’, ‘Inside the House’, ‘Three Acts of Music’, ‘An Author’s Mother’, ‘“Trouble”’, ‘The Guest in Room Nineteen’, ‘In the Holidays’, ‘The End of Hate’, ‘On an Ocean Wave’, ‘The Woman from Twenty-One’ and ‘Discard (Director’s Special)’

A collection of early short stories which helped make Fitzgerald’s name, Tales of the Jazz Age combines period pieces – the most notable of which is the novella-length ‘May Day’ – with more fanciful creations, such as the fantastical ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, recently made into a Hollywood film. Also containing the now classic story ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, as well as lesser-known sketches and tales, this diverse selection, compiled by Fitzgerald himself from material published in newspapers and magazines, showcases both the variety of his writing and early examples of the themes and characters which would find their way into his later novels

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people of the Earth must come to terms with the prospect of the end of human civilization and the beginning of Martian rule. Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels, The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published