"The author 'shipped out of Boston in 1834 on the "Pilgrim" and sailed around the Horn to California on a hide-trading expedition. The book is based on the journal he kept during the voyage. Horrified by the brutal captain's mistreatment of the sailors, and shocked by their lack of redress, Dana wrote with a burning indignation that did much to rouse the public to the mariners' plight.'" Benet's Reader's Ency of Am Lit.

Forced by her parents' ambitions among her wealthy D'Urberville cousins, Tess Durbeyfield attracts the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded, she finds work as a milkmaid, and her steadfast integrity is finally rewarded by the love of Angel Clare. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately...

"The wayward traveler -- Lemuel Gulliver -- ends up on a series of bizarrely populated islands. First he is a giant among little people, but then sees the situation reversed when he's surrounded by giants twelve times his size. Next he finds himself in the clouds, in a society of devoted but ultimately hapless mathematicians. Lastly, his journey brings him to an island where incredibly noble horses must deal with a race of uncouth, reviled ape-men:...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

"The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft -- but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's...

Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...

The Talisman is one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott. Published in 1825 as the second of his Tales of the Crusaders, it is set during the Third Crusade and centres on the relationship between Richard I of England and Saladin. (Source: Wikipedia)

A picaresque historical novel by Charles Reade, published in 1861 and set in late medieval Holland and Europe. The novel focuses on the story of a young scribe and illuminator named Gerard Eliason and his love for Margaret Brandt, daughter of a poor scholar. Interacting with them is a cast of vividly drawn characters and various historical personages. The overarching theme through all of their adventures is the conflict between man's obligations to...

First published serially in 1868, Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" is generally considered the first full length detective novel in the English language. The Moonstone, a large and valuable, yellow diamond, plundered from an Indian temple by Colonel Herncastle during the Siege of Seringapatam, is rumored to bring bad luck to its owner. The Colonel bequeathes the diamond to his niece Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. At her birthday party,...

A spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of her sisters.