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Herman Melville

Narrated by the sailor Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, as he seeks vengeance against Moby-Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. More than an epic sea-story, the detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and the process of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God.

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Signature Editions

Moby-Dick

Kate Chopin

Set in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the end of the nineteenth century, The Awakening centers on Edna Pontellier, an apparently happy twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother of two. But when a summer romance reignites Edna’s appetite for life, she discovers that her conventional family, friends, and surroundings do not make her happy. Boldly—and to the astonishment of her husband and the consternation of New Orleans society—Edna begins to discover the joys of solitude, creative expression, and erotic freedom. A scandal and a shock to readers when it was first published in 1899, The Awakening remains a daring portrayal of a woman rejecting domesticity in favor of her own happiness and self-expression.
 

 This edition includes some of Chopin’s most studied short stories, including “Desiree’s Baby,” “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” and “The Story of an Hour.”

The Awakening and Other Stories

D. H. Lawrence

Inspired by the long-standing affair between D. H. Lawrence’s German wife and an Italian peasant, Lady Chatterley’s Lover follows the intense passions of Constance Chatterley. Trapped in an unhappy marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent, Constance enters into a liaison with the gamekeeper Mellors.

 Originally banned in multiple countries, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is an unapologetic portrayal of pleasure recognized as Lawrence’s “best novel” (Anais Nin) and “one of the most important works of fiction of the century” (Archibald MacLeish).

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Willa Cather

When the Bergson family leave their home in Sweden to travel to the United States in search of a better life, they, like many immigrants, are awed by the beautiful harshness of their new life in Nebraska. When their father, John Bergson, grows sick and dies, he leaves the farm in the hands of his eldest daughter Alexandra Bergson. Resourceful and determined, Alexandra devotes her life to her family's farm, determined to prosper even as her neighbors are overwhelmed by the unremitting demands of pioneer life. But when she falls in love with her childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, Alexandra must choose between her duty to the land, and to her heart.

 A spirited celebration of the immigrants who have shaped the United States, O Pioneers! is a masterpiece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

O Pioneers!

Edith Wharton

The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about love and the constraints of privilege, and the basis for Martin Scorsese's outstanding, award-winning 1993 adaptation, now freshly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Classics Line. 

The Age of Innocence begins with Newland Archer—gentleman-lawyer and scion of one of New York's most privileged families—anticipating his marriage to the gentle, lovely, and equally privileged May Welland. But when Newland meets May's cousin, the beautiful and scandal-ridden Countess Ellen Olenska, he begins to doubt his choice of bride and his place within the shallow, gilded cage of society life. If the Countess Olenska can dare to leave her disastrous marriage, can defy the unspoken, iron-clad rules that have shaped her life—what freedoms are possible for him? And what does true innocence look like in a world strangled by hollow custom, trivial squabbles, and the appearance of goodness? The Age of Innocence is one of Edith Wharton's greatest novels and a true classic that continues to inspire and transfix readers today.

The Age of Innocence

Gaston Leroux

The young and beautiful Christine Daae has been raised in the Paris Opera House since her father died years ago. It is well-known that the opera house is haunted, the mysterious ghost surfacing as a disembodied voice, or a gentleman in a mask. But for Christine, the phantom is her angel of music, teaching her to sing, and nurturing her innate talent until she finally takes the stage the night the lead soprano falls ill. Christine's performance is an incredible success, so much so that she catches the attention of her childhood love, Viscount Raoul. Driven mad with jealousy, the phantom becomes increasingly violent, and Viscount Raoul and Christine realize that their love may have grave and deadly consequences.

The Phantom of the Opera

Henry James

When a young governess arrives at a remote and dreary country estate to take care of two charming little children, she is initially thrilled. However, the longer she stays, the more she realizes that things aren't quite right. The children, while beautiful, are strangely distant, and she feels as if she is being constantly watched. When she witnesses the children speaking with the ghostly apparitions of a man and woman the housekeeper has claimed to have died long ago, she realizes that the estate is not only haunted, but that the darkness plaguing them has only one goal: to take the children. Determined to protect them, the governess must figure out just how far she's willing to go, and whether saving the children is worth her life.

 While best-known for The Turn of the Screw, Henry James wrote many ghost stories during his illustrious career. “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes” and “The Ghostly Rental” are two of those short stories included in this edition.

The Turn of the Screw

James Joyce

James Joyce’s luminous short story collection of ordinary Dubliners’ lives, featuring “one of the greatest short stories ever written” (T. S. Eliot), now newly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Classics line. 

 James Joyce’s collection of fifteen short stories portrays the lives of Dublin’s middle-class during the turn of the twentieth century. Structured from childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death, each story shows people paralyzed by the mundaneness of everyday life. At times humorous and others haunting, Joyce explores the loneliness of the human condition, culminating with “The Dead,” called “one of the greatest short stories ever written” (T. S. Eliot), where a man experiences an epiphany that changes him forever.

Dubliners

Jonathan Swift

Following ship surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver, Jonathan Swift's satire, Gulliver's Travels, is a humorous critique of the darker aspects of human nature. During his voyage, Gulliver visits four islands, each more bizarre and fantastical that the last. From tiny people to giants, from majestic horses to scarily humanoid "Yahoos," each of the island inhabitants create an experience that no one is likely to forget.

Gulliver's Travels

James Joyce’s deeply personal and “most memorable novel” (H. G. Wells) detailing the spiritual and artistic awakening of Stephen Dedalus, now freshly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Classics line. 

 James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical first novel explores the author’s own love-hate relationship with Ireland through Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s literary alter ego. Dedalus yearns to be an artist, but must first overcome the aspects of Irish society, like school and the church, that he feels restrains his creativity and stifles his soul. Joyce’s use of experimental literary techniques, including stream of consciousness, is on full display in his first novel, which he further develops in his later works, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s historical satire about two identical boys, one a poor beggar of the London slums and the other the heir to the royal throne, who trade places to experience a life they never imagined, newly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Classics line. 

 Set in sixteenth-century England, The Prince and the Pauper is Mark Twain’s timeless tale of identical strangers, the penniless Tom Canty living in the London slums and the royal Prince Edward, who switch places and experience what the other’s life has to offer. Subtitled “A Tale for Young People of All Ages,” Twain blends action and comedy with a witty satire of social hierarchy that has resonated with readers for generations.

The Prince and the Pauper

E.M. Forster

Miss Lucy Honeychurch is on a tour of Italy with her cousin and chaperone Miss Charlotte Bartlett when she encounters the young George Emerson, on a similar tour with his father. George finds himself drawn to the pretty, spirited Lucy, while Lucy is intrigued by George's rejection of "proper" behavior. Despite her attraction to George, Lucy later becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, a London 'sophisticate' whose upper class status makes him an excellent match; but when she discovers that George Emerson and his father have rented a villa close to her family home, Lucy must choose between convention and genuine emotion.

 A comedy of manners, A Room with a View is the perfect blend of gentle satire and a predictable, sweet love story—perfect for fans of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde.

A Room with a View

James Fenimore Cooper

Written in 1826, but set in 1757, The Last of the Mohicans portrays ordinary men and women caught in the crossfires of the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. Featuring double agents, dastardly villains, kidnappings, as well as stunning descriptions of the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and the Lake George area, this novel is considered Cooper's greatest work. Indeed, its portrayals of the rugged yet resourceful frontiersman, as well as the wise, stoic Native American were genre-defining—as was Cooper's sympathy for the plight of the First American cultures.

 A historical romance that influenced North American literature for decades, The Last of the Mohicans remains a keystone text to this day.

The Last of the Mohicans

Jane Austen

Sent to live with her rich cousins, the Bertrams, at the age of ten, Fanny Price is acutely aware of her humble rank. As she grows up, she falls in love with her cousin, Edmund Bertram, her only ally and friend. But when the Crawfords move into the neighborhood, bringing the glamour of London, and a reckless taste for flirtation, the Bertram family is thrown into scandal. Together, Fanny and Edmund must overcome the chaos around them in to come to terms with the love they have for each other.

Mansfield Park

When seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland is invited to Northanger Abbey, the grand and forbidding ancestral seat of her suitor, Henry Tilney, she allows the Gothic novels she’s obsessed with to fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Determined to see herself as the heroine of a dark and thrilling romance, Catherine becomes embroiled in a real drama of misapprehension, mistreatment, and mortification, until common sense—and a clarification of her financial status—puts all to right.

Northanger Abbey

Henry David Thoreau

In Walden, Thoreau explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a lifestyle—and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being.
 
 These simple but profound musings—as well as “Civil Disobedience,” his protest against the government’s interference with civil liberty—have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and his love of nature. More than a century and a half later, his message is more timely than ever.

Walden and Civil Disobedience

Virginia Woolf

The fictional portrait of Woolf’s close friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, the hero Orlando is a young nobleman in Elizabethan England, a dreamy and romantic youth who wakes up one day to find himself transformed, astonishingly, into a woman. Over the span of three centuries, Orlando will fall in love many times and rub shoulders with the great artists and writers—and observe how differently history treats men than women.
 

 Bold and tender, Orlando is a truly multi-faceted work that has been hailed as a satire of biography, a queer classic, and a loving portrait of an irrepressible spirit.

Orlando: A Biography

Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six thousand dollars in the bank, Huck Finn faces a new challenge: his father, Pap, who wants Huck's fortune and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Escaping from Pap, Huck meets Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, who has run away after learning that Miss Watson may sell him. Jim plans to head north, find work, and buy his wife and children out of slavery. Huck joins him on a salvaged raft, beginning a raucous journey that transforms into a deep reckoning with human frailty and the hypocrisy of the antebellum South.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Handsome, clever, and rich, Emma Woodhouse delights in interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée, Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected.

Emma

In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.

Signature Editions - The book series

Signature Editions - The book series

Signature Editions books in order

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