Burlington Public Library

Victor Frankenstein leads an idyllic life in Switzerland with his family and friends until a thirst for knowledge sends him off in search of something that no human being has yet attained--the ability to create life. Victor's success soon proves that, through the work of his own hands, he and his family are destined to live a life of pain and suffering.

First published in 1925, "Carry On, Jeeves" is P. G. Wodehouse's third collection of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster stories. All of the stories included in this volume first appeared in periodicals like the "Saturday Evening Post" including some that are reworked versions of stories that appeared in the 1919 collection "My Man Jeeves". In this volume, readers will find some of Wodehouse's most famous tales of the hapless and wealthy Bertie, his equally...

Contains facsimile reproduction of the title-page of the Elizabethan club copy of the first separate edition of "All's well that ends well," London, 1734. The text is that of Craig's Oxford Shakespeare, with alterations.

Follow the thoughts of essayist, poet and American Transcendentalism founder Ralph Waldo Emerson as he discovered his own belief system in the anthology "Self-Reliance and Other Essays." In "Self-Reliance," Emerson explained that standing on one's own two feet against society was essential to forming a strong union with God. Once this essay was published, it received both wild praise and hurtful backlash from different factions of America. However,...

Written between 1845 and 1846 and first published in 1850, "Sonnets from the Portuguese" is a series of love poems written by the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her husband, the famous English poet and playwright, Robert Browning, which was critically acclaimed and instantly popular upon its publication and has remained so to this day. Referring to her olive-skinned complexion, Robert called his wife "his little Portuguese". It is from...

"Hank Morgan, cracked on the head by a crowbar in nineteenth-century Connecticut, wakes to find himself in the England of King Arthur. The tough minded Yankee, an embodiment of scientific enlightenment, faces a world whose idyllic surface only masks the dark forces of fear, injustice, and ignorance. This is the springboard which launches one of literature's most extraordinary excursions into fantasy. With the agility of Mark Twain's unique virtuosity,...

First published in 1926, "The Story of Philosophy" is noted historian Will Durant's survey of Western philosophy. Having been described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy", the book begins with detailed descriptions of the philosophical ideas of the ancient Greeks, i.e. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The book then proceeds in chronicling the different philosophical doctrines of French Enlightenment, German Idealism, Pessimism,...

"When A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843 it was an overnight success, and set a precedent that was to be followed by other Christmas books, including The Chimes (1844) and The Cricket (1845). Each book was published at the same time of year, in the same format, and extolled similar values about the virtues of love, charity and the family unit. But none would achieve the cult status of A Christmas Carol, a book so popular it has become part...

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...

The story of the Phantom of the Opera, a half-crazed musician hiding in the labyrinth of the famous Paris Opera House and creating a number of strange and mysterious events to further the career of a beautiful young singer, is today regarded as one of the most famous of all horror stories: widely mentioned in the same breath as Frankenstein and Dracula.