Artisan: 415 books

"Cet amour vague et sans espoir que j'avais conçu pour une actrice, cet amour qui me balançait chaque soir quand le rideau se levait, seulement pour me libérer quand le sommeil finissait par descendre..." La Aurelia semi-autobiographique, avec Nerval à la fois narrateur et protagoniste,...

“Mary! You’ll hear of me as a drunkard, and maybe as a thief, and maybe as a murderer. Remember! When all are speaking ill of me, you will have no right to blame me, for it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become...” Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell is a widely...

First published in 1875, Signa tells the tender story of an illegitimate orphan boy who is saved from death during a flood when he is one year old. His two uncles find him clinging to the breast of his dead mother, and, afraid that the villagers might accuse them of murder, they let the floodwaters...

“I’m Satan, newly come from hell…” On the first page of John Masefield’s The Everlasting Mercy, the poet rhymed ‘whored’ with ‘Lord’. The work caused a literary sensation. This was a strange beginning for a future poet laureate of Great Britain. Masefield’s...

“Have I been understood? - Dionysus versus the Crucified!" Ecce Homo was Nietzsche's last published work, one of the most remarkable and influential books of the nineteenth century. Written just a few weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche set out to compose his...

"You must never tell anyone..." The Little Match Man is Luigi Barzini Sr.'s classic children’s tale of Fiammiferino, a little man made of matches from the wood of an enchanted willow tree who miraculously comes to life, and attempts to provide wisdom to those who deserve it. LUIGI...

Highly controversial in its day because of its blunt look at the sexual values of Victorian society, Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is an exemplification of all the horrors of ill-fated destiny. Spirited and independent Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position...

“The sacred armies, and the godly knight, That the great sepulchre of Christ did free, I sing.” The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stories, some of which are complicated by differences in...

David Copperfield and Oliver Twist have become two of the most widely read and influential books ever written. They are two of Charles Dickens’ rare and genuine masterpieces: enchanting works of artistry deserving of the label in a thousand different ways.  They reveal the astounding...

In 1919, Thomas Mann said that Effi Briest was one of the "six most important novels ever written". In Bismarck's Germany, Fontane's brilliant story of an emotionally catastrophic relationship between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and a strict, workaholic official twice her...

      “It was impossible to tell why one respected this man, but after a time there grew a suspicion of unknown strength in this lone rider, strength like that of a machine which is stopped but only needs a spark of fire to plunge it into irresistible action.”...

      “How many times round the track is the race for the chariots of war?” Aristophanes' The Clouds is a timeless comedy, combining witty satire to delightful effect. Modern critics have acclaimed it as a perfectly realized fantasy caricaturing...

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” EMMA GOLDMAN (1869-1940) was notorious. She was a radical feminist. She was an anarchist. She advocated Atheism. Free Love. Birth control. Equality for Women. Often called “the most dangerous woman in America,” she stood...

MARY FORTUNE (1833-1910) was an Australian writer of detective and horror fiction. A prolific storyteller, she wrote over 500 stories most featuring Detective Mark Sinclair. She is best known for The Detective's Album, the longest-running early detective serial in the world. Narrated by detective...