Barnes Noble: 2826 books

“The following story does not involve the complication of a plot.” So states the preface, setting the tone for the humorous tale that follows. The Victorian novel tells of two generations of the Pringle family—Mamma, or Miss Emma Willing is a seamstress whose son Fine Billy goes to enjoy romance, hunting, and courting in high society.

Surtees' novel features his great comic creation, the cockney grocer and sportsman Jorrocks. A series of incidents in the life of Jorrocks, the novel is without plot—but includes chapters on hunts, rivals, heroes, cooking, and much more.

This anthology features some of the very best of his travel and adventure writing. Stevenson takes us along with him to California’s Napa Valley, where he gets to know the area’s enterprising—if not always scrupulous—early winemakers.

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most emblematic works of the French Enlightenment. Caustic, witty, and bold, the work was accused by French authorities of undermining the foundations of civil society,...

Francis Bacon once wrote, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. . . ." This is a book to be chewed and digested, and these essays make as satisfying a meal today as when the first edition was published in 1597. Indeed, the present-day reader is...

The author’s argument that the life of Christ should be treated like any conventional biography, and that the Bible should be subjected to critical historical scrutiny, have kept this scholarly work controversial ever since it was translated into English in 1863.

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. In The Dark Night of the Soul, Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross describes the purification, or "night," that the human soul must experience if it is to enter into loving union with God in this life. Its combination...

Since its appearance in the middle of the fourteenth century, The Love of Books: The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury has been a beloved guide to a life with books. Written by a bishop and royal counselor who amassed a vast personal library, the book is at once an ode to the joys of book collecting and...

This collection of essays on ancient Greek mythology, art, and culture was posthumously published in 1895.  The contents are "A Study of Dionysus: Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew," "The Bacchanals of Euripides," "The Myth of Demeter and Persephone," "Hippolytus Veiled: A Study From Euripides," "The Beginnings of Greek Sculpture," and "The Marbles of Aegina."

[T]he first true and correctly proportioned presentation of Platonism that has been given to the general reader."-Paul ShoreyThrough his idiosyncratic presentation of Plato, Pater offers us an account of a peculiarly modern frame of mind. He converts Plato's search for a primordial and transcendent unity...

In 1856, while Ruskin was in the midst of his monumental Modern Painters, the great British cultural theorist jumped at the chance to pen commentaries to accompany a dozen plates by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851).  Ruskin’s illuminating text, the only book he wrote on commission, makes for a unique work in the annals of art history.

This 1866 book is comprised of the lectures that Ruskin gave to various girls’ schools on the fundamentals of mineralogy. Rather than in a lecture format, however, the information is conveyed in the form of a delightful dialogue between Ruskin and his students. Interesting and engaging.

“Meinie” is an old English word for “many”—“in the sense of ‘a many’ persons attending one, as bridesmaids,” the author explains in a preface. This 1873 work looks at avian life through the eyes of both a poet and scientist, compiling lectures delivered at Oxford on the robin, the swallow, and the dabchick.

In the three volumes of The Stones of Venice (1851-1853) Ruskin championed the Gothic style of architecture. “Written for the Help of the Few Travellers Who Still Care for Her Monuments,” this 1877 volume, intended as a sequel, continues the influential critic’s love affair with one of the world’s most beautiful cities.