‘Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security’. Jane Austen’s sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability.
Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor’s character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival.
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions; Reprint edition (5 May 1992)
Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim – that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband.
With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.
Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes – grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity.
Oliver Twist features some of the author’s most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sikes, Nancy and ‘the Artful Dodger’.
For any reader wishing to delve into the works of the great Victorian literary colossus, Oliver Twist is, without doubt, an essential title.
This book Sermons of the Prophet Muhammad By Abu Nasr Muhammad Ibn Wadan (Blank cover) is a compilation of 40 of the finest sermons of the Prophet Muhammad, which in the words of the translator, Assad Nimer Busool, “carries the fragrance of the breath of the noble Prophet.”
This book The Life of the Prophet Muhammad comprises the introduction, written by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall to his translation of the Quran, which serves as a condensed biography of the Prophet Muhammad.