William Dean Howells

Howells wrote several captivating travel books, including Italian Journeys, Venetian Life, and Certain Delightful English Towns. Here, he turns his observant and sometimes critical eye to London, presenting a series of sketches of the city as if they were mental movies.

William Dean Howells, the highly respected author of novels of social realism, occasionally turned his storytelling skills to romantic comedies. In 1888 he published April Hopes, a comedy of manners that follows the romantic complications between a young woman and her fiancé.

The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Master wit Mark Twain selected these twenty-seven stories himself by fifteen of his favorite nineteenth century authors. The order follows that which Twain placed them in in the original anthology, published in 1888. He indulged his comic fancy rather than making a textbook in which all themes or authors are placed together, saying that "This way, you will have to peruse the whole thing before discovering that one of your favorites is not included."...