Recommended English-language Books lists

An allegorical novella descibing the rehabilitation of bitter, miserly businessman Ebenezer Scrooge. The reader is witness to his transformation as Scrooge is shown the error of his ways by the ghost of former partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future.

 

 

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Contains: The Admirable Crichton; Peter Pan; When Wendy Grew Up; What Every Woman Knows; Mary Rose

For some 20 years at the beginning of the century J M Barrie enjoyed enormous commercial success with a wide variety of plays, but he is best known for Peter Pan. It retains its popularity today, both in the original and in adaptations. As well as being the author of the greatest of all children's plays Barrie also wrote sophisticated social comedy and political satire, much of it now newly topical. The Admirable Crichton and What Every Woman Knows are shrewd and entertaining contributions to the politics of class and gender, while Mary Rose is one of the best ghost stories written for the stage. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner, of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are supplemented with a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation. Peter Hollindale is Senior Lecturer in English and Educational Studies at the University of York. He edited Peter Pan is Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy in World's Classics. This is the novel rather than the play of Peter Pan

One of Shaw's best works, Pygmalion is a perceptive comedy of wit and wisdom about the unique relationship between a spunky cockney flower-girl and her irascible speech professor. The flower girl Eliza Doolittle teaches the egotistical phonetics professor Henry Higgins that to be a lady means more than just learning to speak like one.

 

 

The Importance of Being Earnest is an important play by Oscar Wilde, and is a comedy of manners that discusses the serious of society. Set in late Victorian England, the story is about the main charachter, John Worthing's, ficticious brother Ernest, which is the main source of the comedy in this work.

 

Another case of mistaken identity from the king of the plot twist, Twelfth Night tells the tale of the beautiful young Viola who is separated from her twin brother, Sebastian, when their ship is lost at sea. Believing Sebastian to be dead Viol poses as a man and enters service with the Duke Orisino. When Olivia, the woman that Orisino loves, falls for his messenger "boy" Viola and she in turn falls for the Duke the stage is set for a classic Shakespearean love triangle.