Swiss Family Robinson

Gaudy night

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays.

Novels (Emma / Mansfield Park / Northanger Abbey / Persuasion / Pride and Prejudice / Sense and Sensibility)

Jane Austen

This collection from Everyman's Library provides the complete works of one of the most popular authors in English literature. Each of Jane Austen's masterpieces is enchantingly funny, touchingly and wittily told, and filled with a dazzling gallery of characters. These beautiful, clothbound classics are essentials for any home library. Titles included: Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abby, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Sandition and Other Stories, Sense and Sensibility

Undine, eine Erzählung

Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich Heinrich Kar La Motte-Fouqué

The "beautiful" classic fairytale of the ill-fated love between a mermaid and a knight (George MacDonald). This universally loved fairytale, written by German novelist and playwright Friedrich La Motte-Fouqué, has been adapted into operas, songs, ballets, and films, since its original publication in the early 1800s. Undine is the exquisite tale of the all-too-human emotions that drive, and ultimately threaten, magical love. When a knight, Sir Huldbrand of Ringstetten, comes upon a humble fisherman's cottage, he is immediately charmed by the old couple's mischievous adopted daughter Undine, whose true parentage is unknown. Trapped in the cottage by a flood, the knight and the fair maiden are blissfully happy together, despite Undine's capriciousness, and are eventually married. But unknown to Huldbrand, Undine is a water spirit, and their union has given her a sought-after prize: a soul. And now possessed with that most human of gifts, she will have to endure the many joys and sufferings that come along with it—for better or worse . . .

Man and Wife

Wilkie Collins, Norman Page, Harry A. Webber

Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel. It is the second of his novels (after No Name) in which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. Collins increasingly used his novels to explore social abuses, which according to critics] tends to detract from their qualities as fiction. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law. The novel has a complex plot, common in Collins' work.[3] In a Prologue, a selfish and ambitious man casts off his wife in order to marry a wealthier and better-connected woman, by taking advantage of a loophole in the marriage laws of Ireland.The initial action takes place in the widowed Lady Lundie's house in Scotland. Geoffrey Delamayn has promised marriage to his lover Anne Silvester (governess to Lady Lundie's stepdaughter Blanche), who has incurred the enmity of her employer. The spendthrift Geoffrey is about to be disinherited and wishes to escape from his promise and marry a wealthy wife. Nevertheless, he is obliged to arrange a rendezvous with Anne, in the character of his wife, at an inn, and documents this in an exchange of notes with her. Subsequently, urgent matters force him to send his friend Arnold Brinkworth, Blanche's fiancé, to Anne in his place. To gain access to her, Arnold must ask for "his wife". Although nothing improper passes between them, they appear to the landlady and to Bishopriggs, a waiter, to be man and wife.Thus, both Geoffrey and Arnold might be deemed to be married to Anne, depending on the weight put on the spoken and written evidence. Most of the novel concerns Anne's, Geoffrey's and Arnold's attempts to clarify their marital status: