Literary classics (Amherst, N.Y.)

In this remarkable prose-poem, master storyteller Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) builds on known scientific truths to propound a universe governed by the immutable laws of attraction and repulsion, i.e., expansion and a return to unity. The irascible, vindicative God of the Old Testament and the Deists' Master Clockmaker are routed by Poe's pantheistic World Spirit who, through the force of expansion, is diffused throughout his creation. Moreover, we...

Kate Chopin's groundbreaking novel of early feminism set against the evocative backdrop of turn-of-the-century New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is trapped. By her marriage, by her responsibilities to two young sons, by the expectations of Creole society. When she falls in love with the charming and flirtatious Robert Lebrun during a summer on the Louisiana coast, Edna awakens to a new sense of herself, and to the possibility of true independence. Mademoiselle...

Called the "Tenth Muse" by the ancients, Greece's greatest female lyric poet Sappho (ca. 610-580 B.C.E.) spent the majority of her life on the famed island of Lesbos. Passionate and breathtaking, her poems survive only in fragments, following religious conspiracies to silence her. This excellent translation includes Roche's brilliant essay, "Portrait of Sappho".