Books in the Dover Thrift Editions series

One of the most innovative authors and distinguished literary critics of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf examines family dynamics and the tensions between men and women in her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse. She explores multiple perspectives of the members of the Ramsay family as they navigate experiences of disappointment and loss. Divided into three parts, the story takes place pre- and post-World War I during visits to the Ramsays' summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Virginia Woolf strove to write a new fiction that emphasized the passage of time as both a series of sequential moments and a longer flow of years and centuries, as well as exploring the essential indefinability of character. To the Lighthouse is among her most successful experiments in her pioneering use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device in addition to such groundbreaking novels as Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Voyage Out.

The evils of greed and ambition overwhelm love, innocence, and the bonds of kinship in this dark tragedy concerning the secret marriage of a noblewoman and a commoner.

Composed in a golden age of Celtic storytelling in the 13th century or earlier, this collection of 12 Welsh prose tales is a masterpiece of European literature. This unabridged republication of a stand edition includes a Publisher's Note and the original Introduction.

In one of the most perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, third century B.C. Greek philosopher Aristotle examines the literature of his time, describing the origins of poetry as an imitative art and drawing attention to the distinctions between comedy and tragedy. Aristotle helped establish the foundations of Western philosophy, and his influence is evident in philosophical thought today.

An integral part of Chinese thought for more than 2,000 years, the Tao Te Ching teaches individual peace and harmony through meditation. One of the most influential books in history.

Nature was a form of religion for naturalist, essayist, and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817 62). In communing with the natural world, he wished to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and learn what it had to teach." Toward that end Thoreau built a cabin in the spring of 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed nature, farmed, built fences, surveyed, and wrote in his journal.One product of his two-year sojourn was this book a great classic of American letters. Interwoven with accounts of Thoreau's daily life (he received visitors and almost daily walked into Concord) are mediations on human existence, society, government, and other topics, expressed with wisdom and beauty of style.Walden offers abundant evidence of Thoreau's ability to begin with observations on a mundane incident or the minutiae of nature and then develop these observations into profound ruminations on the most fundamental human concerns. Credited with influencing Tolstoy, Gandhi, and other thinkers, the volume remains a masterpiece of philosophical reflection."

Wilde's witty and buoyant comedy of manners, filled with some of literature's most famous epigrams, reprinted from an authoritative British edition. Considered Wilde's most perfect work.

Classic of economic and social theory offers satiric examination of the hollowness and falsity suggested by the term "conspicuous consumption," exposing the emptiness of many standards of taste, education, dress, and culture.

Classic, Renaissance-era guide to acquiring and maintaining political power. Today, nearly 500 years after it was written, this calculating prescription for autocratic rule continues to be much read and studied.