Books in the Dover Thrift Editions series

This unique collection spans over 400 years (1488-1902) of haiku history by the greatest masters, in translations by top-flight scholars of the field. Haiku (distilled poems featuring 17 syllables) command enormous respect in Japan. Now readers of poetry in the West can savor these expressive masterpieces in this treasury.

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.

Romeo and Juliet was the first drama in English to confer full tragic dignity on the agonies of youthful love. The lyricism that enshrines their death-marked devotion has made the lovers legendary in every language that possesses a literature.

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.

Lighthearted and delightful to read, these ten classic short stories by author and humorist P. G. Wodehouse tell the amusing antics and occasional mishaps of young English aristocrat Bertie Wooster, who regularly relies on the infinite wisdom of his consummate valet, Jeeves. Many of the stories were previously published in The Saturday Evening Post between 1916 and 1925. The compilation includes some of the most popular tales from the Jeeves canon: "Jeeves Takes Charge," in which Bertie and Jeeves first meet, and "Bertie Changes His Mind," the only story told from Jeeves's point of view.

A shining star of the Harlem Renaissance movement, Langston Hughes--a poet, novelist, and playwright--was one of the most revered African American writers. His first published collection of poems, The Weary Blues, was a tour de force upon its release. Over ninety years later, it remains critically acclaimed and still evokes a fresh, contemporary feeling. The title poem, "The Weary Blues," influenced by the dialect and rhythm of blues, weaves pain and suffering into haunting melodic prose. "Dream Variation" rings with joyfulness amid oppression. "Epilogue" mimics Walt Whitman in its opening line, "I, too, sing America," proclaiming that the United States will someday fulfill its promise of equality. A powerful reflection of the Black experience, Hughes's words remain prophetic and relevant.

"Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason." -- Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), possibly the greatest writer of short stories, examines the human condition of love in eleven tales of romance. Included in the collection is one of his best-known works-- "The Lady with the Dog," said to be a reflection of the author's romance with an actress, Olga Knipper, whom he would eventually marry. Chekhov demonstrates one of his primary artistic principles by focusing on character rather than plot to reveal the subtle profundities of love. Exposing his audience to a variety of viewpoints, the Russian author refrains from the moral precepts of love and dares his audience to commit emotional honesty. From the observing narrator of "Agafya" and the nonstop dialogue at a fabric store between a spurned shop clerk and a dressmaker ("Polinka") to the awakened memory of boyhood confusion over the power of physical attraction ("The Beauties"), Chekhov explores the psychology of human affection and its obstacles.

Courageous women stepped forward in solidarity in the nineteenth century, advocating for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. These women, undaunted by opposing views, fueled the rise of female abolitionists. Although women did not have the right to vote, they knew how to petition, publish, sermonize, and lecture. Black and white women alike raised money and awareness, and wrote and spoke passionately against slavery. Ellen Craft, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Louisa Forten, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary Prince, Mary Ann Shadd, Maria W. Stewart, and Sojourner Truth are just a few of the Black women who risked their lives to fight for freedom for all. Leading white abolitionists include Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Lydia Maria Child, Angelina E. Grimké, Sarah M. Grimké, Elizabeth Heyrick, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This collection of essays, speeches, and poems by a bold group of women will educate and inspire all who are interested in this era of American history.

This bittersweet tale about a professor's desire to stay in his old study and cling to what used to be on the eve of moving into a new house sparks deep introspection in a story that explores a mid-life crisis and family life in a 1920s Midwestern college town.

This landmark text analyzes the impact of human action on nature by linking the environmental degradation of ancient Mediterranean civilization to the United States of the 1800s. As profoundly topical today as it was in 1864.

Set in a future under a unified totalitarian state, in a society ruled by conformity and where humans are identified by their assigned number, spaceship engineer D-503 must face his beliefs about the One Party head-on in this page-turning adventure.

The State and Revolution is Lenin's most significant work, in which he rejects the institutions of Western democracy and presents his vision of the final perfection of communism. It offers unparalleled insight into the twentieth century, capitalism, the Russian revolution, and more.