The Works of Louisa May Alcott are collected in this giant anthology. Included with this collection is a biography about the life and times of Alcott, and essay on each of Alcott's major works. Works include: Old-fashioned Girl Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag The Candy Country Comic Tragedies Eight Cousins Louisa May Alcott's Flower Fables A Garland for Girls Jack and Jill Jo's Boys Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories Little Men Little Women Little Women Letters from the House of Alcott The Louisa Alcott Reader Lulu's Library Marjorie's Three Gifts A Modern Cinderella Moods The Mysterious Key And What It Opened Picket Duty and Other Tales Passion and Punishment Rose in Bloom Shawl-Straps Silver Pitchers: and Independence Three Unpublished Poems Under the Lilacs Work: A Story of Experience

Jo’s Boys continues the story of many of the characters that appeared in Little Women and Little Men. Jo and her husband Professor Bhaer are now running Laurence College, the funding of which was made possible by the estate of Old Mr. Laurence. The institution supports the educational philosophy and practices evident in Little Men and reflects the ideas of Alcott and her father Amos Bronson Alcott, an educator and philosopher. Laurence College is a post-secondary school where the students of Little Men are continuing their education. This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay.

What choices must a biographer make when stitching the pieces of a life into one coherent whole? How do we best create an accurate likeness of a private life from the few articles that linger after death? How do we choose what gets left out? This intriguing and witty collection of essays by an internationally acclaimed biographer looks at how biography deals with myths and legends, what goes missing and what can't be proved in the story of a life. Virginia Woolf's Nose presents a variety of case-studies, in which literary biographers are faced with gaps and absences, unprovable stories and ambiguities surrounding their subjects. By looking at stories about Percy Bysshe Shelley's shriveled, burnt heart found pressed between the pages of a book, Jane Austen's fainting spell, Samuel Pepys's lobsters, and the varied versions of Virginia Woolf's life and death, preeminent biographer Hermione Lee considers how biographers deal with and often utilize these missing body parts, myths, and contested data to "fill in the gaps" of a life story. In "Shelley's Heart and Pepys's Lobsters," an essay dealing with missing parts and biographical legends, Hermione Lee discusses one of the most complicated and emotionally charged examples of the contested use of biographical sources. "Jane Austen Faints" takes five competing versions of the same dramatic moment in the writer's life to ask how biography deals with the private lives of famous women. "Virginia Woolf's Nose" looks at the way this legendary author's life has been translated through successive transformations, from biography to fiction to film, and suggests there can be no such thing as a definitive version of a life. Finally, "How to End It All" analyzes the changing treatment of deathbed scenes in biography to show how biographical conventions have shifted, and asks why the narrators and readers of life-stories feel the need to give special meaning and emphasis to endings. Virginia Woolf's Nose sheds new light on the way biographers bring their subjects to life as physical beings, and offers captivating new insights into the drama of "life-writing". Virginia Woolf's Nose is a witty, eloquent, and funny text by a renowned biographer whose sensitivity to the art of telling a story about a human life is unparalleled--and in creating it, Lee articulates and redefines the parameters of her craft.

"A most extraordinary thing happened in St. Petersburg on the twenty-fifth of March." The opening lines of "The Nose", one of Gogol’s best-known stories, and quite possibly the most absurd, are just as promising as any of his works. The simple yet extraordinary plot follows the story of the civil servant Major Kovalyov who wakes up one morning to discover his nose has left his face and is living a life of its own. Strange as it may seem, the nose has even surpassed him by attaining a higher rank! The story is a brilliant portrayal of the preoccupation with social rank in Imperial Russia, a biting satire of the bureaucrats’ pursuit of higher position within the Table of Ranks. A masterful combination of brilliant words, witty imagination, and unparalleled humor, it remains one of the most striking stories of all times. It is believed to have influenced masterpieces of world literature, including Dostoevsky's "The Double," Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and Kafka’s "Metamorphosis". Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian humorist, novelist, and dramatist whose work played a crucial role in the direction of Russian literature. He was considered to be one of the leading figures of Russian realism. His novel "Dead Souls", a satire of the political corruption in the Russian Empire, is viewed by many literary historians as the first great Russian novel. Among his contributions to Russian and world literature are the surrealistic and grotesque "The Nose" and "The Mantle", the satirical "The Government Inspector/The Inspector General", the historical novel "Taras Bulba", the comedy "Marriage", the humorous short stories "Diary of a Madman" and "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich". His works have influenced generations of readers and still continue to impress with their subtle psychologism and matchless style.

A most unlikely life. “Marc Estrin” discovers that another writer’s novel — The Nose — not only has spawned a bizarre cult among the nation’s youth, but is based on the extraordinary life of a real person—an outcast named Alexei Pigov. “Estrin” searches Alexei out and asks him to provide annotations to The Nose. Alexei says that—although the events of the novel might, for the most part, be real—the purported reasons for them are all damnable lies. On the left-hand page of The Annotated Nose we read The Nose itself, and take in its beautifully unsettling illustrations. On the right-hand page we follow Alexei’s complaints – always surprising and often far-reaching. The layers in Estrin’s remarkable comic book are as multiple, eclectic, and outrageous as the sequence of masks Alexei wears to hide his face from the world over the caroming trajectory of his most unlikely life. The Annotated Nose is at once Marc Estrin’s most playful and his most ambitious work to date. A signed and numbered limited edition of 75 copies is also available.

Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women as a study of an American family during the Civil War. It was also very closely based on her own experience as a member of the Alcott family. The protagonist of the story, Josephine “Jo” March is based on Louisa herself. The other three March sisters are closely modeled on her own sisters. This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay.

Some critics claim that Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in 1870, is Jules Verne’s masterpiece. The novel is narrated by Professor Pierre Aronnax of the Paris Museum of Natural History. It is set in the year 1866 (Verne was already working on the manuscript at that time) and the world of the sea is in the news with the supposed sightings of a sea monster that is much too large and fast to be a whale. When a boat is damaged, apparently by the sea monster, Aronnax, while on a researching assignment in New York is asked by the United States government to help track down the monster. Aronnax (illustrations of Aronnax in the original edition look very much like Verne) takes his loyal Belgian valet (Conseil) with him – both Aronnax and Conseil are men of science – cool, rational, and possessing encyclopaedic knowledge of the sea. Ned Land serves as their foil – a passionate and foolhardy harpooner from Canada. This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay.