Burton Raffel Book order (chronological)

The greatest love story in English, this play features star-crossed lovers who bravely defy social conventions, leading to tragic outcomes. In Verona, the feud between the Montagues and Capulets creates a tense atmosphere, with the Prince declaring death for any breach of peace. For young Romeo and Juliet, the animosity of their families is irrelevant. Their secret meetings draw them closer to disaster as their families edge toward open conflict. This work has inspired various adaptations, including West Side Story and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet, blending passion and hatred, comedy and tragedy. The edition includes an introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre, a specific introduction to the play, a chronology, reading suggestions, an essay on performance options, and commentary. Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, produced remarkable dramas and a collection of sonnets that are among the most significant love poetry in English. If you enjoyed this play, you may also appreciate A Midsummer Night's Dream, available in the same series.

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication.

George P. Elliott, Bobbie Ann Mason, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Jayne Anne Phillips, Peter J. Taylor, Ann Beattie, Jean Stafford, Richard Ellman, Purdy James, Donald Barthelme, Stanley Elkin, Philip Roth, Richard Yates, John Updike, Grace Paley, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Alice Walker, Mark Helprin, Wright Morris, Robert Greenwood, Leonard Michaels, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Joyce Carol Oates, Layle Silbert, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Ivi Goodman, Walter Mosley Jr.

The best of American short fiction Spanning over 100 years of literary history, here are 33 of the finest short stories by Washington Irving * Nathaniel Hawthorne * Edgar Allan Poe * Herman Melville * Harriet Beecher Stowe * Bret Harte * Bayard Taylor * Rose Terry Cooke * Ambrose Bierce * Hamlin Garland * Mary E. Wilkens Freeman * Henry James * Charlotte Perkins Gilman * Sarah Orne Jewett * Grace Elizabeth King * Harold Frederic * Kate Chopin * Stephen Crane * Edith Wharton * Mark Twain * Jack London * F. Hopkinson Smith * Zona Gale * O. Henry * Sherwood Anderson * Ernest Hemingway * John Dos Passos * Stephen Vincent Benet * Willa Cather * William Faulkner * James Thurber * F. Scott Fitzgerald * William Saroyan