From the publisher: "Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a cycle of short stories concerning life in a small Ohio town at the end of the nineteenth century."

On the MFA reading list.

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From the publisher: "Many consider this rich social commentary to be Jane Austen's finest novel. It is certainly among her more famous ones. Austen sets her entertaining study of manners and misconceptions against the backdrop of a class-conscious society in 18th-century England."

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From the publisher: "Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My Antonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Antonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My Antonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America’s early pioneers."

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From the publisher: "Novelist and short story writer Kate Chopin (1851-1904) was the first American woman to deal with women's roles as wives and mothers. The Awakening (1899), her most famous novel, concerns a woman, dissatisfied with her indifferent husband, who gives in to her desire for other men and commits adultery. This is a searing depiction of the religious and social pressures brought to bear on women who transgress restrictive Victorian codes of behavior."

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From the publisher: "A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness (1902) exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz."

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From the publisher: Great Expectations follows the life of the orphan, Pip. We first meet him as a tiny, terrified child in a village churchyard. Years later, through the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip will travel to London, full of expectations to become a gentleman. But his life is already inextricably tangled in a mystery that surrounds a beautiful woman, an embittered recluse, and an ambitious lawyer....

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From the publisher: The last and greatest of Dostoevsky’s novels, The Brothers Karamazov is a towering masterpiece of literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion. It tells the story of intellectual Ivan, sensual Dmitri, and idealistic Alyosha Karamazov, who collide in the wake of their despicable father’s brutal murder...

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From the publisher: Often called the greatest nineteenth-century British novelist, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) created in Middlemarch a vast panorama of life in a provincial Midlands town. At the story’s center stands the intellectual and idealistic Dorothea Brooke—a character who in many ways resembles Eliot herself. But the very qualities that set Dorothea apart from the materialistic, mean-spirited society around her also lead her into a disastrous marriage with a man she mistakes for her soul mate. In a parallel story, young doctor Tertius Lydgate, who is equally idealistic, falls in love with the pretty but vain and...

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From the publisher: "First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers—the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason."

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From the publisher: The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition contained a number of errors resulting from Fitzgerald's extensive revisions and a rushed production schedule. Subsequent printings introduced further departures from the author's words. This edition, based on the Cambridge critical text, restores all the language of Fitzgerald's masterpiece. Drawing on the manuscript and surviving proof of the novel, along with Fitzgerald's later revisions and corrections, this is the authorized text - The Great Gatsby...

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From the publisher: When it first appeared in 1850, The Scarlet Letter enjoyed scandalous success. New England critics condemned its passionate subject matter. One critic complained that Nathaniel Hawthorne invested adultery with all the fascination of genius, and all the charms of a highly polished style. My preliminary chapter, wryly noted the author, has caused the greatest uproar that has happened here since witch-times...

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From the publisher: This edition of James's classic novel presents the 1908 New York Edition along with five critical essays - newly commissioned or revised for a student audience - that read The Turn of the Screw from five contemporary critical perspectives. Each critical essay is accompanied by a succinct introduction to the history, principles, and practice of the critical perspective and by a bibliography that promotes further exploration of that approach. In addition, the text and essays are complemented by an introduction providing biographical and historical contexts for James and The Turn of the Screw, a survey of critical responses...

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From the publisher: Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction...

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From the publisher: On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment the tenous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book Award winner William delivers a masterfully restrained and magically evocative meditation on the past. "A small, perfect novel."—Washington Post Book World.

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From the publisher: With the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940...

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From the publisher: Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

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From the publisher: While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men (1937), creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal; a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

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From the publisher: Huckleberry Finn, rebel against school and church, casual inheritor of gold treasure, rafter of the Mississippi, and savior of Jim the runaway slave, is the archetypal American maverick. Fleeing the respectable society that wants to 'sivilize' him, Huck Finn shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River. As Huck learns about love, responsibility, and how to make moral choices, the trip becomes a metaphoric voyage through his own soul, culminating in the glorious moment when he decides to 'go to hell' rather than return Jim to slavery.

On the MFA reading list. (Novel)

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From the publisher: With her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Innocence (1920), Wharton recreated the Old New York of her own childhood, in a moving tale of passion and desire. 'Edith Wharton is a writer who brings glory to the name of America, and this is her best book. It is one of the best novels of the twentieth century ... a permanent addition to literature' (The New York Times).

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From the publisher: Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape out society.

On the MFA reading list. (Novel)

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