Secondhand Literary Classics Bargain Book Box SP2825

Secondhand Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2825

A box dominated by D.H. Lawrence — eight titles spanning his novels, novellas, travel writing, and collaborations — alongside four Compton Mackenzie comedies, three Thornton Wilder works, three Kingsley Amis novels, and landmark individual contributions from Ford Madox Ford, Faulkner, and Sholokhov. From The Trespasser and Aaron's Rod to The Old Devils and Absalom, Absalom!, the range and quality on offer here is remarkable — twenty-one titles from across the literary tradition of the 20th century.

1. Aaron's Rod — D.H. Lawrence — Lawrence's 1922 novel following a miner who abandons his wife and family to pursue his destiny as a musician; a searching examination of male identity, power, and creative freedom.
2. Twilight in Italy — D.H. Lawrence — Lawrence's travel essays from his time in northern Italy, among the most lyrical and perceptive of his non-fiction works; a meditation on peasant life, cultural contrast, and the meeting of old and new Europe.
3. St. Mawr / The Virgin and the Gypsy — D.H. Lawrence — Two novellas; the first a brilliant tale of a magnificent stallion as a symbol of untamed vitality, the second a story of a young woman drawn to a wild outsider against the constraints of her repressed household.
4. The Trespasser — D.H. Lawrence — Lawrence's second novel, a passionate and doomed love story set partly on the Isle of Wight; an early example of his power to convey emotional intensity and sexual psychology.
5. St. Mawr / The Man Who Died — D.H. Lawrence — A different pairing of the title novella alongside The Man Who Died, Lawrence's extraordinary and controversial story of a Christ-like figure who survives crucifixion to discover sensual rebirth.
6. Three Novellas: The Ladybird, The Fox, The Captain's Doll — D.H. Lawrence — Three of Lawrence's finest shorter works gathered in a single volume; explorations of desire, dominance, and the mysterious forces that govern human relationships.
7. The Boy in the Bush — D.H. Lawrence and M.L. Skinner — A collaboration born of Lawrence's Australian visit; a frontier novel of masculine testing and spiritual search set in the early settlement of Western Australia.
8. The Bridge of San Luis Rey — Thornton Wilder — Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1927; five people die when a bridge collapses in Peru, and a monk investigates their lives to understand why they were chosen.
9. Sinister Street — Compton Mackenzie — Mackenzie's landmark Edwardian novel of a young man's education, spiritual crisis, and coming of age in London; one of the most influential English novels of its generation.
10. The Rival Monster — Compton Mackenzie — One of Mackenzie's beloved Highland comedy novels set on a Scottish island; warm, inventive, and typically light-footed.
11. Lady Chatterley's Lover — D.H. Lawrence — Lawrence's final and most celebrated novel; the story of a passionate affair between an aristocratic woman and her gamekeeper, and one of the most famous literary prosecutions in publishing history.
12. Hunting the Fairies — Compton Mackenzie — Another of Mackenzie's Scottish island comedies; gentle satire and warmth in his characteristic Highlands setting.
13. Carnival — Compton Mackenzie — An early Mackenzie novel following a London dancer through the theatrical world and the complicated lives of those around her; one of his most ambitious and widely read early works.
14. Heaven's My Destination — Thornton Wilder — Wilder's comic novel of 1935 following a cheerful, devout travelling salesman through Depression-era America; warm, satirical, and surprisingly moving.
15. The Don Flows Home to the Sea — Mikhail Sholokhov — The concluding volume of Sholokhov's Nobel Prize-winning epic; a vast and tragic chronicle of the Don Cossacks and a way of life destroyed by revolution and civil war.
16. The Good Soldier — Ford Madox Ford — Ford's masterpiece of Edwardian manners and moral catastrophe; a story of two couples whose apparent friendship conceals devastating secrets, told by one of literature's most celebrated unreliable narrators.
17. Absalom, Absalom! — William Faulkner — Faulkner's densely layered novel of Southern history and obsession, told through multiple competing voices; one of the most demanding and rewarding works in American literature.
18. The Folks That Live on the Hill — Kingsley Amis — A warm and wryly observed late Amis novel about a librarian managing the complicated lives of his family in suburban north London; one of his most affectionate portraits of ordinary English life.
19. The Old Devils — Kingsley Amis — Winner of the Booker Prize; a group of ageing Welsh friends are forced to confront the past when an old acquaintance returns; Amis at his most incisive and emotionally honest.
20. The Riverside Villas Murder — Kingsley Amis — A light-footed detective novel set in the 1930s suburbs; Amis's affectionate homage to the golden age of crime fiction, with genuine detection and sharp social comedy.
21. The Cabala — Thornton Wilder — Wilder's first novel; a young American in Rome is drawn into the strange, fading world of a mysterious aristocratic circle; elegant, witty, and remarkably assured for a debut.