Ocean State Libraries

"About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northhamptom, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income." --

"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson "One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson "His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...

In the most seminal slave narrative ever written, Frederick Douglass writes, "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom." Reading this narrative is to witness...

Eliza Harris, a slave whose child is to be sold, escapes her beloved home on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky and heads North, eludes the hired slave catchers and is aided by the underground railroad. Another slave, Uncle Tom, is sent "down the river" for sale and ultimately endures a martyr's death under the whips of Simon Legree's overseers.

Of the complex, richly rewarding masterworks he wrote in the last decade of his life, Little Dorrit is the book in which Charles Dickens most fully unleashed his indignation at the fallen state of mid-Victorian society. Crammed with persons and incidents in whose recreation nothing is accidental or spurious, containing, in its picture of the Circumlocution Office, the most witheringly exact satire of a bureaucracy we possess, Little Dorrit is a stunning...

Thoreau's classic account of his meditative, beach-combing walking trips to Cape Cod in the early 1850s, reflecting on the elemental forces of the sea, with an introduction by Paul Theroux
Cape Cod chronicles Henry David Thoreau’s journey of discovery along this evocative stretch of Massachusetts coastline, during which time he came to understand the complex relationship between the sea and the shore. He spent his nights in...

Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work...

A collection of poems evoking the world and feelings of childhood, including "The land of Counterpane," "My Shadow," "The Swing," "The Moon," and "Looking Forward," complemented by digitally restored, retro-style illustrations by two Caldecott Medalists.