About The Book

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Two women fall in love with men of the same name. This mythical suitor is called ‘Ernest’, a name that has been adopted by both Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff to win the hearts of their beloveds, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, respectively. As pandemonium breaks out at Jack’s country home on the same weekend, and while the identity of ‘Ernest’ is still uncertain, only an insignificant handbag and an old nursemaid can save the day! A farce where characters take on fictitious roles, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is a delightful carnival of lovers in conflict, warped identities, clandestine arrangements, witticism and incisive, artful conversations. The eccentricity and effervescence in Wilde’s plot and characters are enjoyed by readers and viewers even today. Ever since it was first performed in London’s St. James’ Theatre on 14 February 1895, this brilliant tour de force has inspired many other adaptations. The Importance of Being Earnest remains an evergreen classic!”

About Oscar Wilde

Born on 16 October 1854, Oscar Wilde was a famous Irish poet and playwright. Part of a family of intellectuals, he was educated at the most prestigious colleges in Great Britain Trinity College, University of Dublin and Magdalen College, University of Oxford. During his years in university, he was drawn to Aestheticism, the art movement prevalent in late 19th century. He wrote essays, propagated ideas as a lecturer and also wrote the famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which he vehemently defended using the concept of making art for art’s sake.

His aesthetic sensibilities mixed with his wit were apparent in notable plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan, and established him as a successful playwright.
However, Wilde had a harrowing personal life because of his homosexuality. He was prosecuted and imprisoned in 1895 for two years. The idea of homosexuality in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used against him to strengthen the case. Upon his release, he left for France, never to return to England.
His health declined after his release from prison and he died of meningitis in 1900, aged 46.

About The Book

Russian writer Anton Chekhov, full name Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) is one of the greatest short story writers of world literature. Influenced by the venerated Russian masters, Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky, Chekhov wrote hundreds of stories and novellas, tracing the trajectory of ordinary lives, capturing the vastness and backwardness of remote Russian provinces, shining the spotlight on bureaucratic apathy and corruption and the Russian obsession with rank, poignantly evoking a specific time and place through meticulous observation and telling detail. In Chekhov’s stories, an overt plot often hints at hidden stories, giving readers plenty of room to make use of their imagination. Chekhov displays deeply felt empathy and compassion for those who suffer misfortunes while managing to find human traits in the ones he dislikes. His canvas is wide – encompassing everything from happiness and intense suffering to slapstick humour. This collection includes some of Anton Chekhov’s finest stories including ‘The Dual,’ ‘The Lady with the Dog,’ ‘Betrothed,’‘Gooseberries,’‘TheKiss,’‘Fatand Thin,’and ‘The Trousseau’.

About Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov, full name Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) is regarded as the finest representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school. The son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, he began his writing career as the author of sketches for humorous journals and moved on to more serious writing. An accomplished playwright and master short story writer, this doctor-turned-writer believed that “in one’s work one should be truthful and simple to the point of asceticism.” Chekhov’s literary output is characterised by objectivity, clarity, and realism. He portrayed the lives of ordinary people in Russia of his time using a deceptively simple technique shorn of elaborate literary devices. Steering clear of complex plots in his plays and stories, he explored the grimness, beauty, and comical aspects of the human condition with consummate skill.

Other Books By Anton Chekhov

About The Book

At present our only task is to infuse in the unbelievers our own unhesitating and unflinching confidence in all that belongs to our country.Through our constant habit of being ashamed of our country, the poison of servility has overpowered our minds. If each one of us will by example counteract that poison, then we shall soon find our field of service. Iconic Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore’s fifth novel, Gora, is set in 1880s Calcutta, in the time of the British Raj. This is Tagore’s longest novel.The narrative revolves around the parallel love stories of two pairs of lovers: Gora and Sucharita, Binoy and Lolita. Gora contains in-depth philosophical debates on politics and religion and it highlights social and political upheavals in 19th-century India. Other themes Tagore grapples with in Gora are freedom, feminism, caste, class, the collision between tradition and modernity, urbanites versus peasants, colonial rule, nationalism and the Brahmo Samaj. Over the years, the novel has been adapted for film and television successfully.

About Rabindranath Tagore

RABINDRANATH TAGORE, an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, was a polymath who not only reformed Bengali literature and music, but also combined Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the 19th and 20th centuries. He also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, a profound collection of songs he authored. Also called the “the Bard of Bengal”, Tagore’s poetry is both spiritual and effervescent. Along with a writer, Tagore was a humanist, and believed in universal internationalism. He was an ardent supporter of India’s freedom from the colonial regime. Other seminal works by him include Gora and Ghare-Baire, while he also wrote plays like Visarjan, Chandalika, and The Post Office. Tagore is also responsible for the composition of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, and is said to have inspired Sri Lanka’s national anthem as well. He passed away in 1941.

Other Books By Rabindranath Tagore

About The Book

It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning. Published in 1925, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is an incisive portrayal of a single day in the life of 51-year-old Clarissa Dalloway, the perfect high- society hostess, in post-World War I, England. As she prepares to host a party in the evening, she is flooded with memories of her youth in the countryside in Bourton, her choice of Richard Dalloway as husband over the intriguing and demanding Peter Walsh, amidst myriads of other things. A visit from Peter that morning reinforces Mrs Dalloway’s pressing need to re-examine the trajectory that her internal and external lives have taken between the pull and push of the past and present, within a certain social structure. In October 2005, Mrs Dalloway, arguably Woolf’s finest novel, was included on Time’s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.

About Virginia Woolf

Born on 25 January 1882, Virginia Woolf was one of the most influential modernist 20th-century English writers, notable for using stream of consciousness as a literary technique in her works. While writing anonymous reviews for journals, she resolved to ‘re-form’ the novel by experimenting with dreams and delirium. Her novel Melymbrosia, which she completed in 1912 was born out of this determination. Recast and published in 1915 as The Voyage Out, it was about a young woman’s journey of selfdiscovery on her father’s ship in South America. Later, she modelled many of her characters on real-life associates and acquaintances.
At the onset of 1924, the Woolfs moved their residence from the suburbs back to Bloomsbury, where a relationship blossomed between the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West and Virginia. With Sackville-West, she learned to face her anxieties and overcome her nervous ailments. In fact, Orlando, a fantastical biography is partly a portrait of Vita Sackville-West.
One of the most important chapters in her early life was the summer home the family visited in St Ives, Cornwall, where she first beheld the Godrevy Lighthouse. To the Lighthouse (1927) is, therefore, considered one of her most autobiographical novels. Apart from her extremely popular extended essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929), her other seminal works include-Mrs Dalloway (1925), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931).
In 1941, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a river, aged 59. Her last work, Between the Acts, was posthumously published later that year.
Other Books By Virginia Woolf