Oxford world's classics

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in the American South in 1813 and went on to write the story of her life, which was published pseudonymously, in 1861. Hers was the first narrative published by a female slave. She describes her treatment at the hands of her owners, her eventual escape to the North, and her perilous existence trying to evade recapture. To save herself, before her flight to the North, she is forced to hide for seven years in a tiny attic space, enduring psychological and physical pain. Jacobs' story of self-emancipation, and her growing feminist consciousness, is both the tale of an individual and a searing indictment of slavery's inhumanity.

Presents the 1899 novel about Edna Pontellier, a Victorian-era wife and mother who is awakened to the full force of her desire for love and freedom when she becomes enamored with Robert LeBrun, a young man she meets while on vacation, and includes thirty-two short stories by Kate Chopin, drawn from throughout her career.

Jane, a plain and penniless orphan in nineteenth-century England, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her melancholy employer, Mr. Edward Rochester, a man with a terrible secret. Includes an introduction, explanatory notes, and excerpts of nineteenth-century reviews.

Upton Sinclair's classic 1906 novel describing the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young struggling immigrant; includes an introduction, textual and explanatory notes, bibliography, and chronology.