Given that Canada has the longest coastline in the world and its motto is "From Sea unto Sea," it is not surprising that virtually every Canadian writer has been inspired to write about some aspect of the sea at some point in their work. As this book shows, those watery passages are some of the very best writing the nation has produced. Journeying coast to coast to coast, from the picturesque and isolated Vancouver Island village of Ucluelet, through...

Originally published in serial form in 1884 to 1885, "Germinal" is Émile Zola's realistic depiction of the coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s. In this faithful translation from the original French by Havelock Ellis, the story centers on Étienne Lantier, a young migrant worker who arrives at the coalmining town of Montsou in search of work. Set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and oppression, "Germinal" is the story of the idealistic...

In “Madame Bovary”, Charles, an awkward country doctor courts and weds Emma, the beautiful young daughter of a patient. Emma, unsuited to the role of housewife, quickly gets restless and begins to explore her passions. This leads to infidelities which she hides from Charles and, eventually, mounting debts as she turns to merchandise for her happiness. Flaubert’s novel is cited as the first example of literary realism and has been called a “perfect”...

Originally published in 1859, "Adam Bede" is the first novel by George Eliot, which was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Eliot was one of the leading British writers of the Victorian era, as well as a noted journalist, poet, and translator. "Adam Bede" concerns a small, tight-knit, and fictional rural community called Hayslope and the romantic drama that develops between four of its young residents: the title character Adam, a young carpenter, the...

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a mesmerizing and unsettling exploration of the female psyche and the stifling constraints of 19th-century society. The story is narrated by a woman suffering from what her husband and physicians diagnose as "nervous depression." She is confined to a room in her home and prescribed a treatment of complete rest. As the protagonist spends her days in isolation, she becomes increasingly obsessed...

Knut Hamsun believed that modern literature should express the complexity of the human mind and nowhere is that philosophy more evident than in this stunning modern masterpiece, "Hunger." First published in 1890 in Norwegian and based on Hamsun's own experiences with poverty prior to his success as an author, "Hunger" tells the story of an unnamed vagrant who stumbles around the streets of Norway's capital city of Kristiania (now Oslo) looking for...

First published in 1799, Charles Brockden Brown's "Edgar Huntly, Or Memoirs of a Sleep Walker" is the story of its title character, who upon learning of the death of the brother of his friend and love interest, Mary Waldegrave, visits where he died in the woods in rural Pennsylvania. There he discovers a man, Clithero, a servant from a nearby farm, suspiciously lurking about near the scene of Waldegrave's murder. Suspecting Clithero, Edgar begins...

A collection of stories, poems, and cartoons for and about mothers celebrates all of the important things that mothers do for their children.