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Alexander's Bridge (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Continuing a tradition begun in 1905, The World's Classics series offers a wealth of American and British literature, as well as translated works by French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and classical Greek and Latin masters. Since 1980 Oxford has published this outstanding collection in handsome paperback editions, making the best of world literature available to a whole new generation of readers. Based, whenever possible, on first editions or author-corrected manuscripts, these volumes contain introductions by distinguished scholars from around the world--small classics in their own right--that help place each work in its historical and literary context. In addition, each volume offers full and unobtrusive "Explanatory Notes" and "Notes on the Text" which offer valuable information on the publication history of each book. No other series offers so much for so little. The World's Classics series undoubtedly provides the finest, most reasonably priced volumes available.

In this, Willa Cather's first novel, we find Bartley Alexander, a successful engineer torn bewteen his duties to his career and his wife, and his passion for an Irish actress. In the only critical edition available, we see how Cather uses urban settings and the figure of the bridge-builder to analyze America's emergence as an international, industrial power at the turn of the century. Both anxious and celebratory, Cather's novel anticipates The Great Gatsby in trying to reckon with the social and emotional costs of that emergence.

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