Ulrich Baer

The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest novels ever written and a masterpiece of American fiction. Midwesterner Nick Carraway spends a summer on Long Island where he is gradually lured into the ultra-glamorous parties and social circle of his mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. It is a tale of obsessive passion, reckless decadence, excess, and disillusionment, but also of the power of love and dreams to alter our world. Fitzgerald's glittering portrayal of 1920s elite society during the Jazz Age is an enduring testament to the tantalizing power and peril of the American Dream. Includes an insightful new afterword, select first edition reviews, and a biographical timeline.

A speculative avant-garde queer horror novel that reads like an erotic vampiric nightmare directed by Jodorowsky playing at a '50s drive-in.Beyond the Planet of the Vampires is a gay pulp horror novel of chance. The narrative erratically loses and regains consciousness during an apocalyptic space invasion of psychic vampires, reaching across intergalactic fathoms in search of future victims.Smoldering in a social alienation reminiscent of Genet's outlaw anti-heroes, Baer's novel screams with Joycean word play in an entirely new and unique idiom, where theories of Kant are situated with reckonings of identity and postulations on the nature of evil.On each page, Ulrich Baer creates an enigmatic performance of both philosophical and queer thought, exercised through the rich aesthetic experience of a retro horror film. Beyond the Planet of the Vampires redefines avant-garde in a relentless, generation-defining voice.

An immediate bestseller when it was first published in 1921 by the famous author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden and The Enchanted April, this brilliant dissection of a marriage gone terribly wrong is also a cautionary tale for anyone tempted to abandon their principles in the name of loyalty and love. Based on von Arnim's disastrous marriage to the 2nd Earl Russell, the brother of philosopher Bertrand Russell, this haunting tale of a woman gaslit by her despotic husband anticipates the plot of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, later an Academy Award-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Would you trade your soul for eternal youth? Oscar Wilde's provocative novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, tells the story of a beautiful young man who strikes this Faustian bargain by which a painted portrait fades and ages while he remains untouched by time. His stunning beauty protects him from suspicion in a society that judges by appearances while he spirals into ever more scandalous hedonism and wrongdoing. Wilde defended his sensational tale, which outraged Victorian critics, arguing that art should not be judged by moral standards. The book eventually became evidence in a criminal case that sent Wilde to prison for two years for "gross indecency" with men, and ever since the gripping tale retains its power as a key text for anyone skeptical of the stifling constraints of dominant culture or the obsession with superficial beauty that defines our age.

"There could not be a more perfect work of the American imagination."-D. H. LawrenceIn colonial New England, beautiful, young Hester Pryne bears a child although her husband is presumed lost at sea. She refuses to name the father and is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" and live as an outcast. As she transforms the badge of shame into a symbol of freedom, Hawthorne's dramatic masterpiece envisions an authentic relation between the sexes-and a different way of imagining love, sin, and redemption-that can form the basis for America's radical project of a true democracy.

Beguiling, witty, and gently comedic, The Enchanted April tells the tale of four very different women who escape dreary London for an Italian castle in Portofino, shortly after World War I. Elizabeth von Arnim's ageless novel compellingly responds to the eternal question of how to achieve happiness in life. An immediate best seller upon its first publication, the story of unlikely female friendship, newfound empowerment, rekindled love, and unexpected romance has been adapted for stage and screen, including a 1991 Oscar-nominated film, and a Tony-nominated play in 2003. This much-beloved book appeals to anyone who appreciates the sly charm of Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

When first published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises changed American literature forever. Hemingway follows a disillusioned group of expats in post-World War I Europe whose relationships unravel as they travel from Paris to the bullfights in Spain. Unsettling, provocative, and inspiring to this day, this legendary novel about loyalty, love, and betrayal challenges readers to discover what it takes to be true to oneself. This authoritative edition includes a new foreword that explores how to read Hemingway from the changed perspective of our time.

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a classic of Victorian gothic fiction. The story of an upstanding, educated gentleman who seeks to access his own dark sides and gets caught in a maelstrom of evil captivated late nineteenth-century London readers and then the world. Today Jekyll and Hyde has become the universal reference for "man's double being," but the story's revelatory ending shows that Stevenson did far more than create an archetype in this compelling eerie tale. Frequently adapted for stage and screen, the story continues to mesmerize readers and belongs among the great works of world literature, alongside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Oscar Wilde's first major success on the stage, Lady Windermere's Fan premiered in London in 1892 to sold-out fashionable crowds. The social comedy centers on a woman who has been cast out of and hopes to re-enter society but ultimately sacrifices herself to save her grown daughter's dignity and social standing. Filled with some of Wilde's best-known and wittiest epigrammatic sayings, the play's exposure of upper-class hypocrisy is far deeper and more poignant than such funny writing ought to allow.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, poet, and novelist, known for his biting wit, defense of aesthetics, and defiance of social conventions. The author of celebrated comedies, including The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and the iconic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, at the height of his fame he was sentenced to two years' hard labor for "gross indecency" with men. He died penniless in Paris three years after his release from prison. He ranks among the most celebrated writers in English literature.

Oscar Wilde's social comedy, An Ideal Husband, has charmed and challenged audiences since its glamorous London opening in 1895, which the Prince of Wales attended. When a prominent politician is blackmailed over a youthful indiscretion, society is forced to examine whether idealized notions of goodness and morality serve to uphold society or become tools of destruction. In the context of contemporary quests to grapple with the past honestly, Wilde's sparkling and profound play is unparalleled in beckoning us to love the world "in all its tainted glory." This Warbler Classics edition includes an afterword by Ulrich Baer and George Bernard Shaw's review of the original stage production.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Thus begins Jane Austen's most beloved and celebrated novel that has delighted and enthralled readers ever since its anonymous publication in 1813. In Austen's time, Mr. Bennet's estate can only be passed down to a male heir-a circumstance that will leave his five daughters destitute. To escape poverty at least one of sisters must make a wealthy match to support the others. Despite this pressure, the spirited Bennet girls are determined to marry for love rather than for money and prestige. Austen's humor, wit, and narrative prowess infuse this highly entertaining story that offers, along the way, a keen examination of the nature of true happiness and independence and has served as inspiration for countless retellings up to the present time. This authoritative edition includes a new afterword, Virginia Woolf's seminal essay Jane Austen, and a detailed timeline of Austen's life.

Often considered the wittiest play in the English language, The Importance of Being Earnest has thrilled audiences for nearly one hundred and fifty years with undiminished sparkle, wit, and bite. Many of Wilde's famous epigrams are uttered by the memorable characters in this comedy of mistaken identities. But the perfectly phrased social satire packs a velvet-gloved punch. Can we break with the hypocrisies of respectable society to reveal our authentic selves and find happiness? This elegant new edition includes a timeline of Wilde's life, and Ulrich Baer's accessible afterword that identifies the play's major themes and its relevance for twenty-first century audiences, along with commentary by George Bernard Shaw and Mary McCarthy.

Jack London's beloved 1903 masterpiece, The Call of the Wild, is unsurpassed as the gripping adventure of Buck, a California wolf-dog enjoying the good life who is brutally kidnapped and sold into the Canadian Yukon as a sled-dog during the gold rush of the 1890s. Buck quickly has to shed his civilized ways to survive the harsh new laws of fang and club, but after terrifying challenges he triumphs by discovering his true nature, which leads him to authentic love and finally an authentic life. Far more than a deeply moving animal fable, London's harrowing and sublime tale probes fundamental questions of human existence and our relationship to the natural world.Includes London's haunting short story "To Build a Fire," his 1903 article "How I Became a Socialist," his 1910 essay The Other Animals, an afterword by Ulrich Baer, and a biographical timeline.