Every work,
annotated.
You get the whole passage, in its own words, plus a note in the margin that explains what it's doing. Nothing is abridged.
See which of these became films →Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy
William Shakespeare · 1606
A man argues with a dagger he knows perfectly well isn't there.
Doctor Faustus — The Bargain
Christopher Marlowe · c. 1592
The bargain with the devil that English drama never got over.
Frankenstein — The Creature Speaks
Mary Shelley · 1818
A novel about creation, written by a teenager on a wet holiday.
Great Expectations — Opening
Charles Dickens · 1861
A marsh, a small boy, and the most atmospheric opening in English fiction.
Ulysses
Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1842
An old hero refusing the only thing left to him: rest.
Moby-Dick — Opening
Herman Melville · 1851
Three words that turn a narrator into an invitation.
The Great Gatsby — Closing
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
The last page of the American dream, written in the tense it describes.
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871
A whole town, and every private ambition quietly measured against what it costs.
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 1848
A fair with no heroes, and one woman determined to win at it.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1868
Four sisters growing up while the money runs out.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving · 1820
A schoolmaster, a rival, a horse race, and one very effective rumour.