Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, orginally entitled " First Impressions". The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman, living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. It is one of the most popular novels in English literature, and has been adapted numerous times for film and stage. Jane Austen began writing the novel in October of 1796 and finished it by August of the following year; she was aged only twenty-one years old. Little is known of this early version of the story beyond its original title: First Impressions. Three months after completing the work, her father offered it to a publisher in the hope that it would make it into print. The publisher refused without ever having seen the manuscript and it was not until fourteen years later that Austen picked it up again after the successful publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811. Retitled Pride and Prejudice it was accepted for publication and released on 28 January 1813.

The Great Gatsby is a brilliant illustration of life among the new rich in America during the 1920s. The mysterious Jay Gatsby embodies the American notion that it is possible to redefine oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. Gatsby's youthful neighbor, Nick Carraway, the narrator, rents a house in Long Island next door to Jay Gatsby. Fascinated with the display of enormous wealth in which Gatsby revels, Carraway finds himself swept up in the lavish lifestyle of Long Island society during the Jazz Age. Gatsby is in love with Nick's cousin who is married to a man she doesn't love. Their extramarital affairs are set against the background of extravagant parties that Gatsby is famous for throwing while Nick struggles to reconcile his attraction to a lavish lifestyle with his feeling that a moral grounding is missing.

At the age of eight, Scout Finch is an entrenched free-thinker. She can accept her father's warning that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because mockingbirds harm no one and give great pleasure. The benefits said to be gained from going to school and keeping her temper elude her.

The place of this enchanting, intensely moving story is Maycomb, Alabama. The time is the Depression, but Scout and her brother, Jem, are seldom depressed. They have appalling gifts for entertaining themselves--appalling, that is, to almost everyone except their wise lawyer father, Atticus.

Atticus is a man of unfaltering good will and humor, and partly because of this, the children become involved in some disturbing adult mysteries: fascinating Boo Radley, who never leaves his house; the terrible temper of Mrs. Dubose down the street; the fine distinctions that make the Finch family "quality"; the forces that cause the people of Maycomb to show compassion in one crisis and unreasoning cruelty in another.

Also because Atticus is what he is, and because he lives where he does, he and his children are plunged into a conflict that indelibly marks their lives--and gives Scout some basis for thinking she knows just about as much about the world as she needs to.

J.D. Salinger's 1951 classic of adolescent angst has become one of the most popular books of all time. With its themes of alienation and rebellion it has been translated into almost every language and regularly sells more than 250,000 copies each year, and has sold more than 65 million copies. Holden Caulfield, the novel's protagonist and antihero, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there. Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage rebellion.

Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But dreams come at a price. Gentle giant Lennie doesn't know his own strength, and when they find work at a ranch he gets into trouble with the boss's daughter-in-law. Trouble so bad that even his protector George may not be able to save him.


Director Bruce Beresford continues his exploration of American opera with the Australian premiere of Of Mice and Men, an opera based on John Steinbeck

Philip Pirrip - known more commonly as Pip - is an orphan. His visits to the mysterious Miss Havisham are his only escape from his childhood of poverty. But then an anonymous bequest changes his life for ever - until secrets from Pip's past emerge, threatening to destroy the genteel new life he has built for himself. And Pip soon discovers the merciless cruelty of love, and the harsh reality of his great expectations.