It's Christmastime in London, and overworked Bob Cratchit and his family, including poorly Tiny Tim, find joy and cheer even in poverty. Meanwhile Bob's boss, the selfish, miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge, is deeply bitter about the festive season. However, when Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, the error of his ways is revealed with haunting clarity. Dickens's timeless classic, which has popularised phrases...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce and is a key work of twentieth century literature that remains as fresh, challenging and relevant as the day it was first published. It is a autobiographical novel and describes the early life and development of its central character, Stephen Dedalus (representing Joyce). Stephan, an intelligent but frail child, struggles toward maturity in Ireland at the turn of...

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentlemen callers'.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), is a devastating portrait of a generation of wealthy young Americans who struggle to find meaning and happiness in their lives. The sophisticated but emotionally fragile Anthony Patch enjoys an initially idyllic marriage to the beautiful Gloria Gilbert. But their intense romance turns sour as they waste their time and energy in decadent leisure and luxury. Their happiness comes...

Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A PLACE IN THE SUN. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters),...

"This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow and her handsome and earthy younger gardener. When their romance prompts the scorn of her children and country-club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others. A profoundly felt film about class and conformity in small-town America"--Container....