The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Further reading: Two standard lives are Jocelyn Baines's Joseph Conrad: A Criticai Biography; and F.R. Karl's Joseph Conrad. The Three Lives. See also: B.C. Meyer, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytical Biography; Leo Gurko, Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile; Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle; G. Jean-Aubry, Sea-Dreamer, A Definitive Biography of Joseph Conrad; A.J. Guйrard, Conrad the Novelist; F.R. Leavis, The Great Tradition; E.M. Forster, "Joseph Conrad: A Note" in Бbinger Harvest.

Anton Chekhov—The handiest edition of the complete plays is in the Penguin Classics series, translated and introduced by Elisaveta Fen. Another good paperback is Plays and Letters, 1884-1Q04 (Norton). His short stories have appeared in a bewil- dering profusion of editions. See representative volumes: Anton Chekhov: Selected Stories, tr. Ann Dunnigan (Signet Classics); Ward Six and Other Stories, tr. Ann Dunnigan (Signet Classics); Peasants and Other Stories, selected and with a preface by Edmund Wilson (Doubleday Anchor). Ecco Press has issued in paperback twelve volumes of The Tales of Anton Chekhov, using the classic version by Constance Garnett.

Further reading: Good biographies are David Magarshack, Chekhov: A Life; Ernest J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography; Ronald A. Hingley, A New Life of Anton Chekhov; Henri Troyat, Chekhov, which is both recent and highly readable. See also M.J. Valency, The Breaking String.

Edith Wharton—Ali of her major novйis are in print from Scribners; there are also Penguin editions of most. The Library of Amйricas volume of selected novйis includes the three that we

recommend, plus The Reef. See also The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, ed. R.W.B. Lewis (Scribners), and Edith Wharton Novellas and Other Writings, ed. Cynthia Griffin Wolff (Library of America).

Further reading: The standard life is R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography. See also Millicent Bell, Edith Wharton and Henry James, and the same authors The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton; Louis Auchincloss, Edith Wharton: A Woman in Her Time; Gloria Erlich, The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton; Katharine Joslin, Edith Wharton; Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton; and a pictorial biography by Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life.

William Butler Yeats—The best edition (hardbound): The Poems ofW.B. Yeats, ed. Richard Finneran (Macmillan). Through Collier, Macmillan also issues Eleven Plays, The Autobiography, and Essays and Introductions. Last Poems (Aurora); Selected Poems (Macmillan).

Further reading: A standard biography is J.M. Hone's William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). See also: T.R. Henn, The Lonely Tower; Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks; Douglas Archibald, Yeats; Denis Donoghue, Yeats; Harold Bloom, Yeats and R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life; essays on Yeats in Arland Usshers Three Great Irishmen; Edmund Wilson, AxeVs Castle; T.S. Eliot's essay in On Poetry and Poets; Keith Alldritt, W.B. Yeats: Man and Milieu.

Natsume Soseki—Kokoro, tr. Edwin McClellan (Regnery); Botchan, tr. Umeji Sasaki (Charles E. Tuttle).