American author Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote several books of essays, commonly associated with the transcendentalism and romanticism movements in New England. These are among his most well-known writings.

Presents Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel about an elderly slave who maintains his human dignity in the face of cruelty, suffering, and death; and includes a Stowe time line, a historical time line, critical excerpts, discussion questions, and other study tools.

The catalyst for the mystery is Walter Hartright's encounter on a moonlit road with a mysterious woman dressed head to toe in white. She is in a state of confusion and distress, and when Hartright helps her find her way back to London she warns him against an unnamed "man of rank and title." Hartright soon learns that she may have escaped from an asylum and finds to his amazement that her story may be connected to that of the woman he secretly loves....

A gentle linen weaver in a small English town is wrongly accused of a theft goes into seclusion and finds redemption in his unselfish love for an abandoned child who mysteriously appears at his cottage.