Warbler Classics

A Daughter of the Samurai offers an elegant account of a world that had all but vanished by the time Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto put pen to paper. In her beguiling memoir Sugimoto chronicles her childhood in the frozen Nagaoka region of Japan, where she grows up in a high-ranking samurai family in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration that stripped the samurai class of many of its privileges. Although originally destined to be a Buddhist priestess, at the age of twelve she becomes engaged by family arrangement to a Japanese merchant in Cincinnati, Ohio. To prepare for her new life in the United States Etsu attends a Methodist school in Tokyo where she studies English. In 1898 she boards a ship and leaves the only land she has ever known. An emissary of her native culture even while she is fascinated by American customs, Sugimoto keenly observes the two worlds she inhabits. Sugimoto's profound, poignant, and sometimes wry perceptions continue to resonate with authenticity and insight to this day. Includes a biographical note on the author's life and work.

The Fox is a timeless exploration of the human spirit, personal freedom, and the ever-shifting landscape of human connection. Set against the backdrop of World War I, D. H. Lawrence's The Fox explores the lives of three protagonists in a triangle of desire and dread. Nellie March and Jill Banford have built a life together on an isolated poultry farm. Their lives, disrupted only thus far by the incursions of a fox that is raiding their coops, are complicated by the arrival of Henry Grenfel, a young soldier in search of his grandfather, the now-deceased former owner of the farm. In exchange for work on the farm, he stays during his furlough, sparking a series of events that challenge societal norms and precipitate the upheaval of their lives.