CLASSICS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALIThe love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks...

Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens' lifetime. He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and...

With an Introduction by Helen Moore.The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is one of the most enduring and influential stories in world literature. Its...

With an Introduction by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading.Translated by C.J. Hogarth.Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has long been acclaimed as Turgenev's...

An immediate best-seller on publication, Ben Hur remains a dazzling achievement by any standards. A thoroughly exhilarating tale of betrayal, revenge and salvation, it is the only novel that ranks...

With an Introduction and Notes by David Blair.From its first publication in 1816 Rob Roy has been recognised as containing some of Scott's finest writing and most engaging, fully realised...

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury.Set in the reign of Richard I, Coeur de Lion, Ivanhoe is packed with memorable incidents - sieges, ambushes and...

Traditional rhymes and stories have been collected under the wing of Mother Goose for centuries and this collection of favourite nursery rhymes has been put together by the famous illustrator...

Hans Christian Andersen is the best-loved of all tellers of fairy tales.This collection of over forty of Andersen's most popular stories includes The Mermaid, The Real Princess, The Red Shoes,...

Johann Rudolf Wyss' tale of a family's adventures on an isolated desert island is a great children's favourite. The plot is a simple one but has many surprises and excitements...

Jane Austen is without question, one of England's most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature's most charismatic and believable...

`Everyone in Greenall Bridge knew Sam Carraclough's Lassie. In fact, you might say that she was the best-known dog in the village ... because nearly every man in the village...

This collection comprises of Joyce's three novels, plus the short story collection Dubliners.Dubliners, about Joyce's native city, is faithful to his country, seeing it unflinchingly and challenging every precedent and...

Few works of American fiction have proved as enduringly popular as Harold Bell Wright's The Shepherd of the Hills. Wright's novel, first published in 1907, was an instant best seller;...

When fifteen-year-old orphan John Trenchard is banished by his Aunt Jane, he goes to live at the local inn with the mysterious Elzevir Block, whose son has been killed by...

Rip van Winkle is an amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect; a familiar figure about the village, he is loved by all except his wife....

'Moving, his candle was instantly extinguished, and in the very moment of being left in the darkness he saw, standing in the doorway, a woman, resembling her who had haunted...

The sixteenth-century Puritan Solomon Kane has a thirst for justice which surpasses common reason. Sombre of mood, clad in black and grey, he 'never sought to analyse his motives and...

Edited, with an Introduction, by William Breeze. Foreword by David Tibet.This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)....

Welcome to the breathtaking adventures of Sexton Blake!For the greater part of the 20th century, the countless escapades of super sleuth Sexton Blake kept millions of readers on the edge...

Selected, Edited and Introduced by David Stuart Davies.The Best of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twenty of the very best tales from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fifty-six short stories...

With an Introduction by Professor Stuart Sim.John Bunyan was variously a tinker, soldier, Baptist minister, prisoner and writer of outstanding narrative genius which reached its apotheosis in this, his greatest...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it...

Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B. Cook Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).Following the success of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and...

The Aeneid is Virgil's Masterpiece. His epic poem recounts the story of Rome's legendary origins from the ashes of Troy and proclaims her destiny of world dominion. This optimistic vision...

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank.The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental,...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury.Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a...

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York.Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works....

Agnes Grey is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century.This is a deeply personal novel...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.The diverse tales selected for this volume display the astonishing virtuosity of Rudyard Kipling's early writings. A...

Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation.Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad, have...

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children.But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as...

Anna Sewell's Black Beauty was an immediate success on its publication in 1877, and has gone on to sell an estimated 50 million copies.Black Beauty is a horse with a...

When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis are shattered. They and their mother have to move from their comfortable London home...

'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' Treasure Island is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck, and is perhaps the best...

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading.This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions.To the Lighthouse is the most...

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Roger Cardinal. University of Kent at Canterbury.Translationsare by Paul Desages (Around the World in Eighty Days) and Arthur Chambers (Five Weeks in a...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University.Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor is an historical novel of high adventure set in the...

With an Introduction and Notes by R.T.Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York.The novel follows the life of its eponymous heroine, Moll Flanders, through its many vicissitudes, which include...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Department of English, Canterbury Christ Church University College.Based on Charlotte Bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette is a...

'All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's'.Saki (H.H. Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury.The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set...

With an Introduction by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex.After Sherlock Holmes' apparently fatal encounter with the sinister Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, the great detective reappears, to the...

Introduction and Notes by David Blair. University of Kent at Canterbury.It is 1757. Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older...

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren. University of Kent at Canterbury.One of the most celebrated and popular historical romances ever written, The Three Musketeers tells the story of...

Introduction and Notes by Susan Jones, St Hilda's College, Oxford.First published in 1900, Lord Jim established Conrad as one of the great storytellers of the twentieth century. Set in the...

'My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know'. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant detective to the...