CLASSICS

In the summer of 1844, taking a break from novel-writing, the thirty-two-year-old Charles Dickens embarked on a journey to Italy with his wife, his five children and his young sister-in-law....

Simplicius Simplicissimus - the towering achievement of H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, one of the earliest novelists in the German language - charts the adventures of its hero, Simplicius, through the horrors...

Dante's dramatic journey down the circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and through the spheres of Heaven in search of redemption - and his encounter with devils, monsters...

Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for...

On his return to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War as an assistant surgeon, Doctor Watson is looking for a place to live. He is introduced to a...

A first-person diary of a prisoner's final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo's poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the...

It is 1880: after visiting his mistress in the London suburbs, Colonel Pargiter returns home to his children and his dying wife. In a series of snapshots we meet all...

When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that...

The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realizes that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her...

A rediscovered gem from Italian children literature, written by the author of Pinocchio, translated and expanded by Alessandro Gallenzi and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (the illustrator of the Gruffalo). Collodi...

Inspired by real events and centring on the figure of Pelageya Vlasova - the mother of the title - and her son Pavel, Gorky's masterpiece describes the brutal life of...

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, following the example of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Alexander Afanasyev embarked on the ambitious task of sifting through the huge repository of...

Rising from humble beginnings as a foundling, Castruccio Castracani came to prominence as one of the most powerful and shrewd warlords in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli argues, so great was his...

After the death of his father, the seventeen-year-old orphan David Balfour discovers the existence of an uncle, and sets off in search of him. His uncle Ebenzer is far from...

The mayor and local officials of a small provincial town in Russia have got it made: corruption is rife and they have all the power. Yet, when they learn that...

"Written after Woolf had finished her emotionally draining work on The Waves, Flush purports to be an autobiography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's eponymous cocker spaniel, charting the dog's early days...

After doubts are raised concerning the trustworthiness of Magua, Cora and Alice Munro's Native American guide, the warrior slips away into the wilderness, and the vulnerable sisters turn to the...

"Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, spends his childhood on the bustling streets of Lahore, begging and running errands in order to survive. One day he meets...

As he was finishing Finnegans Wake, Joyce proclaimed, "I have discovered I can do anything with language I want." Indeed, with his last book, which took him seventeen years to...

"One of the most famous and celebrated Victorian coming-of-age novels, David Copperfield charts the adventures and vicissitudes of its eponymous hero's life, from the misery of his childhood after his...

Between 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde's drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a...

Of unknown date, and surviving in a tenth-century manuscript, Beowulf is the tale of a young Geatish hero and his struggle with three deadly foes, beginning with the dread monster...

Having frittered away his family's fortune in Paris, the profligate Guido, driven by his ungovernable passions, is forced out of his native Genoa and harbours plans for revenge. After a...

When the young naturalist Darwin set sail on a round-the-world expedition at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that the relationships between all life forms,...

Russia's literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman - a professor of black magic - arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It...

First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcil able relationships. At the centre of the story...

When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, having published only a tiny selection of her verse anonymously in journals and newspapers, she left behind a chest containing almost 1,800 poems written...

Found in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci's writings and drawings, 'The Prophecies' are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While...

Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end of his career and considered by him the culmination of all his life's work, Eureka is an extended treatise...

Frank Aldersley becomes engaged to Clara Burnham on the eve of his departure on a journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Unbeknownst to him, Richard Wardour, his spurned rival, joins...

Inspired by a box of wooden toy soldiers given as a present to her elder brother Branwell in 1826, Charlotte Bronte created, together with her siblings, a series of tales...

Coming back into town after a hunting expedition, Alexandre Dumas witnesses an incredible scene: a man has come to hand himself in to the mayor after decapitating his wife, terrified...

As the sensitive and delicate Gertrude begins to shrink from her drunken and violent husband, their marriage becomes a battleground. Gertrude turns increasingly towards her two eldest sons, William and...

During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received - as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham - what is...

In response to the dire economic conditions in eighteenth-century Ireland, A Modest Proposal ironically exhorts the poor to provide their offspring as food to the rich. Skilfully applying a wealth...

For two and a half thousand years The Art of War has been the core text of military strategy and planning, providing leaders with enduring insights into tactics, psychology, discipline...

"After a while, with the parrot's help, the Doctor got to learn the language of the animals so well that he could talk to them himself and understand everything they...

Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, twenty-nine pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on their long road, their host suggests that they regale each other...

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in...

Gilbert Markham is fascinated by Helen Graham, the beautiful and enigmatic woman who has recently moved into Wildfell Hall. He is swift to befriend her and steadfastly refutes the local...

"Though Earth and moon were gone,And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone,Every Existence would exist in Thee."From the transcendent beauty of nature observed on the...

As the young Zinaida and her sweetheart, the student Nemovetsky, stroll through the idyllic Russian countryside, their memories, dreams and thoughts about life and the future mingle in the evening...

This volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville's masterpieces. In 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young...

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles' proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of his brother's mill, he decides to accept a position...

Conflict between father and son is one of the oldest themes in literature, and in this open letter to his father - a letter which was never sent - Kafka...

The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her family and so sets out to prove herself by seeking employment as a governess....

The Vita Nuova, with its unusual blend of prose and poetry, is universally recognized as Dante's early masterpiece and provides an indispensable prequel to The Divine Comedy. Set in thirteenth-century...

A glorious exercise in cheeky punmanship, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders sees Jonathan Swift in fine scatological form. Flying by the seat of his pants, the great author treats us...