CLASSICS

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...

In the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire, Vivian is writing an article about the importance of lying, when he is interrupted by Cyril, who tries to tempt him...

The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition - in a shopping arcade - of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan...

What is the nature, essence and definition of a fart? What are the consequences and disadvantages of suppressing one? Why is farting considered to be taboo? Swift's The Benefit of...

Inspired by Boileau's Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the "Ancients", who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the...

We takes place in a distant future, where humans are forced to submit their wills to the requirements of the state, under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor, and dreams...

The interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has gone on for so long that it has become a subject of mirth in legal circles and a source of great profit...

The most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for...

In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little does he suspect that...

The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is sent to a prison colony in Siberia for killing his wife. Largely ignored at first...

"Orphaned at an early age, Heidi has been brought up by her mother's sister Dete in Switzerland. Having been offered a job in Frankfurt, however, her aunt is forced to...

A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed, Directions...

The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing...

During a stifling St Petersburg summer, the rich landowner Velchaninov is haunted by the figure of a man he keeps glimpsing in the street. When he receives a surprise visit...

In the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante recounts his journey through heaven, after the travails and torments of Hell and the arduous ascent of Mount Purgatory,...

As ideological ferment grips Russia, a small group of revolutionaries, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky and inspired by Nikolai Stavrogin, plan to spread destruction and anarchy throughout the country. Morally bankrupt,...

Originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his children at bedtime, this compendium of witty tales imagines how animals came to be as they are now. Discover how the massive whale...

When Celine's first novel, Journey to the End of the Night was first published in 1932, it created an instant scandal, being extravagantly praised by its supporters and savagely attacked...

James Joyce's first published book, which he wrote when he was still in his twenties, Dubliners is far removed from the bold experimentalism of his later work, but is essential...

In Thomas More's hugely influential Utopia, a traveller recounts his discovery of an island nation in which the inhabitants enjoy unprecedented social cohesion and justice. The book imagines a community...

While enjoying a six weeks' stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. Thanks to a new literary diet of...

As they relax after dinner on Christmas Eve, the members of a family and their guests turn to telling ghost stories. These ghoulish accounts range from the melancholy to the...

Set in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the chaotic winter of 1918-19, The White Guard, Bulgakov's first full-length novel, tells the story of a Russian-speaking family trapped in circumstances...

Ebenezer Scrooge is a lonely, miserly old man who hates Christmas, which he dismisses as "humbug". One Christmas Eve, however, he is visited by a series of ghosts who reveal...

From his Baker Street apartment, Sherlock Holmes wields his powers of deduction in pursuit of justice and truth, venturing out into foggy Victorian London accompanied by his faithful sidekick Dr...

A murderer is forced to reveal his crime by the sound of a beating heart, a mysterious figure wreaks havoc among a party of noblemen during the time of the...

This trilogy of short novels, taken as a whole, recounts the young narrator's early life up to his university days, each episode told through the perceptions, points of view and...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful...

Born into a poor family, Fanny Price is raised amid the daunting splendour of Mansfield Park by her rich uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Treated as an inferior by most of...

Universally known for his groundbreaking prose - especially for the monumental novel Ulysses and its depictions of Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century - James Joyce started off...

The adventures of Mowgli, the young man raised by wolves in the jungles of Central India, and his friends Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther and Kaa the python, as...

When it is discovered that the reigning world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, is on board a cruiser heading for Buenos Aires, a fellow passenger challenges him to a game. Czentovic...

When young Dorothy and her dog Toto are caught in a cyclone, their Kansas farmhouse is carried off to the magical Land of Oz. Upon being told that the only...

Having travelled from her native New York to London to meet her relatives, Isabel Archer, a young, independently minded young woman, rejects the marriage proposals of two suitors in her...

Judicially condemned in 1857 as offensive to public morality, The Flowers of Evil is now regarded as the most influential volume of poetry published in the nineteenth century. Torn between...

"She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steeled his heart against her."In love with the beautiful heiress Laura Fairlie, the...

Persuasion narrates the emotional journey of its protagonist Anne Elliot, who chances upon Captain Wentworth, a suitor she was persuaded to reject seven years earlier, and whose reappearance causes her...

"There is absolutely no necessity to learn how to read; meat smells a mile off, anyway. Nevertheless, if you live in Moscow and have a brain in your head, you'll...

Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions...

The boy who wouldn't grow up, Peter Pan has the power of flight and lives on a magical island. But he is fascinated by Mary Darling's bedtime stories for her...

Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts...

When strange things are reported to be floating in rivers in rural Vermont after a flood, old myths about hill-dwelling monsters who abduct humans resurface in subsequent debates, much to...

When the Selfish Giant decides to build a wall around his garden to prevent the children from playing in it, it becomes barren and stuck in perpetual winter. It takes...

In Hard Times, Dickens illustrates the condition of England through the fictional city of Coketown. Among its inhabitants are Thomas Gradgrind, the utilitarian headmaster who attempts to impose his rigid...

The present selection traces the development of Yeats's verse, encompassing the poet's interest in Irish folklore and national identity, his engagement with the political situation of his day and the...

When Rachel Verinder's legacy of a priceless Indian diamond is stolen, all the evidence indicates that it is her beloved, Franklin Blake, who is guilty. Around this central axis of...

When the world-weary dandy Eugene Onegin moves from St Petersburg to take up residence in the country estate he has inherited, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his neighbour,...

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne's novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of...