CLASSICS

Edith Wharton's classic novel follows Lily Bart, a beautiful, witty and sophisticated New York socialite, popular with both 'old money' and the growing numbers of nouveaux riches, as she searches...

Virginia Woolf's lyrical, nostalgic novel centres at first on a family holiday in Skye where the subtle shifts of tension and affection between the Ramsays and their guests are delicately...

The classic tale of Tess Durbeyfield, wronged by two men and driven to vengeful murder, shows Hardy at his most fatalistic. Hardy felt that this was the finest of his...

'The image of little Oliver Twist victimised by poverty, almost seduced by the specious excitement of crime, and then offered the possibility of a lucrative career in authorship is always...

William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair depicts the anarchic anti-heroine Beky Sharpe cutting a swathe through the eligible young men of Europe, set against a lucid backdrop of war and international...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into...

The definitive edition of Anne Frank's work, incorporating entries that were omitted from the original edition. Among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century, it has been read by...

In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the...

It was Friday night. Mr and Mrs Darling were dining out. Nana had been tied up in the backyard. The poor dog was barking, for she could smell danger. And...

'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.'Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and...

Sometimes known as the Arabian Nights, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights includes some of the world's best-loved tales, including such classics as Aladdin and 'Sindbad the Sailor' The...

A hugely significant political novel of the late 20th century from one of the outstanding writers of the modern era. In a London squat, a band of bourgeois revolutionaries are...

'Traitor! Now is your death-time upon you!'You may think you know all about King Arthur, the young boy who plucked the sword from the stone. You've probably heard stories about...

'Bah,'said Scrooge, 'Humbug.'But that was before he was presented with visions of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come, which gave him a whole new lease of life:'I...

'Mr Durrell has written about a dozen real love stories, entwined them, explored them with a truly Proustian ferocity and set them all against the marvellous background of Alexandria in...

Discover Mann's Nobel Prizewinning semi-autobiographical and sweeping family epic.The Buddenbrook clan is everything you'd expect of a nineteenth-century German merchant family - wealthy, esteemed, established. Four generations later, a tide...

Was there ever a real Robin Hood? Nick Rennison looks at the candidates who have been proposed over the years, from petty thieves to Knights Templar, before moving on to...

'The language is refined, the smile not grave, My honest tongue recounts how men behave.' The Satyricon is the most celebrated work of fiction to have survived from the ancient...