CLASSICS

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear,...

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also...

Discover Murdoch's wonderful writing in this compelling story of a young woman and an unusual religious lay community.A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home...

Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as...

De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and poetry in Penguin Classics, edited and introduced by Colm Toibin.At the start of 1895,...

'The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.'Is lying simply an uncomfortable truth about...

Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "roaring twenties", and a devastating expose of the 'Jazz Age'. Through the...

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff...

Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has...

Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family of the four March sisters living in...

Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an...

Anne Shirley is an eleven-year-old orphan who has hung on determinedly to an optimistic spirit and a wildly creative imagination through her early deprivations. She erupts into the lives of...

Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit...

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891,...

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of...

Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, desperation, fear,...

Frankenstein is the classic gothic horror novel which has thrilled and engrossed readers for two centuries. Written by Mary Shelley, it is a story which she intended would 'curdle the...

Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage...

'...man is not truly one, but truly two.'In this powerful deconstruction of Calvinist belief and the hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian society, Stevenson creates a gothic icon in the...

'There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey, the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed...

Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From...

From its first publication in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been printed in over 700 editions. It has inspired almost every conceivable kind of imitation and variation, and been the subject...

The signature character of author H. P. Lovecraft's darkly fantastic fiction, Cthulhu is as emblematic for Lovecraft's fans as Darth Vader is for Star Wars adherents. Both feared and worshipped...

Yet few of these stories have been translated or published outside Russia. This rare collection includes eleven vintage tales by seven writers of the period: Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Aleksandr...

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** 'This belated collection shows us the depths of Fitzgerald's vision and talent. Only now are we beginning to appreciate what was lost' The PoolI'd...

A lost-world fantasy in the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Utopianism of William Morris, Herland inverted expectations with its exclusively female society visited by three men from the...

**The twentieth-century masterpiece, the authoritative new edition** With a new foreword by Jesmyn Ward, author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted Sing, Unburied, Sing'There was music from my neighbour's house through the...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'I want to know if men realise when they are insane. Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too...

For more than 80 years H. P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of horror and supernatural fiction with his dark vision of humankind's insignificant place in a vast, uncaring cosmos. At...

Cracking Shakespeare serves to demystify the process of speaking Shakespeare's language, offering hands-on techniques for drama students, young actors and directors who are intimidated by rehearsing, performing and directing Shakespeare's...

When old drunken sailor Billy Bones dies at the Admiral Benbow Inn, the innkeeper's son Jim Hawkins finds a map amongst his possessions. The local physician, Doctor Livesey, and the...

Shakespeare's potent use of garden imagery has captivated successive generations of readers and inspired the making of gardens across the globe. Laced with quotations and abounding with illustrations drawn from...

The legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of the great tales of American folklore, supposedly stemming from Washington Irving's famous short story. But what if there was more to the...

James Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on one day in June 1904. It is considered to be one...

Overcome with grief at her husband's death, Lady Franklin, an eligible young widow, unburdens herself to Leadbitter - a gallant, hard-bitten ex-soldier who has invested his savings in the car...

The thirteenth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by crime writer Natasha Cooper - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's...

***THE NOVEL OF THE HIT INDIE FILM***'If, like me, you like your Austen subversive, cruel, funny and outrageous, then you will love Stillman's Love & Friendship' The Times'Lady Susan is...

'Witty, satirical and deftly malicious' Anthony Burgess Described by the New York Times upon her death as 'one of Britain's best-known novelists', delve into the sparkling and satirical world of...

From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatra-one of the Bard's most riveting and memorable female characters.Cleopatra...

From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century-an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Lear,...

From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, Harold Bloom presents Othello's Iago, perhaps the Bard's most compelling villain-the fourth in a series of five short books about...

From the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time, comes a portrait of Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare's most complex and compelling anti-heroes-the final volume in a series of five short...

In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series...

First published in 1914, Dubliners depicts middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the start of the twentieth century. Themes within the stories include the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of...

Folk tales and fairy stories from all over the world are collected together in this gorgeous international anthology which brings together 'The Frog Who Became an Emperor' from China, 'The...