CLASSICS

"I tried to turn away, but the shadows and the sounds and the stench were everywhere. Then I remembered something I used to do in half-conscious nightmares as a boy,...

With an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Michael Irwin, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Kent, Canterbury.The young Thomas Hardy, working as an architect, but fired with literary ambition, tried...

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of the party?'So Mark Twain acclaims his voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy...

With an Introduction by M.J. Elliott.'My eyes, perversely shaken open, gazed for an instant upon a sight which no human creature could even imagine without panic, fear and physical exhaustion...'A...

'How on earth did you piece together all this?' he asked in wonder. Mr Reeder shook his head sadly.'I have that perversion,' he said. 'It is a terrible misfortune. I...

Henry Morton Stanley's greeting to the Scottish medical missionary David Livingstone 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' is to exploration what Holmes's 'Elementary, my dear Watson' is to detective fiction. It took...

With an Introduction and Notes by Sara Haslam, Department of English, The Open University.The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including...

The words 'Merry Christmas' first appeared in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which has become probably the best-loved of all Christmas stories, and it appears here with the four other...

The four novels gathered here constitute the complete longer works of one the most brilliant and original American writers. West's vision of American modernity is terrifyingly comical and diagnoses the...

Irish-born playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett, one of the most individual voices of post-war literature, famously said: 'Personally, I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air...

From the rain forests of Almayer's Folly to the Mediterranean coast of The Rover, Conrad's first and final completed novels are played out against contrasting backgrounds. Almayer, in Borneo, is...

In The Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendyll's close resemblance to the King of Ruritania leads him into intrigue, romance and perilous escapades. Enmeshed in a plot by the villainous Duke...

Translated, with an introduction, by John R. Williams.This selection of Kafka's shorter prose writings includes one of the few works published during his lifetime: the harrowing story of Gregor Samsa's...

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was internationally famous as the author of novels based on 'extraordinary voyages.' His visionary use of new travel technologies inspired his readers to look to the industrial...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.Lucia is one of the great comic characters in English literature. Outrageously pretentious, hypocritical and snobbish, Queen...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and...

When Pollyanna Whittier goes to live with her sourtempered aunt after her father's death, things seem bad enough, but then a dreadful accident ensues.However, Pollyanna's sunny nature and good humour...

Virginia Woolf's second novel, Night and Day (1919), portrays the gradual changes in a society,the patterns and conventions of which are slowly disintegrating; where therepresentatives of the younger generation struggle...

An invaluable companion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain's inimitable portrait of 'the great Father of Waters'....

Enter Arsene Lupin, Gentleman - Cambrioleur, the 'Prince of Thieves', one of the most daring and dashing individuals who ever lifted a diamond necklace from under the noses of the...

Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-nineteenth century. But these...

`And behind him, like a misshapen black frog, bounded the Thing, its red tongue lolling out of its gash of a mouth, its diminutive blubbery lips drawn back in a...

During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (bornc.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator,overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire. He was servant, retainer, husband, friend andfather, but...

Few American novelists of the twentieth century have stayed as modern as F. Scott Fitzgerald. He gave a name to his age, 'the Jazz Age', but his reputation has outlived...

Max Carrados is one of the most unusual detectives in all fiction. He is blind - and yet he has developed his other faculties to such an amazing degree that...

When Princess Irene and her nursemaid stay out too late one night and are chased home by goblins, a young miner boy called Curdie comes to their rescue. So begins...

Parade's End is the great British war novel and Ford Madox Ford's major achievement as a novelist. Originally published as four linked novels between 1924 and 1928, it follows the...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.In Henry IV, Part 1, the King is in a doubly ironic position. His rebellion against Richard...

'Hello, I'm Raggedy Ann. Welcome to my world. I'm going to tell you about myself and this book. Some grown-ups think I'm just another rag doll with floppy arms and...

With an Introduction and Notes by James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in French, University of Kent Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit...

With an Introduction by Joanna Trollope.Trollope's delightful novel recounts the fortunes of Doctor Thorne, an upright and principled country doctor, and his niece Mary. She falls in love with Frank...

This volume contains a generous selection of the tales of H. G. Wells, some of them famous, some forgotten. They demonstrate his immense imaginative energy, his originality, his prophetic genius,...

These comic novels will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped by circumstance. Their central characters, Artie Kipps and Alfred Polly, are prisoners of their modest social class, limited...

H. G. Wells is often referred to as `the father of science fiction' and this compendium of his stories contains two of his most well-known works in the genre, The...

When penniless businessman Mr Bedford retreats to Kent to write a play, he encounters Dr Cavor, an absent-minded scientist who has invented a material that counteracts gravity. This discovery enables...

The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents,...

The Wonderful World of the Wizard of Oz, which the the Library of Congress named as 'America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale', is one of the great works of children's...

Robin Hood is perhaps the greatest of all British folk heroes. Henry Gilbert's book assembles all the disparate elements of the legend into an elegiac and detailed version of Robin's...

Treasure Island is the seminal pirates and buried treasure novel, which is so brilliantly concocted that it appeals to readers both young and old. The story is told in the...

The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair...

'This is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers' Edmund White, Washington Post When Arthur Montana, world-renowned 'Emperor of Soul', is found dead in a...

Samuel Richardson's Pamela is a captivating story of one young woman's rebellion against the social order, edited by Peter Sabor with an introduction by Margaret A. Doody in Penguin Classics.Fifteen-year-old...

Thady Quirk, devoted steward to the decaying estate of the Rackrent family, narrates a riotous story of four generations of a dying dynasty in Castle Rackrent (1800). Thady will defend...