CLASSICS

Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) spent the early part of her working life providing for a demanding and ungrateful family. We are lucky that she did so, since among the results were...

This novel is an exciting fusion of a Sherlock Holmes mystery with the Ruritanian world of intrigue and skulduggery of Anthony Hope's novel The Prisoner of Zenda. Colonel Sapt of...

Jane Austen is without question, one of England's most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature's most charismatic and believable...

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,...

This novel, when originally published in 1936, was entitled The Wheel Spins. However, since the Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation in 1938, the novel has become better known by its 'Hollywood...

With an Introduction by Nicola Bradbury, University of ReadingUne Vie (1883) and Bel-Ami (1885) seem almost diametrically opposed in tone and temper. The `Life' of the first is poignantly restricted...

The Sea-Wolf belongs in the honorific tradition of American sea fiction where the voyage motif became a means of exploring the meaning of life, as in Richard Henry Dana's Two...

Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (revised by Moya Longstaffe). With an Introduction and Notes by Moya Longstaffe.The Red and the Black has been hailed as the first great 'realist'...

This is the first paperback edition to bring out in one volume Kate Chopin's extraordinary novel The Awakening (1899), along with the complete text of her two collections of short...

Almayer's Folly was Conrad's outstanding debut novel: as well as exploring the culture of a part of the world previously unknown to English fiction, it showed immense sophistication in its...

Dorothy Kathleen Broster (1877-1950) is best known for her historical novels. But there is a darker side to her writing, glimpsed in her early poems - 'The Second of September...

Selected and Introduced by M.J. Elliott.That is not dead that can eternal lie And with strange aeons even death may die Millenia ago, the Old Ones ruled our planet. Since...

This book comes with an introduction by Graham Handley. Who was the Countess and why does she selfishly ingratiate herself into the poor household of Reverend Amos Barton, curate of...

"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...