CLASSICS

With an Introduction and revised translation by Adrianne Tooke.Sentimental Education has been described both as the first modern novel and as a novel to end all novels. Weaving a poignant...

With an Introduction by A. M. de Medeiros, University of Kent at Canterbury.A year after the publication of The Three Musketeers,/em>, Alexandre Dumas produced a sequel worthy in every respect...

Elegant, ruthless, hypnotic: enter Dr Nikola and his black cat Apollyon. He was the world's first master villain, a Victorian forerunner of Dr Fu Manchu and the mad cat-stroking evil...

Scotland has a notoriously rich and diverse cultural tradition when it comes to the supernatural. Many of her greatest writers from Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg to Robert Louis...

Some six or seven feet above the port bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as the full moon, hung a Face. It was not human, and it certainly...

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born in Odense, the son of a shoemaker. His early life was wretched, but he was adopted by a patron and became a short-story writer,...

One of the first and still one of the finest spy stories ever written, Erskine Childers' book introduced Edwardian readers to the idea of a 'secret service'. In an enthralling...

With an Introduction by Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading.The Wings of the Dove is a tale of desire and possession, of love and death. It is in essence a simple...

Kafka's final novel was written during 1922, when the tuberculosis that was to kill him was already at an advanced stage. Fragmentary and unfinished, it perhaps never could have been...

With an Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson.Following on from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884-5) Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) became one of Mark...

The Little Prince is a modern parable for our time, of equal appeal to children and adults. This much loved story is joined by the following classic titles, to give...

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University.Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellington,...

Introduction and Notes by Jane Thomas, University of Hull.The Well-Beloved completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love...

Selected and Introduced by David Stuart Davies.Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. These are tales...

With an Introduction by Pat Righelato, University of Reading.The child of parents who divorce, remarry and then embark on adulterous affairs, Maisie Farange survives by her intelligence and spirit. For...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of WestminsterGaskell's last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its...

Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele.Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon...

With an Introduction and Notes by Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading.Henry James's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl, is the story of two flawed marriages. The lives and relationships of...

What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next continue the story of the high-spirited and rebellious American girl, Katy Carr, and her family, who first appeared in What...

With a new Introduction by Professor Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D.The Forsyte Saga is Galsworthy's enduringly popular masterpiece. Initially, the plot centres on Soames Forsyte, a successful solicitor living in London...

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Emeritus John Chapple, University of Hull.The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing. This new volume contains six of...

Editedand with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?'This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins,...

Nothing is so improbable as what is true'Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic...

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...