CLASSICS

When Celine's first novel, Journey to the End of the Night was first published in 1932, it created an instant scandal, being extravagantly praised by its supporters and savagely attacked...

Originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his children at bedtime, this compendium of witty tales imagines how animals came to be as they are now. Discover how the massive whale...

As ideological ferment grips Russia, a small group of revolutionaries, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky and inspired by Nikolai Stavrogin, plan to spread destruction and anarchy throughout the country. Morally bankrupt,...

When the young Ishmael gets on board Captain Ahab's whaling ship, little does he suspect that the mission on which he is about to embark is the fulfilment of his...

In the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante recounts his journey through heaven, after the travails and torments of Hell and the arduous ascent of Mount Purgatory,...

During a stifling St Petersburg summer, the rich landowner Velchaninov is haunted by the figure of a man he keeps glimpsing in the street. When he receives a surprise visit...

Against the backdrop of growing discontent in Paris, Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and begins a new life in England with his...

A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed, Directions...

The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing...

"Orphaned at an early age, Heidi has been brought up by her mother's sister Dete in Switzerland. Having been offered a job in Frankfurt, however, her aunt is forced to...

The House of the Dead recounts the story of Alexander Goryanchikov, a gentleman who is sent to a prison colony in Siberia for killing his wife. Largely ignored at first...

In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little does he suspect that...

The most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for...

The interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has gone on for so long that it has become a subject of mirth in legal circles and a source of great profit...

We takes place in a distant future, where humans are forced to submit their wills to the requirements of the state, under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor, and dreams...

Inspired by Boileau's Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the "Ancients", who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the...

What is the nature, essence and definition of a fart? What are the consequences and disadvantages of suppressing one? Why is farting considered to be taboo? Swift's The Benefit of...

The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition - in a shopping arcade - of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan...

In the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire, Vivian is writing an article about the importance of lying, when he is interrupted by Cyril, who tries to tempt him...

A glorious exercise in cheeky punmanship, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders sees Jonathan Swift in fine scatological form. Flying by the seat of his pants, the great author treats us...

The Vita Nuova, with its unusual blend of prose and poetry, is universally recognized as Dante's early masterpiece and provides an indispensable prequel to The Divine Comedy. Set in thirteenth-century...

Conflict between father and son is one of the oldest themes in literature, and in this open letter to his father - a letter which was never sent - Kafka...

The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her family and so sets out to prove herself by seeking employment as a governess....

When the orphaned William refuses his uncles' proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of his brother's mill, he decides to accept a position...

On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told that he will be set free, but must...

This volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville's masterpieces. In 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young...

Gilbert Markham is fascinated by Helen Graham, the beautiful and enigmatic woman who has recently moved into Wildfell Hall. He is swift to befriend her and steadfastly refutes the local...

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in...

Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, twenty-nine pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on their long road, their host suggests that they regale each other...

"After a while, with the parrot's help, the Doctor got to learn the language of the animals so well that he could talk to them himself and understand everything they...

In response to the dire economic conditions in eighteenth-century Ireland, A Modest Proposal ironically exhorts the poor to provide their offspring as food to the rich. Skilfully applying a wealth...

During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received - as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham - what is...

As the sensitive and delicate Gertrude begins to shrink from her drunken and violent husband, their marriage becomes a battleground. Gertrude turns increasingly towards her two eldest sons, William and...

First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman's lifetime ambition to create a new voice...

Coming back into town after a hunting expedition, Alexandre Dumas witnesses an incredible scene: a man has come to hand himself in to the mayor after decapitating his wife, terrified...

Inspired by a box of wooden toy soldiers given as a present to her elder brother Branwell in 1826, Charlotte Bronte created, together with her siblings, a series of tales...

Frank Aldersley becomes engaged to Clara Burnham on the eve of his departure on a journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Unbeknownst to him, Richard Wardour, his spurned rival, joins...

Found in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci's writings and drawings, 'The Prophecies' are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While...

Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end of his career and considered by him the culmination of all his life's work, Eureka is an extended treatise...

When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, having published only a tiny selection of her verse anonymously in journals and newspapers, she left behind a chest containing almost 1,800 poems written...

Controversial, scandalous, erudite and funny, Ulysses is undisputedly a landmark of twentieth-century modernism. It charts one day - 16th June 1904 - in the lives of three inhabitants of Dublin:...

First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcil able relationships. At the centre of the story...

Russia's literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman - a professor of black magic - arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It...

When the young naturalist Darwin set sail on a round-the-world expedition at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that the relationships between all life forms,...

Having frittered away his family's fortune in Paris, the profligate Guido, driven by his ungovernable passions, is forced out of his native Genoa and harbours plans for revenge. After a...

"One of the most famous and celebrated Victorian coming-of-age novels, David Copperfield charts the adventures and vicissitudes of its eponymous hero's life, from the misery of his childhood after his...

As he was finishing Finnegans Wake, Joyce proclaimed, "I have discovered I can do anything with language I want." Indeed, with his last book, which took him seventeen years to...

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost...