CLASSICS

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...

"Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, spends his childhood on the bustling streets of Lahore, begging and running errands in order to survive. One day he meets...

After doubts are raised concerning the trustworthiness of Magua, Cora and Alice Munro's Native American guide, the warrior slips away into the wilderness, and the vulnerable sisters turn to the...

"Written after Woolf had finished her emotionally draining work on The Waves, Flush purports to be an autobiography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's eponymous cocker spaniel, charting the dog's early days...

After the death of his father, the seventeen-year-old orphan David Balfour discovers the existence of an uncle, and sets off in search of him. His uncle Ebenzer is far from...

Rising from humble beginnings as a foundling, Castruccio Castracani came to prominence as one of the most powerful and shrewd warlords in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli argues, so great was his...

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, following the example of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Alexander Afanasyev embarked on the ambitious task of sifting through the huge repository of...

When the adventurer Allan Quatermain is asked by Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good to help them find Sir Henry's missing brother, who was last seen trekking into the remote...

Inspired by real events and centring on the figure of Pelageya Vlasova - the mother of the title - and her son Pavel, Gorky's masterpiece describes the brutal life of...

A rediscovered gem from Italian children literature, written by the author of Pinocchio, translated and expanded by Alessandro Gallenzi and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (the illustrator of the Gruffalo). Collodi...

Under the feckless husbandry of Mr Jones, the Manor Farm has fallen into disrepair. Pushed into hardship, the animals decide to stage a revolt, and, led by two young pigs,...

When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that...

The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realizes that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her...

It is 1880: after visiting his mistress in the London suburbs, Colonel Pargiter returns home to his children and his dying wife. In a series of snapshots we meet all...

A first-person diary of a prisoner's final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo's poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the...

On his return to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War as an assistant surgeon, Doctor Watson is looking for a place to live. He is introduced to a...

Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for...

Dante's dramatic journey down the circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and through the spheres of Heaven in search of redemption - and his encounter with devils, monsters...

Simplicius Simplicissimus - the towering achievement of H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, one of the earliest novelists in the German language - charts the adventures of its hero, Simplicius, through the horrors...

In the summer of 1844, taking a break from novel-writing, the thirty-two-year-old Charles Dickens embarked on a journey to Italy with his wife, his five children and his young sister-in-law....

Weird and Horrific Stories (2021) collects some of H. P. Lovecraft's finest early work. Although his reputation as one of the world's greatest writers of horror and weird fiction remains...