CLASSICS

The Female Quixote (1752), a vivacious and ironical novel parodying the style of Cervantes, portrays the beautiful and aristocratic Arabella, whose passion for reading romances leads her into all manner...

In a home-made dress of flame-coloured silk, a gawky, would-be curate as an escort, Olivia Curtis' first dance is either going to be gloriously romantic or an agonizing public humiliation....

Two wonderful stories about members of the Glass family by the author of `The Catcher in the Rye'. The first story takes place in downtown New Haven during the weekend...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The quality of mercy is not strain'd,It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven' Bassiano, a noble Venetian,...

One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the...

One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the...

Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with the...

The authoritative Riverside text is used in this case study of Hamlet - probably the most frequently studied of all Shakespeare plays. The five critical essays that follow the text...

Franz Kafka's classic 1915 novella remains one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. This Norton Critical Edition is based on Susan Bernofsky's acclaimed new translation,...

The little priest with the large umbrella who moonlights as an amateur detective uses his intuition to untangle twelve remarkable criminal cases

A gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, Honore de Balzac's Cousin Bette is translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in Penguin Classics.Poor,...

G.K. Chesterton's quiet and unassuming little priest has long since joined the pantheon of great literary detectives. Combining the shrewdness of Miss Marple, the insight of Sherlock Holmes and the...

'Once upon a time in mid-winter, when the snowflakes were falling from the sky like down, a queen was sitting and sewing at a window ...'The tales gathered by the...

I write this sitting at the kitchen sink' is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle...

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess. This is a personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried,...

After her parents die, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up wild and free on the Yorkshire Moors and despite the continued bad feeling between Cathy's brother, Hindley, and Heathcliff they're happy...

Alexandra Bergson is the eldest child of a Swedish immigrant family newly arrived in the harsh untamed landscape of the American West. An original, determined child, she is driven by...

My Antonia' is one man's attempt to commit to paper the beautiful, wild eyed immigrant girl who has haunted him all his life. For Jim Burden, Antonia Shimerdas symbolises all...

'That sense of the meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work' Malcolm BradburyAlienated...

'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins with one of the most arresting opening sentences in literature' Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface.A Portrait first appeared in instalments...