CLASSICS

A brilliant portrait of a young girl's coming of age, The Lost Traveller tells of Clara, the beloved daughter of a devoted though authoritarian father, an imperious mother and the...

Oblomov was considered a satirical portrait of the Russian aristocracy, who no longer had a useful role in society. Oblomov is a nineteenth century Russian landowner brought up to do...

The complete short stories of the 20th century's greatest visionary'Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man' W. H. AudenThis volume contains all of...

Far removed from the conventional travel book, this work is based in fiction rather than reportage. Sterne travelled extensively in the 1760s, and drew on his experiences to write the...

The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the...

Lolly Willowes is a twenty-eight-year-old spinster when her adored father dies, leaving her dependent upon her brothers and their wives. After twenty years of self-effacement as a maiden aunt, she...

Now a major musical film from Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, and also featuring Amanda Seyfreid, Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha...

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the...

First published in 1954, William Golding's debut novel, now a classic, is a stark story of survival, probing the depths of human nature, and what happens when civilization collapses. As...

'I can resist everything except temptation'Oscar Wilde is probably the most quoted and quotable man in history. His genius manifested itself in his plays and poetry but he is equally...

'I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre.' George Eliot...

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the...

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...

Originally published in 1940, this is Cather's last novel, a retrospective portrait of a society and conditions that have vanished forever in the Old South. The stain of slavery is...

James Joyce's astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom's voluptuous wife, Molly, commits...