CLASSICS

Introduced by Mark Valentine.The greatest French detective in his most fiendish case. Even if Hercule Poirot had been born a Frenchman, not a Belgian, he would have to take second...

Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; but crime, of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential'.Bulldog Drummond was the original daredevil adventurer who,...

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant, Canterbury Christchurch University CollegeThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and...

With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University, Bakersfield.Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature',...

Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster.Illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen.Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern...

Translated by Irene Testot-Ferry.The Little Prince is a classic tale of equal appeal to children and adults. On one level it is the story of an airman's discovery, in the...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Patsy Stoneman, University of Hull.Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to...

With an Introduction by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling.Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For...

With a new Introduction by David Stuart Davies.'Surely no man would take up my profession if it were not that danger attracts him.'In The Casebook, you can read the final...

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by James Carroll Beckwirth (1899).Set in 1482, Victor Hugo's powerful novel of 'imagination, caprice and fantasy'...

Introduction and Notes by Norman Vance, Professor of English, University of Sussex.Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Tim Middleton, Head of English Studies, University of Ripon and York.In seeking to discover his inner self, the brilliant Dr Jekyll discovers a...

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, Rutherford College, University of Kent.The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel...

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent.Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated...

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe...

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading.The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906) are world famous animal stories. Set in Alaska during the...

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull.Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in...

With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of 'Poetry Review'.Moby Dick is the story...

Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence...

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex.Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners....

This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being...

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager.This collection brings together Jane Austen's earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at...

With an Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury.Tender is the Night is a story set in the hedonistic high society...

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury.The Man in the Iron Mask is the final episode in the cycle of novels featuring Dumas' celebrated...

Introduction and Notes by Janet Beer, Manchester Metropolitan University.The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to...

Editedand with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine. University of Kent at Canterbury.Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe's...

With an Introduction and Notes by Anne Varty, Royal Holloway, University of London.De Profundis is Wilde's eloquent and bitter reproach from prison to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. He contrasts...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic detective chiller. It features the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The...

Translated by George Chapman, with Introductions by Jan Parker.Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom,...

The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents,...

Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living...

Under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen, Flann O' Brien wrote a daily column in the 'Irish Times' called 'Cruiskeen Lawn' for over twenty years which hilariously satirised the absurdities and...

'Still an acknowledged masterpiece and a model for historical fiction ... sympathetic and intensely involving: a great feat of imagination' Hilary Mantel Bringing to life the intrigue of ancient Rome,...

Ulysses is one of the foundational texts of modern literature, yet has a reputation for complexity and controversy. In Ulysses Unbound, Joyce expert Terence Killeen untangles this seemingly knotty classic...

An astonishingly frank and deeply autobiographical account of homosexual relationships in an era when love between men was not only stigmatised, but also illegal, E.M. Forster's Maurice is edited by...

In 1960, John Steinbeck set out in his pick-up truck with his dog Charley to rediscover and chronicle his native USA, from Maine to California.He felt that he might have...

Black Beauty is a perennial children's favourite, one which has never been out of print since its publication in 1877. It is a moralistic tale of the life of the...

'To that flash of semi-vision can be traced a full half of the horror which has ever since haunted us'An expedition to Antarctica goes horribly wrong as a group of...

The great Russian 20th-century novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad.Life and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family,...

'A masterpiece - a classic of twentieth-century fiction' New York TimesBulgakov paints a powerful picture of Stalin's regime in this allegorical classic. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain'I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous...

'I would rather be with my grandfather on the Alp than anywhere on earth!'When Heidi is sent to live in the Swiss mountains with her bad-tempered old Grandfather, everyone in...

In this masterful retelling of one of the greatest works of world literature, Alasdair Gray - in his last work - offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme. Lyrical...