CLASSICS

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...

This is Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical story of a writer who fails to sell his novel and fails to commit suicide. When his play is taken up by the theatre, literary success...

A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be...

Le Fanu was facinated by the occult, and his writings draw on the gothic tradition, Irish folklore and the social and political anxieites of his Anglo-Irish contemporaries. In exploring sometimes...

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...

Described as 'a metaphysical shocker' at the time of its release, Muriel Sparks' The Driver's Seat is a taut psychological thriller, published with an introduction by John Lanchester in Penguin...

'Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.'Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks,...

The Longman Cultural Editions series presents the only paperback edition of both parts of Henry IV published in one volume, together with relevant literary and historical contextual materials that illluminate...

When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the...

With an Introduction, Bibliography and Glossary by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature University of Kent at Canterbury.Thomas Hardy started composing poetry in the heyday of Tennyson and Browning. He...

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, is one of the most notorious texts in English literature. As recently as 1963 an unexpurgated edition was the...

The Canterbury Tales tells the story of 30 pilgrims who meet by chance at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, and journey together to the shrine of St Thomas Becket...

"I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'From the supreme artist of the short story, three disturbing tales of...

These special fairy tales, which Oscar Wilde made up for his own sons, include "The Happy Prince", who was not as happy as he seemed; "The Selfish Giant", who learned...

With an introduction by Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall.Originally published in 1956, The Long View is Elizabeth Jane Howard's uncannily authentic portrait of one marriage and one woman. Written...

Emma is wealthy, beautiful, accomplished and a self-proclaimed matchmaker. When Emma meets Harriet Smith, a young girl of unknown parentage, Emma is convinced she can find Harriet a suitable husband....

'I should like to go to France,' said Ma.'God Almighty,' Pop said. 'What for?''For a holiday of course,' Ma said. 'I think it would do us all good to get...

'There!' Pop said. 'There's the house. There's Gore Court for you. What about that, eh? How's that strike you? Better than St Paul's, ain't it, better than St Paul's?'And so...

Adam Swann is hungry for success. He is one of the new breed of entrepreneurs thrown up by the Industrial Revolution, determined to take advantage of current economic conditions to...