Secondhand Classics

Frank Muir guides the reader through five centuries of humorous prose in the English language. Starting in London with William Caxton and a preface written and printed in 1477, and...

As the the bicentennary of the French Revolution draws near, Dickens' historical novel serves as a timely reminder of nineteenth-century reactions to that great upheaval. Set between 1757 and 1793,...

Based on Hawthorne's own experience of a Utopian socialist community outside Boston, The Blithedale Romance tells of the attempts of a like-minded group to begin reforming a dissipated America. However,...

Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient and eager to please, she accepts this closed...

Peter Sabor presents both the first critical edition and the first accurate, wholly unexpurgated text of the most famous erotic novel in English, better known as Fanny Hill.

Originally published in 1823, The Pioneers is the first of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, and the one that incorporates most fully his own experience of growing up in a town...

The book offers a brief plot synopsis, a double-page graphic overview and insight into the text, a short introduction to major characters and themes and a who's who in the...

A key backlist title from the highly acclaimed author of The Naked and the Dead and The Fight War hero, ex-Congressman, a professor of 'popular but somewhat notorious reputation', television...

'The lower jaw was thin - what can I call it? - shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips...'M. R. James is the master of the English...

Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class, and includes an...