Elizabeth Gaskell's only historical novel, Sylvia's Lovers, is set in 1790 in the seaside town of Monkshaven (Whitby) where press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men for service in the Napoleonic wars. One of their victims is whaling harpooner, C…
More than any other writer Gilbert White (1720-93) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and…
Presented as a miraculous cure-all, Tono-Bungay is in fact nothing other than a pleasant-tasting liquid with no positive effects. Nonetheless, when the young George Ponderevo is employed by his Uncle Edward to help market this ineffective medicine,…
This new collection of autobiographical pieces offers a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and one of America's most celebrated writers. A must-have for all lovers of Mark Twain…
When honest young Caleb Williams comes to work as a secretary for Squire Falkland, he soon begins to suspect that his new master is hiding a terrible secret. But as he digs deeper into Falkland's past and finally unearths the guilty truth, the resul…
Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister of England, is widowed and wracked by grief. Struggling to adapt to life without his beloved Lady Glencora, he works hard to guide and support his three adult children. Palliser soon…
Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse form. This collection brings together fantasy poems, such as Goblin Market, and terrifyingly vivid verses for children, love lyrics and s…
One of the key foundation books of the English Reformation, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) makes a radical challenge to the established order of the all-powerful Church of its time. Himself a priest, Tyndale boldly claims that there is just…
Christine de Pizan (c.1364 1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine has a dreamlike…
Buddhist philosophy and the experiences of the author's own family underlie this eighteenth-century novel of a Chinese family's declining fortunes
First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness and religious experience, and together form a triumphant conclusion to Flaubert's literary career. With elegant simplicity, 'A Simple Heart' relates t…
When young Francis Osbaldistone discovers that his vicious and scheming cousin Rashleigh has designs both on his father's business and his beloved Diana Vernon, he turns in desperation to Rob Roy for help. Chieftain of the MacGregor clan, Rob Roy is…
This richly evocative novel-in-letters tells the story of two Persian noblemen who have left their country - the modern Iran - to journey to Europe in search of wisdom. As they travel, they write home to wives and eunuchs in the harem and to friends…
Horace (65-8 bc) was one of the greatest poets of the Golden or Augustan age of Latin literature, a master of precision and irony who brilliantly transformed early Greek iambic and lyric poetry into sophisticated Latin verse of outstanding beauty. O…
A French courtier, secret agent, libertine and adventurer, Beaumarchais (1732-99) was also author of two sparkling plays about the scoundrelly valet Figaro - triumphant successes that were used as the basis of operas by Mozart and Rossini. A highly…
Adolphe is a privileged and refined young man, bored by the stupidity he perceives in the world around him. After a number of meaningless conquests, he at last encounters Ellenore, a beautiful and passionate older woman. Adolphe is enraptured and gr…
One of the first woman authors, Julian of Norwich produced in Revelations of Divine Love a remarkable work of revelatory insight, that stands alongside The Cloud of Unknowing and Piers Plowman as a classic of Medieval religious literature. This Peng…
Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of th…
Moliere combined all the traditional elements of comedy - wit, slapstick, spectacle and satire - to create richly sophisticated and enduringly popular dramas. The Miser is the story of Harpagon, a mean-spirited old man who becomes obsessed with maki…
This well-known fairy tale follows the adventures of a mischievous puppet without strings, Pinocchio. Pinocchio is at once a tragicomic character, and a poor, illiterate peasant boy who has few choices in life but usually chooses to shirk his respon…
"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discove…
For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the art…
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics.Ethan Frome works…
Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his on…
These three novellas display D. H. Lawrence's brilliant and insightful evocation of human relationships - both tender and cruel - and the devastating results of war. In The Fox, two young women living on a small farm during the First World War find…
Spanning his entire career, a compehensive collection of writings by the Latin American literary pioneer encompasses a variety of works by the leader of the Modernista movement, including a bilingual selection of poetry organized thematically, as we…
Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton was the first Mexican-American woman to write novels in English and the first nineteenth-century Californian writer to publish a novel in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Her first book, "Who Would Have Thought…
Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. Composed by a monk of St David's in Wales who became Bishop of Sherborne in Alfred's service and worked with him in his efforts to revive r…
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings is a collection of Alexander Pope's greatest works, edited with an introduction by Leo Damrosch in Penguin Classics.Alexander Pope was the greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights into hu…
The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The fifth part of Cao Xueqin's magnificent saga, The Dreamer Awakes, was carefully edited and completed by Gao E some…
A volume of key writings on the Buddha, collected from a variety of languages and traditions While Buddhism has no central text comparable to the Bible or Koran, there is a powerful body of scripture from across Asia that encompasses the dharma, or…
The volume contains Richard II, Henry IV Part One, henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Each play possesses its own distinctive mood, tone and style, and together they inhabit the turbulent period of change from the usurpation of the throne of Richard II…
Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of…
'The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists' Virginia WoolfWith its depiction of the wronged 'pure woman' Tess and its powerful criticism of Victorian hypocrisy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's n…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'Though best-known for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, Herman Melville also left a body of short stories arguably unmatched in American fiction. In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd,Sailor; the con…
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it…
Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. A…
'They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway share; They charmed it with smiles and soap' Ever since Lewis Carroll's nonsense epic appeared in 1876 readers have…
After the death of old Dr Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the decision is finally made to appoint the evangelical Dr Proudie, rather than the son of the old bishop, Archdeacon Grantly, re…
The Satires of Horace (65-8 BC), written in the troubled decade ending with the establishment of Augustus' regime, provide an amusing treatment of men's perennial enslavement to money, power, glory and sex. Epistles I, addressed to the poet's friend…
In these impressions of the Italian countryside: "Twilight in Italy", "Sea and Sardina", and "Etruscan Places", the author transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty.
The gripping first-hand story of the disaster that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick and is the basis for a major new feature film, In the Heart of the Sea.In 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex was sailing in the South Pacific when it was rammed by an…
Living in a revolutionary age, Coleridge's poetry was written in a spirit of moral and emotional inquiry into the absolutes of the human condition. He is best known for his visionary poetry ('Kubla Khan') and his ballads ('The Rime of the Ancient Ma…
The daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, Paula Power inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions George Somerset, a young architect, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula but she, the L…
Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that has all but disappeared from today's public rhetoric. Lincoln's writings are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of…
Tom Canty and Edward Tudor could have been identical twins. Their birthdays match, their faces match, but there the likeness stops. For Edward is a prince, heir to King Henry VIII, whilst Tom is a miserable pauper. But when fate intervenes, Edward i…
Set within a framing narrative told by Chrystal Croftangry, these three stories are set in the years following the Jacobite defeat and all feature characters who are leaving Scotland to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In 'The Highland Widow' and 'The…
Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of a European Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole. The money he receives in payment for th…
This unique anthology offers a more comprehensive look at the poems of Christopher Marlowe, England's first great poet and playwright.
First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled intelligence of his three…
