Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was co...więcej »
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest...więcej »
Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that ful...więcej »
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's Dubliners and the symbolism of Ulysses, and is essential to the understanding of the later w...więcej »
One of the great classics of western literature, Les Misérables is a magisterial work which is rich in both character portrayal and meticulous historical description.Characters s...więcej »
"Jane Eyre" ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an ind...więcej »
Widely regarded as one of Edith Wharton's greatest achievements, The Age of Innocence is not only subtly satirical, but also a sometimes dark and disturbing comedy of manners in its exploration of ...więcej »
With an Introduction and Notes by Sara Haslam, Department of English, The Open University.The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, ...więcej »
Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury.This is a troubling story of crime, sin, guilt, punishment and expiation, ...więcej »
Gaskell’s last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family relationships – father, daught...więcej »
Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old dropout, has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmast...więcej »
Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, d...więcej »
With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank.The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its com...więcej »
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdo...więcej »
Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted envir...więcej »
Agnes Grey is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a ...więcej »
Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens' working title for the novel, Nobody's Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in pr...więcej »
Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An unexpected inheritance apparently gives h...więcej »
Following the success of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and firmly established Dickens as a 'literary gentleman'. It has a full supporting cast of...więcej »
This book is with an introduction and notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. "To the Lighthouse" is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on...więcej »