Sigmund Freud’s controversial ideas have penetrated Western culture more deeply than those of any other psychologist. The ‘Freudian slip’, the ‘Oedipus complex’, &lsqu...
Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative years includ...
W. B. Yeats was Romantic and Modernist, mystical dreamer and leader of the Irish Literary Revival, Nobel prize winner, dramatist and, above all, poet. He began writing with the intention of putting...
With an Introduction and Notes by Sally MinogueDylan Thomas wrote some of the best-known and best-loved poems of the twentieth century, amongst them ‘Do not go gentle into that go...
Edgar Poe was born the son of itinerant actors on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. Abandoned by his father and the later death of his mother, he was taken into the foster care of John A...
Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by John R. Williams. Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowl...
Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly mar...
‘They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from the centuried wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out into the laboratory in single file; led by a stalking t...
Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining.Why did Pheidippides run the 26...
Aristotle (384-322BC) is the philosopher who has most influence on the development of western culture, writing on a wide variety of subjects including the natural sciences as well as the more stric...
‘… the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible death’s-head, which darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes. I felt as if I were face to face with Satan…’...
Shakespeare's sonnets have an intensity of both feeling and meaning unmatched in English sonnet form. They divide into two parts; the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a fair youth for whom the po...
Robin Hood is the best-loved outlaw of all time.In this edition, Henry Gilbert tells of the adventures of the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest – Robin himself, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarl...
Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend it, a change comes ove...
With an Introduction and Notes by Katherine McGowran.Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No re...
Initially a vivacious, outgoing person, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) progressively withdrew into a reclusive existence. An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,7...
With an Introduction, Bibliography and Glossary by Dr Paul Wright, Trinity College, Carmarthen.'I mean to show things really as they are, not as they ought to be'. wrote Byron (1788-182...
As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brother...
The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC), they anticipate Machiavelli's The ...
Cavalier and Roundhead battle it out in the turbulent setting of the English Civil war and provide the background for this classic tale of four orphans as they face adversity, survival in the fores...