Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains ...
Collected inside this book are diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings that piece together the depraved story of the ultimate predator. A young lawyer on an assignment finds himself imprison...
Alice is one of the most beloved characters of English writing. A bright and inquisitive child, one boring summer afternoon she follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole. At the bottom she finds he...
Pip's life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a Lond...
Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new frie...
The Return of the Native is widely recognised as the most representative of Hardy's Wessex novels. He evokes the dismal presence and menacing beauty of Egdon Heath - reaching out to touch the lives...
Richard III is one of the finest of Shakespeare’s historical dramas. Although it has a huge cast, Richard himself, gleefully wicked, charismatically Machiavellian, always dominates the play: ...
With this intensely moving short novel, Edith Wharton set out ‘to draw life as it really was’ in the lonely villages and desolate farms of the harsh New England mountains. Through the e...
Kim is Rudyard Kipling’s finest work. Now controversial, this novel is a memorably vivid evocation of the life and landscapes of India in the late nineteenth century. Kim himself is a resourc...
SONny is a model prisoner. Inspector Kirk Thomas is a dedicated police officer. They are connected by SONny's father, who was Kirk's best friend. Both were left devastated by the news of his corrup...
The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing. This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, ...
In Henry IV, Part 1, the King is in a doubly ironic position. His rebellion against Richard II was successful, but now he himself is beset by rebels, led by the charismatic Harry Hotspur. The King&...
The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of ...
Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, t...
These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye). Their constant skirmishes en...
Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s finest works: lucid, eloquent, and boldly structured. It can be seen as a tragedy, or a historical play, or a political drama, or as one part of a vast dram...
In 1915, Lawrence's frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was published. Today it is recognised as ...
Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest peak in Africa, rising 19,340 feet above the surrounding plains. For hundreds of years it has been called the "shining mountain" by local people. They gav...
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...
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...