When Elizabeth Bennet meets Mr Darcy she is repelled by his overbearing pride, and prejudice towards her family. But the Bennet girls are in need of financial security in the shape of husbands, so ...
A classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism from one of the best Czech writers For twenty-two-year-old Milos, bumbling apprentice at a sleepy Czech railway ...
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: ...
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...
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&...
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds ...
Lizzy Bennet finds eligible bachelor Darcy arrogant the first time she meets him, and when she hears he has been meddling in her family's affairs is determined to dislike him even more. Darcy...
A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens’ greatest historical novel, traces the private lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysm of the French Revolution and the Terror. Dickens base...
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...
Introduction and Notes by David Blair. University of Kent at Canterbury.It is 1757. Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict...
The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a ...
This vivid historical and political novel by Dickens is centred on the infamous 'No Popery' riots, instigated by Lord George Gordon, which terrorised London in 1780. Dickens' targets are prejudice,...
Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England...
"Pride and Prejudice", which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it, the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only on...
Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin begins in Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different w...
High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the...