Set in the years before and after Waterloo, the novel tells the parallel stories of two schoolfriends - the quiet, long-suffering Amelia and her brilliant, scheming friend, Becky Sharp. The novel port
First published in 1852, this collection of Greek myths and legends was adapted by Hawthorne in a romantic and readable style, to remove the classical tales from what he called "cold moonshine".
Among the best loved of all classics for children are the tales of Mowgli, the boy who learned the law of the jungle as he grew up among a pack of wolves in India's Seeonee Hills. First published in 1
A mock autobiography, in which the hero wrestles with the impossibility of explaining anything without explaining everything. In the process he explores every conceivable fictional device in a brillia
A classic novel which follows Stephen Dedalus as he progresses from boyhood to his coming of age in Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, describing his sexual awakening, his intellectual deve
In these three sea stories, based on his own experience, the author invests his portraits of mundane steamers and their crews with epic qualities of fortitude and courage in the face of overwhelming n
Comprises such sacred books of India as the hymns of the "Rig-Veda", the world's first recorded poems, the stirring pantheistic speculations of the "Upanishads" and the "Bhagavad-Gita", a cosmic drama
This is a classic story of one man's tragic failure and eventual redemption, told under the circumstances of high adventure at the margins of the known world.
Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of "Villette", achieves by degrees an authentic independence from bo
This is a documentary-style account of political unrest and personal travail in a late 19th-century French coalfield. Despite the grimness of his subject and the accuracy of his description, Zola tell
The novel takes its wide-eyed hero from innocence to experience through inns and bedrooms from Somerset to London and back, while at the same time continuing a farcical debate about the true nature of
This is the story of a woman and her family experiencing the passage of time and seeking to recapture meaning from the flux of things. Though Mrs Ramsay's death is the event on which the novel turns,
This is the spirited story of a survivor whose racy anecdotes and shady dealings only underline her essential warmth and goodness. But there is nothing sentimental about Moll, who presents herself war
Set in the bleak, magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Hardy's early work, Tess's cruel story reveals circumstances slowly closing in on her as she attempts to grasp a few moments of happiness wi
These stories of the 19th-century Russian rural landscape and the difficult life of those who inhabited it were universally popular with the reading public at large and contributed in no small measure
John Keats began writing at the age of 18, and by the time he died, seven years later in 1821, he had produced a substantial number of poems. This collection contains his work - his narratives, sonnet
This complete and unabridged edition contains a biography of the author and a new introduction and afterword. Anne falls in love with Wentworth, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no ho
Alone in the social world of New York high society in the late 19th century, with little but her wit and beauty to support her, Lily Bart pays the ultimate price for defying convention and the hostess
This selection of stories by Katherine Mansfield has been chosen by Claire Tomalin and emphasize the stronger, feminist side of her writing rather than the popular, more sentimental view. The 21 stori
When a beautiful, spoilt, aristocratic woman with revolutionary ambitions meets an idealistic young proletarian conspirator who dreams of a better life, the stage is set for The Princess Casamassima i
