Mark Twain’s gloriously funny ‘Diary of Adam and Eve’, which John Updike described as a paradigm of the relations between sexes,...

A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his...

A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will...

Throughout his life, Rudyard Kipling was fond of dogs, and while they featured prominently in early tales such as ‘The Dog...

When an ageing, impoverished nobleman decides to style himself “Don Quixote” and embarks upon a series of daring endeavours, it...

Regarded as one of the most influential horror stories of all time and the inspiration for countless literary spin-offs, the tale...

Although ranging considerably in tone, mood and milieu, the fifteen short stories included in this collection all centre around...

Baron Eduard and his second wife Charlotte enjoy a quiet, humdrum existence in their opulent castle, but when he invites his...

Emma is considered by many readers to be Jane Austen's crowning achievement, a timeless comedy of manners that lays bare the...

Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end of his career and considered by him the culmination of all his...

On a crowded bus at midday, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated,...

Bathsheba Everdene is a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep...

In a series of nine letters, the narrator tells his friend how he introduced Vera Nikolayevna, a married woman who had been...

As he was finishing Finnegans Wake, Joyce proclaimed, “I have discovered I can do anything with language I want.” Indeed, with...

When Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane and their baby brother start exploring a gravel pit not far from their new countryside home,...

Published soon after Fitzgerald’s debut novel This Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers was the author’s first collection...

Written after Woolf had finished her emotionally draining work on The Waves, Flush purports to be an autobiography of Elizabeth...

Since it was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s seminal novel has generated countless print, stage and screen adaptations,...

The local landowner Van Cheele experiences an unnerving encounter with a youth sunning himself near a pond, and starts to wonder...

After a traumatic early childhood spent living in poverty in a Preston cellar, the suddenly orphaned George Silverman grows up...

Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all...

The story of young Henry, who struggles to fulfil his ambitions to become a successful painter and is torn between the gentle...

Celine’s third novel, first published in 1944 but dealing with events taking place during the First World War, Guignol’s Band...

Shipwrecked on an unknown island, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself surrounded by its six-inch-tall natives, the...

Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Caucasian struggle against the Russians, defects from...

In Hard Times, Dickens illustrates the condition of England through the fictional city of Coketown. Among its inhabitants are...

B... , Готье...

Among the earliest artistic descriptions of the hallucinogenic experience in European literature, the four pieces in this volume...

On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading...

Orphaned at an early age, Heidi has been brought up by her mother’s sister Dete in Switzerland. Having been offered a job in...

A mysterious murder near Esher, a gruesome delivery of two human ears packed in coarse salt, the disappearance of secret...