'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding'

Dickens's story of...

Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of...

When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of...

In A Discourse on Inequality Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the growth of civilization corrupts man’s natural happiness and...

'Our home has never been anything other than a play-house. I've been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Daddy's...

'The most reliable and comprehensive account of the Great Plague that we possess' Anthony Burgess

In 1665 the plague swept...

The daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, Paula Power inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She...

The Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's savagely satirical A Modest Proposal and Other Writings is edited with an...

The literary career of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) spanned less than twenty years, but no area of intellectual inquiry was...

When Elfrise Swanston meets Stephen Smith she is attracted to his handsome face, gentle bearing and the sense of mystery which...

A compelling portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India depicts the fate of individuals caught in the...

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society....

Ranging from the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted imaginary sister to Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and the effects of poverty...

A furiously witty response to Tobias Smollett's curmudgeonly 'Travels through France and Italy', Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental...

Spanning the origins of the Earth to the outcome of the First World War, this is a brilliantly compelling account of the...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet is the literary debut of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock...

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'

Vividly interweaving epic historical drama with personal tragedy,...

Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction that is both informative and imaginative, reliable and entertaining. To...

Twain's account of travelling in Europe, A TRAMP ABROAD (1880), sparkles with the author's shrewd observations and highly...

One of the most significant works of Western philosophy, Hume's Treatise was published in 1739-40, before he was thirty years...

The writings of one of the great woman adventurers of the twentieth century - the 'female Lawrence of Arabia' - and the subject...

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival, in the local squire’s son...

Infamous as the inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A...

Anne Bronte's first novel is the compelling autobiographical tale of a young woman desperately seeking a place in the...

The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricola - the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and...

Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. Composed by a monk...

'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole . . . without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Lewis...

Lewis Carroll's anarchic, disturbing and boisterously funny Alice stories, conjured
up one afternoon to entertain a young girl,...

A poor doctor's daughter cures the King of France and, in return, is promised marriage to any nobleman she wishes. But the proud...