Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances',...

Channelling a razor-sharp satire through the everyday mishaps of the immortal comic character Mr Pooter, George and Weedon...

'One of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels' Peter Ackroyd

Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of...

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...

The first romantic historical novel and international bestseller, Waverley (1814) tells the story of Edward Waverley, a naive,...

Guy Mannering is an astrologer who only half-believes in his art. Instead he places his faith in patriarchal power, wealth and...

In the court of Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is favoured above all the noblemen of England. It is rumoured that...

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

Applying his controversial theory of evolution to the origins of the human species, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man was the...

Returning home to tend her widowed father Dr Marjoribanks, Lucilla soon launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to...

'Among the most powerful things Dickens ever did in fiction' Guardian

Greed has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become...

Matthew Lewis's Gothic masterpiece, depicting a holy man slowly becoming entangled in a web of sin, The Monk is edited with an...

Composed in medieval Iceland, Hrolf's Saga is one of the greatest of all mythic-legendary sagas, relating half-fantastical events...

'The noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers ... ethically he is supreme' Bertrand Russell

Published shortly after...

Barely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and...

When young Francis Osbaldistone discovers that his vicious and scheming cousin Rashleigh has designs both on his father's...

The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its...

When country-girl Grace Melbury returns home from her middle-class school she feels she has risen above her suitor, the simple...

'There's no writing against such power as this - one has no chance' William Makepeace Thackeray

A compelling depiction of a...

Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure is a fearless exploration of the hypocrisy of Victorian society, edited with an...

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

One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology...

Hardy described Desperate Remedies as a tale of 'mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity'.

Cytherea has taken a...

Thomas Hardy's tragic vision of a love struggling to overcome prejudice and rejection, The Return of the Native is edited in...

'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. Wilson

The hero of Dickens's...

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

'The great poet of the city. He was created by London' Peter Ackroyd

Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance - Old...

'Ambiguities indeed! One long brain-muddling, soul-bewildering ambiguity (to borrow Mr. Melville's style), like Melchisedeck,...

Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is a story of romance, scandal and intrigue within the confines of a watchful, gossiping...

One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years...