When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalizes the town of...

'When Dickens has described something you see it for the rest of your life' George Orwell

In 1844, Charles Dickens took a...

Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her...

As Daniel Deronda opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is...

Elizabeth Gaskell's only historical novel, Sylvia's Lovers, is set in 1790 in the seaside town of Monkshaven (Whitby) where...

An innovative novel featuring an astonishingly wicked female villain, Wilkie Collins's Armadale was regarded by T.S. Eliot as...

A witty, intricately-plotted exploration of a sudden fall from grace, the Penguin Classics edition of Wilkie Collins's No Name is...

Anthony Trollope's story of one man's obsessive self-deception pitted against against the enduring power of his wife's love, He...

Shamela is a brilliant parody of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, in which a virtuous servant girl long resists her master's advances...

Shelley... , W...

These three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by...

'Sets out the London of the 1830s before you, streets, people, pleasures, low life, prisons' Claire Tomalin

Charles Dickens's...

Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister of England, is widowed and wracked by grief. Struggling to...

Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in life

This landmark...

Son of a bankrupt landowner, Frank Gresham is intent on marrying his beloved Mary Thorne, despite her illegitimacy and apparent...

The hero of Charlotte Bronte's first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in...

Making her debut in London society, Nanda Brookenham is being groomed for the marriage market. Thrust suddenly into the...

Mill John... , Bentham...

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of...

The illegitimate and impoverished son of a dressmaker and a nobleman, Hyacinth Robinson has grown up with a strong sense of...

Anthony Trollope's The Warden is the first of his well-loved Chronicles of Barsetshire, edited with an introduction and notes by...

Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential...

Originally delivered in the form of lectures at Glasgow, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations Books I-III laid the foundations of...

After the death of old Dr Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the...

One of the greatest figures of his age, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59) was widely admired throughout his life for his prose,...

One of the greatest of all horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) also composed pioneering tales that seized upon the...

This witty and amusing collection of short pieces shows Dickens liberated from the more formal and sustained demands of the novel...

Collecting three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century's greatest authors, Jane Austen's Lady Susan, The Watsons...

Determined that her baby son Tom shall not share her fate and remain in slavery, Roxy secretly exchanges him with his playmate...

Shelley... , Уолпол...

The Gothic novel, which flourished from about 1765 until 1825, revels in the horrible and the supernatural, in suspense and...

Henry James's third novel is an exploration of his most powerful, perennial theme - the clash between European and American...

A fascinating picture of the American frontier emerges from Twain's fictionalized recollections of his experiences prospecting...