A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creation, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and...

Published in 1886, The Bostonians begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer in search of a...

Spanning thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, Decline & fall is one of the...

In the fourth of the 'Palliser' stories, Trollope follows Phineas Finn's return to the dangerous world of Westminster politics....

With its insightful portrayals of her protagonist's inner life, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was a hugely influential...

When Reverend Josiah Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, is accused of theft it causes a public scandal, sending...

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit...

One of the most significant and intriguing Gothic novels of the Victorian period and is enjoyed today as a modern psychological...

'His characters are marvellous, his insights wonderful ... You don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better' Ruth...

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

Grossmith... , Grossmith...

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...

Tom Canty and Edward Tudor could have been identical twins. Their birthdays match, their faces match, but there the likeness...

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...

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

Smith's The Wealth of Nations was the first comprehensive treatment of political economy. Originally delivered in the form of...

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

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

'One of my life's greatest tragedies is to have already read Pickwick Papers - I can't go back and read it for the first time'...

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

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...