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

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...

'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...

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

'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...

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

The Moonstone is one of the first true works of detective fiction, in which Wilkie Collins established the groundwork for the...

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

'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...

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

Daniel Defoe's bawdy tale of a woman's struggle for independence and redemption, Moll Flanders is edited with an introduction and...

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...

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...

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,...

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

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

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

Originally published in 1823, The Pioneers is the first of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, and the one that incorporates...

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades - experimenting with...

'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me...'
After the death of his wife Emma, a grief-stricken Hardy wrote some of...

Dark yet life-affirming, endlessly inventive and heart-breakingly human - the next novel in the 'Seasonal' cycle, following the...