'Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: this time I will burn out all the animal, this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' declares Doctor Moreau to ha...
Anne Shirley is an eleven-year-old orphan who has hung on determinedly to an optimistic spirit and a wildly creative imagination through her early deprivations. She erupts into the lives of aging b...
The Little Prince is a modern fable, and for readers far and wide both the title and the work have exerted a pull far in excess of the book's brevity. Written and published first by Antoine de St-E...
Homer's great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His colourful adventures, his...
In this selection of tales by the master folklorist Andrew Lang, the reader is taken into the romantic world of the gallant Knights of the Round Table and their courageous and chivalrous deeds, fai...
Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes… it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick, soft fur… and it had hands and fe...
The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents, and of the friendship...
Frances Burnett Hodgson's novel The Secret Garden is both intriguing and uplifting. It is regarded as one of the best children’s books written in the twentieth century.Mary Lennox...
Lively and mischievous, idle and brave, Tom Brown is both the typical boy of his time and the perennial hero celebrated by authors as diverse as Henry Fielding (in Tom Jones) and Alec W...
Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation.Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad, have brought del...
When fifteen-year-old orphan John Trenchard is banished by his Aunt Jane, he goes to live at the local inn with the mysterious Elzevir Block, whose son has been killed by Customs Officers. Unoffici...
When Jerry, Jimmy and Cathy discover a tunnel that leads to a castle, they pretend that it is enchanted. But when they discover a Sleeping Princess at the centre of a maze, astonishing ...
With a new Introduction by Dr Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Sussex.Illustrations by Arthur RackhamA Christmas Carol has become a phenomenal touc...
The captivating Irish stories collected in this new edition include both comic tales such as Paddy O'Kelly and the Weasel, and tales of heroes from ancient literature such as How Cormac Mac Art wen...
A Room of One's Own (1929) has become a classic feminist essay and perhaps Virginia Woolf's best known work; The Voyage Out (1915) is highly significant as her first novel. Both focus on the place ...
Treasure Island is the seminal pirates and buried treasure novel, which is so brilliantly concocted that it appeals to readers both young and old. The story is told in the first person by young Jim...
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the instit...
At the end of the nineteenth century a stranger arrives in the Sussex countryside and mayhem ensues; in the sleepy county of Kent a miracle food brings biological chaos that engulfs and threatens t...
Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury.Set in the reign of Richard I, Coeur de Lion, Ivanhoe is packed with memorable incidents - sieges, ambushes and c...
None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the 'partly real, partly dream country' he founded on his native Do...