In this famous story of seduction, two highly intelligent but amoral French aristocrats plot the downfall of a respectable young married woman and a fifteen year old girl who has only just emerged ...
Rene Descartes (1569-1650), the 'father' of modern philosophy, is without doubt one of the greatest thinkers in history: his genius lies at the core of our contemporary intellectual identity. Break...
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the most important and innovative figures of the European Middle Ages. Writing his Comedy (the epithet 'Divine' was added by later admirers) in exile from his ...
Andrew Lang draws on his classical learning to recount the Homeric legend of the wars between the Greeks and the Trojans. Paris, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, the Amazons and the Wooden...
In these 'scientific romances' H. G. Wells sees the present reflected in the future and the future in the present. His aim is to provoke rather than predict. The Sleeper falls into a trance, waking...
Here is Edward FitzGerald’s original translation of the Rubáiyát, the collection of poems attributed to the Persian astronomer and mathematician, Omar Khayyám. FitzGerald...
Lawrence's reputation as a novelist has often meant that his achievements in poetry have failed to receive the recognition they deserve. This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctione...
When Princess Irene and her nursemaid stay out too late one night and are chased home by goblins, a young miner boy called Curdie comes to their rescue. So begins a fantastic adventure in which Ire...
The Aeneid is Virgil's Masterpiece. His epic poem recounts the story of Rome's legendary origins from the ashes of Troy and proclaims her destiny of world dominion. This optimistic vision is accomp...
Njal's Saga is the finest of the Icelandic sagas, and one of the world's greatest prose works. Written c.1280, about events a couple of centuries earlier, it is divided into three parts: the first ...
Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-cl...
From "The Crystal Egg": There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near Seven Dials over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Natural...
'Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your immediate feelings...'Adam Bed...
George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they ...
John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the most influential English writer of his time. His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises of Government (1690) weighed heavily on the his...
In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, now in a new edition, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a ...
The phrase `life's little ironies' is now proverbial, but it was coined by Hardy as the title for this, his third volume of short stories. While the tales and sketches reflect many of the strengths...
Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulf...
The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his t...
He saw her wounded, and bleeding to death; saw her ashy countenance, and her wasting eyes ... turned piteously on himself, as if imploring him to save her from the fate that was dragging her to the...