Since its first publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan has been recognised as one of the most compelling, and most controversial, works of political philosophy written in English. For...
Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining.Why did Pheidippides run the 26...
Sigmund Freud’s controversial ideas have penetrated Western culture more deeply than those of any other psychologist. The ‘Freudian slip’, the ‘Oedipus complex’, &lsqu...
During his life, Geoffrey Chaucer (born c.1340) was courtier, diplomat, revenue collector, administrator, negotiator, overseer of building projects, landowner and knight of the shire. He was serva...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
In The Social Contract Rousseau (1712-1778) argues for the preservation of individual freedom in political society. An individual can only be free under the law, he says, by voluntarily embracing t...
Each boxset contains eight of the best classics ever writtenBeautifully packaged in a ridged, matt-laminated slipcase with metallic detailing, complete with strikingly attractive, bespo...
With an Introduction and Notes by Katherine McGowran.Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No re...
The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous utterances of the prophet (together with the il...
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...
In 1888 Henry James wrote 'There was the customary novel by Mr Le Fanu for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight'. Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories a...
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 ...