19th‑Century Classics

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank.The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque an…

Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster. Illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen.Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial…

With an Introduction and Notes by Deborah Wynne, Chester College. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Our Mutual Friend, Dickens' last complete novel, gives one of his most comprehensive and penetrating accounts of Victorian society.Its …

With an Introduction and Notes by Karl Ashley Smith, University of St Andrews. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite …

Introduction and Notes by Dr Adrienne Gavin, Canterbury Christ Church University College. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).Dickens wrote of David Copperfield: 'Of all my books I like this the best'. Millions of readers in …

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr John Bowen, Department of English, University of Keele. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).Martin Chuzzlewit is Charles Dickens' comic masterpiece about which his biographer, Forster, not…

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, University of Kent at Canterbury. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature n…

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, Rutherford College, University of Kent. The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. …

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading. Also included are two short stories: The Veteran * The Open Book The Red Badge of Courage is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It reports on the Am…

Introduction and Notes by David Blair. University of Kent at Canterbury. It is 1757. Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older struggles between …

With an Introduction and Notes by Hugh Epstein, Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society of Great Britain. 'Then the vision of an enormous town presented itself, of a monstrous town...a cruel devourer of the world's light. There was…

Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable …

With an Introduction and Notes by Esther SaxeyThe flaxen-haired beauty of the childlike Lady Audley would suggest that she has no secrets. But M.E. Braddon's classic novel of sensation uncovers the truth about its heroine in a plo…

With an introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at CanterburyThis selection of Carroll's works includes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glas…

With an Introduction and Notes by Joe Andrew, Professor of Russian Literature, Keele University. Anton Chekhov is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. He constructs stories where action and drama are im…

Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Canterbury Christ Church University College. Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outward…

Introduction and Notes by Elaine Jordan, Reader in Literature, University of Essex. What does persuasion mean - a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest he…

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent. Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. …

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager. This collection brings together Jane Austen's earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of he…

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', but Emma is irresistible. 'Handsome, clever, and rich', Em…

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex. Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The diffide…

Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community, Meg, the eldest,…

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex. Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed M…

Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco University. 'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour …

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue. The Professor is Charlotte Brontes first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and consciousness of a man, William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like …

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University. Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor is an historical novel of high adventure set in the South West of England during the turbulent…

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant, Canterbury Christchurch University CollegeThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It por…

Agnes Grey is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a deeply personal novel written fro…

With an Introduction and Notes by Sally MinogueThe Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerl…

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Department of English, Canterbury Christ Church University College. Based on Charlotte Bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette is a moving tale of repress…