Classics

Herman Melville delivers some of his best literary work in this gripping tale of tragedy and vengeance. The story follows Captain Ahab on an obsessive quest to destroy the unruly White Whale that ravaged the Captain's ship on a pr…

Best known for her lively characters and complex emotional development, Jane Austen continues to captivate readers in this literary masterpiece The story reflects the love and lives of five husband-hunting sisters in the nineteent…

Widely recognized as a philosophical masterpiece in Gothic literature, The Picture of Dorian Gray presents a twisted take on Victorian morality and controversial topics prevalent during this era. The story follows a charming young…

A brilliant novel describing two parallel love stories, Sense and Sensibility remains a time-honored classic in English literature. The story follows the Dashwood sisters unique experiences with love and heartbreak in their search…

A collection of Middle Eastern folk tales including familiar classics like Aladdin and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves. Each individual story is told by a different person in a unique style, artfully tied together by the narrator…

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The t…

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ella Westland, University of Exeter. Illustrations by George Cruickshank. Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. T…

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 between the man-cub and Bagheera…

'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' Treasure Island is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck, and is perhaps the best adventure story ever written. When young Jim Hawkins find…

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children. But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and …

Jody Tiflin is a ten-year-old boy, living on his father's ranch. One day his father brings home a small pony. He's Jody's, if the boy will learn to feed, clean, stable and care for him. But Jody learns, through the colt, and throu…

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and …

The greatest novel of the twentieth century, now in a beautiful Clothbound Classics centenary edition Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th of June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leo…

Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month. '[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotion…

Discover the most famous anti-war novel ever written One by one the boys begin to fall... In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'.…

'Doctor Watson, Mr Sherlock Holmes' - The most famous introduction in the history of crime fiction takes place in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, bringing together Sherlock Holmes, the master of science detection, and…

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic detective chiller. It features the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and…

'My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know'. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant detective to the readers of The Strand Magazine.The runaway su…

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 diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope wi…

When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis are shattered. They and their mother have to move from their comfortable London home to go and live in a simple country cottage, where M…

Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "roaring twenties", and a devastating expose of the 'Jazz Age'. Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is t…

Agatha Christie's most exotic murder mystery in a sumptuous hardback Special Edition. The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, st…

When the adventurer Allan Quatermain is asked by Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good to help them find Sir Henry's missing brother, who was last seen trekking into the remote African interior in search of the fabled King Solomon's M…

War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy's view that history is an inexorable process that man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred cha…

Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the heigh…

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading. In 1915, Lawrence's frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was…

With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster. Gaskell's last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family …

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of …

Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. The proverbial phrase 'life's little ironies' was coined by Hardy for his third volume of short stories. These tales and sketches possess all the power…

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, ting…