BLOG POSTS
Archives: Books
Little Prince
Translated by Irene Testot-Ferry 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-Exupéry in 1943, only a year before his plane disappeared on a reconnaissance flight,… Read More
Hunchback of Notre-Dame
With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by James Carroll Beckwith (1899). Set in 1482, Victor Hugo’s powerful novel of ‘imagination, caprice and fantasy’ is a meditation on love, fate, architecture and politics, as well as a compelling recreation of the medieval world at the dawn of the… Read More
War of the Worlds & The War in the Air
With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Andrew Frayn, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University. In these two compelling novels H.G. Wells imagines terrifying futures in which civilisation itself is threatened. The narrator of The War of the Worlds is quick to discover that what appeared to be a falling star… Read More
Time Machine & Other Works
With an Introduction and Notes by Laurence Davies, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow 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 up two centuries… Read More
Island of Doctor Moreau & Other Stories
With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Emily Alder, Lecturer in Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University ‘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… Read More
Invisible Man & The Food of the Gods
With an Introduction and Notes by Linda Dryden, Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh Napier University and the author of Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells: The Fin-de Siecle-Literary Scene. 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… Read More
Heart of Darkness & Other Stories
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 of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the… Read More
Mansfield Park
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 diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while… Read More
Emma
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’, Emma is also an ‘imaginist’, ‘on fire with speculation and foresight’. She sees the signs of romance… Read More