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Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury. Set in the reign of Richard I, Coeur de Lion, Ivanhoe is packed with memorable incidents – sieges, ambushes and combats – and equally memorable characters: Cedric of Rotherwood, the die-hard Saxon; his ward Rowena; the fierce Templar knight, Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert; the… Read More

‘All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren’t respectable live beyond other peoples’. Saki (H.H. Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University. Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen’s College and returned permanently in 1908. her first book of stories,… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading. The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906) are world famous animal stories. Set in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s, The Call of the Wild is about Buck, the magnificent cross-bred offspring of a St Bernard and… Read More

Introduction and Notes by Dr Howard J. Booth, University of Kent at Canterbury. ‘When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life’. – Richard Aldington This novel is Lawrence’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece in which he explores emotional conflicts through the… Read More

Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Three Men in a Boat is a comic classic. When it first appeared in 1889 it became a best seller, and has remained popular ever since. This motley novel has not only been translated into many languages but has also been staged, filmed, televised… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by Charles E. Wilbour (1862). One of the great Classics of Western Literature, Les Misérables is a magisterial work which is rich in both character portrayal and meticulous historical description. Characters such as the absurdly criminalised Valjean, the street urchin Gavroche,… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Adam Roberts, Royal Holloway, University of London. 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 endurance, his love for his wife and son have… Read More