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Country: UK
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
Les Misérables Volume One
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
Pickwick Papers
With an Introduction and Notes by David Ellis, University of Kent at Canterbury*. With Illustrations by R.Seymour, R.W. Buss and Hablot K. Browne (Phiz.) The Pickwick Papers is Dickens’ first novel and widely regarded as one of the major classics of comic writing in English. Originally serialised in monthly instalments, it quickly became a huge… Read More
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Notes and Introduction by David Ellis, University of Kent at Canterbury. With its four-letter words and its explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the novel with which D.H. Lawrence is most often associated. First published privately in Florence in 1928, it only became a world-wide best-seller after Penguin Books had successfully resisted… Read More
Treasure Island
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 Hawkins, whose mother keeps the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old seadog, a resident at the inn, hires Jim to keep… Read More