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With an Introduction by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University. With this intensely moving short novel, Edith Wharton set out ‘to draw life as it really was’ in the lonely villages and desolate farms of the harsh New England mountains. Through the eyes of a visitor from the city, trapped for a… Read More

With an Introduction by A. M. de Medeiros, University of Kent at Canterbury. A year after the publication of The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas produced a sequel worthy in every respect of the original. In Twenty Years After the much beloved D’Artaganan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis reunite to fight the forces of evil. In the… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Patsy Stoneman, University of Hull. Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author’s first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine’s movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell’s skilful narrative uses an… 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

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Esther Saxey, University of Sussex. ‘As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved… It was good, good, good…’ Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents – a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue. The Professor is Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and consciousness of a man, William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like Lucy Snowe in Villette he leaves the certainties of England to forge a life in Brussels. But as… Read More

Selected and Introduced by David Stuart Davies. Short Stories from the 19th Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. These are tales from the golden age of the great storytellers presenting evocative snapshots from that bygone era while at the same time providing engaging entertainment and… Read More

With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up ‘dead souls’. These are the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, but who… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Adam Roberts, Royal Holloway, University of London. The product of more than a decade’s continuous work (1598-1611), Chapman’s translation of Homer’s great poem of war is a magnificent testimony to the power of The Iliad. In muscular, onward-rolling verse Chapman retells the story of Achilles, the great warrior, and… Read More