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Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine. University of Kent at Canterbury. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe’s rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes… Read More

Introduction and Notes by David Blair. University of Kent at Canterbury. It is 1757. Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older struggles between nations of native Americans for possession of the same lands and between the native peoples and white colonisers. Through these layers of… Read More

Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B. Cook Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Following the success of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and firmly established Dickens as a ‘literary gentleman’. It has a full supporting cast of delectable characters that range from the iniquitous Wackford Squeers and… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren. University of Kent at Canterbury. One of the most celebrated and popular historical romances ever written, The Three Musketeers tells the story of the early adventures of the young Gascon gentleman, D’Artagnan and his three friends from the regiment of the King’s Musketeers – Athos, Porthos and… Read More

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 relationships – father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter – all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements… Read More

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