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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

With an Introduction and Notes by Sally Minogue. The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman’s role is and can be. Their male counterparts – Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother – also stand at odds to society’s… Read More

With an Introduction and Notes by R.T.Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. The novel follows the life of its eponymous heroine, Moll Flanders, through its many vicissitudes, which include her early seduction, careers in crime and prostitution, conviction for theft and transportation to the plantations of Virginia, and her ultimate redemption and prosperity… 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