BookOdyssey

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods.’ Still considered one of the most important and groundbreaking works of science ever written, Darwin’s eminently readable exploration of the evolutionary process challenged most of the strong beliefs of the Western world. Forced to question the idea of the Creator, mid-nineteenth century readers were faced with Darwin’s theories on the laws of natural selection and the randomness of evolution, causing massive controversy at the time. However, Darwin’s theories remain instrumental in providing the backbone to modern biology today. Σελίδες: 624, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee…’ Few literary masterpieces cast quite as awesome a shadow as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Captain Ahab’s quest for the white whale is a timeless epic – a thrilling tale of vengeance and obsession, and a searing parable about humanity lost in a universe of moral ambiguity. Inspired by true events, Moby Dick is a work of astonishing psychological depth. It is perhaps the greatest sea story ever told and one of the great classics of literature. Σελίδες: 640, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘The movements of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.’ When Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser gets drunk and sells his wife at a country fair, his life will never be the same. Eighteen years later, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge to find that Henchard has become Mayor. Although he’s spent most of his life attempting to repent for his actions, he remains a rash and impetuous man. Hardy portrays Henchard as a tragic hero, searching for love and acceptance from the community around him, posing the overarching question of whether we shape our own fate, or whether life deals us an inevitable hand. Σελίδες: 432, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘I pay very little regard…to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.’ Humble and lowly, a young Fanny Price goes to live with her wealthy Aunt and Uncle at their grand house, Mansfield Park. Growing up with her privileged and spoilt cousins, the Bertrams, she lives in the shadows of their glamorous lives, but manages to find an ally in her cousin, Edmund. When Henry and Mary Crawford come to visit, the house is thrown into disarray as romance flourishes between the young people, leading Fanny to finally confront the extent of her true feelings for Edmund. Σελίδες: 528, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. \'Oliver Twist has asked for more!\' Fleeing the workhouse, Oliver finds himself taken under the wing of the Artful Dodger and caught up with a group of pickpockets in London. As he tries to free himself from their clutches he becomes immersed in the seedy underbelly of the Capital, amongst criminals, prostitutes and the homeless. Dickens scathing attack on the cruelness of Victorian Society features some of his most memorable and enduring characters, including innocent Oliver himself, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy. Σελίδες: 528, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is pround to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. \'My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!\' Challenging the hypocrisy and social conventions of the rural Victorian world, Tess of the D\'Urbervilles follows the story of Tess Durbeyfield as she attempts to escape the poverty of her background, seeking wealth by claiming connection with the aristocratic D\'Urberville family. It is through Tess\'s relationships with two very different men that Hardy tells the story of his tragic heroine, and exposes the double standards of the world that she inhabits with searing pathos and heart-rending sentiment. Σελίδες: 528, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself…’ Beautiful, rich, self-assured and witty, Emma Woodhouse delights in matchmaking those around her, with no apparent care for her own romantic life. Taking young Harriet Smith under her wing, Emma sets her sights on finding a suitable match for her friend. Chided for her mistakes by old friend Mr Knightley, it is only when Harriet starts to pursue her own love interests that Emma realises the true hidden depths of her own heart. Delightful, engaging and entertaining, and with a dazzling gallery of characters, Emma is arguably Austen’s most well-loved social comedy. Σελίδες: 512, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.’ The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achilles and the battles and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon. Attributed to Homer, The Iliad, along with The Odyssey, is still revered today as the oldest and finest example of Western Literature. Σελίδες: 720, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.’ Set in medieval Paris, against the backdrop of the brooding Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Hugo’s take on the classic story of Beauty and the Beast tells of the hunchbacked, grotesque bellringer, Quasimodo. Rejected by Parisian society because of his appearance, Quasimodo resides in Notre-Dame, harbouring a love for the only woman that pities him, a gypsy named Esmerelda. However, a sinister archdeacon also covets Esmerelda, and when his advances are spurned, he seeks to destroy her. Σελίδες: 688, Διαστάσεις: 11.1x11.1cm

From the author of The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle and Becoming Ted, a brand new enemies-to-lovers romcom for fans of Ted Lasso and Red, White and Royal Blue . . .\'Heart-warming and joyful\' LORRAINE KELLY \'A great big hug of a book\' MICHAEL BALL Toddington FC defender Tom Horrocks is never happier than when he\'s on the football pitch, but when it comes to love, he\'s hiding a big secret. Worried about his young daughter and sick father - and with his team finally in the Premier League - he avoids all media.Journalist Cosmo Roberts wants to change the world, so is angry when he\'s sent to a quiet northern town to cover a sport he sees as anti-gay. Then something about Tom catches his eye.Cosmo hates football. Tom hates journalists.Perhaps this time they\'ve both met their match.\'Filled with joy and strength and optimism\' RUSSELL T. DAVIES\'Romantic and heartbreaking and uplifting\' LAURA KAYReader love Matt Cain \'Wonderfully uplifting\' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐\'Absolutely brilliant\' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐\'I loved every second of this book\' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Σελίδες: 128, Διαστάσεις: 12.8x12.8cm

Editedand 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 that only ‘repentance, justice and mercy’ will prevent the onset of ‘the wrath of Almighty God!’. The novel gave such a terrific impetus to the crusade for the abolition of slavery that President Lincoln half-jokingly greeted Stowe as‘the little lady’ who started the great Civil War. As Keith Carabine argues in his lively and provocative Introduction, the novel immediately provoked a storm of competing and contradictory responses among Northern and Southern readers, moderate and radical abolitionist groups, blacks and women, with regard to issues of form, genre, politics, religion, race and gender, that are still of great interest because they anticipate the concerns that vex and divide modern readers and critical constituencies. Σελίδες: 480, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

The Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, Big Brother – 1984 itself: these terms and concepts have moved from the world of fiction into our everyday lives. They are central to our thinking about freedom and its suppression; yet they were newly created by George Orwell in 1949 as he conjured his dystopian vision of a world where totalitarian power is absolute. In this novel, continuously popular since its first publication, readers can explore the dark and extraordinary world he brought so fully to life.  The principal characters who lead us through that world are ordinary human beings like ourselves: Winston Smith and Julia, whose falling in love is also an act of rebellion against the Party. Opposing them are the massed powers of the state, which watches its citizens on all sides through technology now only too familiar to us. No-one is free from surveillance; the past is constantly altered, so that there is no truth except the most recent version; and Big Brother, both loved and feared, controls all. Even the simple act of keeping a diary – as Winston does – is punishable by death. In Winston’s battle to keep his freedom of thought, he has a powerful adversary in O’Brien, who uses fear and pain to enter his very thought processes. Does 2+2 = 4? Or is it 5? We find out in Room 101. Nineteen Eighty-Four was Orwell’s last novel; but the world he created is always with us, as successive generations of readers find within it a mirror for their own times and a warning for the future.  Our edition also includes the following selection of Orwell\'s essays, column extracts and broadcasts: A Hanging; Spilling the Spanish Beans; Reviews of Jack London, The Iron Heel; H. G. Wells, When the Sleeper Awakes; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; Ernest Bramah, The Secret of the League ; England Your England; Looking Back on the Spanish War; Arthur Koestler; The Prevention of Literature; Politics and the English Language; Why I Write; Politics Vs Literature; Sir Walter Raleigh; The Three Super-States of the Future; Persecution of Writers in USSR; Literature and Totalitarianism; Imaginary Interview: George Orwell and Jonathan Swift Σελίδες: 432, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an exclusive introduction and notes by David Stuart Davies. Translation by Louis Mercier. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is not only a classic science fiction novel, it is also a thrilling adventure yarn. Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant Conseil and Canadian harpooner Ned Land are held prisoners aboard the fantastic submarine, the Nautilus, by its enigmatic and charismatic commander, Captain Nemo: ‘That terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred.’ And so begins a hazardous and eventful voyage which leads them from the lost city of Atlantis, to the South Pole, hunting in underwater forests and to an encounter with a ferocious giant squid. Published in 1870, the novel continues to fascinate and engage the reader, presenting as it does an incredible journey into a mysterious world of excitement and danger! Σελίδες: 256, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Bickley, The Godolphin and Latymer School, formerly of Royal Holloway, University of London. The Last Man is Mary Shelley\'s apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the radical philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died ten days after her birth and the young child was educated through contact with her father\'s intellectual circle and her own reading. She met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812; they eloped in July 1814. In the summer of 1816 she began her first and most famous novel, Frankenstein. Three of her children died in early infancy and in 1822 her husband was drowned. Mary returned to England with her surviving son and wrote novels, short stories and accounts of her travels; she was the first editor of P.B.Shelley\'s poetry and verse. Σελίδες: 432, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cattermole, with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. This vivid historical and political novel by Dickens is centred on the infamous \'No Popery\' riots, instigated by Lord George Gordon, which terrorised London in 1780. Dickens\' targets are prejudice, intolerance, religious bigotry and nationalistic fervour, together with the villains who exploit these for selfish ends. His intense account of the riots is interwoven with the mysterious tale of a long-unsolved murder and with a romance involving forbidden love, treachery and heroism. Barnaby Rudge abounds in memorably strange, comic and grotesque characters. Furthermore, recent historical events have renewed its political topicality. Σελίδες: 672, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by S.L. Fildes and Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Dickens’s final novel, left unfinished at his death, is a tale of mystery whose fast-paced action takes place in an ancient cathedral city and in some of the darkest places in nineteenth-century London. Drugs, sexual obsession, colonial adventuring and puzzles about identity are among the novel’s themes. At the centre of the plot lie the baffling disappearance of Edwin Drood and the many explanations of his whereabouts. A sombre and menacing atmosphere, a fascinating range of characters and Dickens’s usual superb command of language combine to make this an exciting and tantalising story. Also included in this volume are a number of unjustly neglected stories and sketches, with subjects as different as murder and guilt and childhood romance. This unusual selection illustrates Dickens’s immense creativity and versatility. Σελίδες: 496, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Phillip Mallett, Senior Lecturer in English, University of St Andrews. Educated beyond her station, Grace Melbury returns to the woodland village of little Hintock and cannot marry her intended, Giles Winterborne. Her alternative choice proves disastrous, and in a moving tale that has vibrant characters, many humorous moments and genuine pathos coupled with tragic irony, Hardy eschews a happy ending. With characteristic derision, he exposes the cruel indifference of the archaic legal system off his day, and shows the tragic consequences of untimely adherence to futile social and religious proprieties Σελίδες: 336, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. Laurence Sterne\'s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne \'the most liberated spirit of all time\'. Σελίδες: 480, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College. The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope\'s Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is one of the Victorian novel\'s greatest and strangest creations, and is an achievement undimmed by the passage of time. Trollope\'s \'Now\' might, in the twenty-first century, look like some distant disenchanted \'Then\', but this is still the yesterday which we must understand in order to make proper sense of our today. Σελίδες: 800, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading. In 1915, Lawrence\'s frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was published. Today it is recognised as one of the classic English novels of the twentieth century. The Rainbow is about three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840s to the early years of the twentieth century. Within this framework Lawrence\'s essential concern is with the passional lives of his characters as he explores the pressures that determine their lives, using a religious symbolism in which the \'rainbow\' of the title is his unifying motif. His primary focus is on the individual\'s struggle to growth and fulfilment within marriage and changing social circumstances, a process shown to grow more difficult through the generations. Young Ursula Brangwen, whose story is continued in Women in Love, is finally the central figure in Lawrence\'s anatomy of the confining structures of English social life and the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the human psyche. Σελίδες: 448, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank. The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque and the socially concerned, and its story of pursuit and courage, which sets the downtrodden and the plucky against the malevolent and the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens\' most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to him about her fate. Dickens was conscious of the ‘many friends’ the novel had won for him, and ‘the many hearts it turned to me when they were full of private sorrow’, and it remains one of the most familiar and well-loved of his works. Σελίδες: 608, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury. Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century. Henry James described Middlemarch as a ‘treasurehouse of detail’ while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot’s masterpiece as ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. Σελίδες: 736, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr John Bowen, Department of English, University of Keele. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Martin Chuzzlewit is Charles Dickens\' comic masterpiece about which his biographer, Forster, noted that it marked a crucial phase in the author\'s development as he began to delve deeper into the \'springs of character\'. Old Martin Chuzzlewit, tormented by the greed and selfishness of his family, effectively drives his grandson, young Martin, to undertake a voyage to America. It is a voyage which will have crucial consequences not only for young Martin, but also for his grandfather and his grandfather\'s servant, Mary Graham with whom young Martin is in love. The commercial swindle of the Anglo-Bengalee company and the fraudulent Eden Land Corporation have a topicality in our own time. This strong sub-plot shows evidence of Dickens\' mastery of crime where characters such as the criminal Jonas Chuzzlewit, the old nurse Mrs Gamp, and the arch-hypocrite Seth Pecksniff are the equal to any in his other great novels. Generations of readers have also delighted in Dickens\' wonderful description of the London boarding-house - \'Todgers\'. Σελίδες: 832, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

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 Jew, Isaac of York, and his beautiful, spirited daughter Rebecca; Wamba and Gurth, jester and swineherd respectively. Scott explores the conflicts between the Crown and the powerful Barons, between the Norman overlords and the conquered Saxons, and between Richard and his scheming brother, Prince John. At the same time he brings into the novel the legendary Robin Hood and his band, and creates a brilliant, colourful account of the age of chivalry with all its elaborate rituals and costumes and its values of honour and personal glory. Σελίδες: 464, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. Although the shortest of George Eliot\'s novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader\'s attention until the last page as Eppie\'s bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test. Σελίδες: 176, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Agnes Grey is a trenchant exposé of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a deeply personal novel written from the author’s own experience and as such Agnes Grey has a power and poignancy which mark it out as a landmark work of literature dealing with the social and moral evolution of English society during the last century. Σελίδες: 192, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Deborah Wynne, Chester College. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Our Mutual Friend, Dickens\' last complete novel, gives one of his most comprehensive and penetrating accounts of Victorian society. Its vision of a culture stifled by materialistic values emerges not just through its central narratives, but through its apparently incidental characters and scenes. The chief of its several plots centres on John Harmon who returns to England as his father\'s heir. He is believed drowned under suspicious circumstances - a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity until he can evaluate Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colourful characters and incidents - the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering\'s dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas Wegg. Σελίδες: 832, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. With Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens\' working title for the novel, Nobody\'s Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens\' childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor\'s prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel\'s range of characters - the honest, the crooked, the selfish and the self-denying - offers a portrait of society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts. Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens\' finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it ‘a masterpiece among masterpices’, a vedict shared by the novel\'s many admirers. Σελίδες: 848, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Carole Jones, freelance writer and researcher. George Eliot\'s final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they search for personal and vocational fulfilment and sympathetic relationship. Set largely in the degenerate English aristocratic society of the 1860s, Daniel Deronda charts their search for meaningful lives against a background of imperialism, the oppression of women, and racial and religious prejudice. Gwendolen\'s attempts to escape a sadistic relationship and atone for past actions catalyse her friendship with Deronda, while his search for origins leads him, via Judaism, to a quest for moral growth. Eliot\'s radical dual narrative constantly challenges all solutions and ensures that the novel is as controversial now, as when it first appeared. Σελίδες: 752, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Robin Hood is the best-loved outlaw of all time. In this edition, Henry Gilbert tells of the adventures of the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest - Robin himself, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, and Alan-a-Dale, as well as Maid Marian, good King Richard, and Robin\'s deadly enemies Guy of Gisborne and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. Σελίδες: 288, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

Little Women is one of the best-loved children\'s stories of all time, based on the author\'s own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community, Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Lawrence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever. Good Wives takes up the story of the March sisters, some three years later, when, as young adults, they must face up to the inevitable trials and traumas of everyday life in their search for individual happiness. Σελίδες: 464, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

The beautiful Scheherazade\'s royal husband threatens to kill her, so each night she diverts him by weaving wonderful tales of fantastic adventure, leaving each story unfinished so that he spares her life to hear the ending the next night. This is the background to the Arabian Nights. In this selection made by that master of folklore and fairy-tale Andrew Lang, the reader meets Aladdin with his wonderful lamp, the Enchanted Horse, the Princess Badoura, Sinbad the Sailor, and the great Caliph of Bagdad, Haroun-al-Raschid. The stories are beautifully illustrated by H.J. Ford. Σελίδες: 352, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

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 unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes. Σελίδες: 448, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, University of Kent at Canterbury. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Bleak House is one of Dickens\' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city\'s underworld, and of the law\'s corruption and delay, draw upon the author\'s personal knowledge and experience. But it is his symbolic art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin. In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers. Σελίδες: 800, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural told by a master of the genre. The Aspern Papers is a tale of Americans in Europe, a theme in which Henry James is at his most assured and accomplished. The author cleverly evokes the drama of comédie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace. Σελίδες: 224, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm

This is the first paperback edition to bring out in one volume Kate Chopin\'s extraordinary novel The Awakening (1899), along with the complete text of her two collections of short stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), and twelve uncollected tales. The Awakening is a strikingly modern, evocative story of self-discovery and female emancipation, set in the sensuous environment of Southern Louisiana, where the young Edna Pontellier reclaims her own individuality, refusing to be defined by her roles of wife and mother. Chopin\'s stories are brilliantly observed, compassionate and often humorous, alert to the foibles, weaknesses and small triumphs of her characters. Overshadowed by the relatively recent fame of The Awakening, they contain some of the best work of this remarkably original author. Σελίδες: 544, Διαστάσεις: 12.9x12.9cm