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Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. In the hope of saving her brother's life, should a woman submit to rape? Should the law be respected when its administrator is corrupt? How powerful in the state should religion become? Although Measure for Measure ends like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marriages, it has often been regarded as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The drama show...

With a new Introduction by Professor Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D.This selection of a hundred of O. Henry’s succinct tales displays the range, humour and humanity of a perennially popular short-story writer.Here Henry gives a richly colourful and exuberantly entertaining panorama of social life, ranging from thieves to tycoons, from the streets of New York to the prairies of Texas.These stories are famed for their 'trick endings' or 'twists in the tail': repeatedly the plot twirl...

With an Introduction and Notes by Charles P.C. Pettit. Thomas Hardy's only historical novel, The Trumpet Major is set in Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars. Hardy skilfully immerses us in the life of the day, making us feel the impact of historical events on the immemorial local way of life - the glamour of the coming of George III and his soldiery, fears of the press-gang and invasion, and the effect of distant but momentous events like the Battle of Trafalgar. He interweaves...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and quiet irony, established Hardy as a writer. However, the novel is not merely a charming rural idyll. The double-plot, in which the love story of Dick Dewey and Fancy Day is inter-related with a tragic chapter in the history ...

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remained in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled. If you...

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the 'partly real, partly dream country' he founded on his native Dorset, it charts the rise and self-induced downfall of a single 'man of character'. The fast-moving and ingeniously contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its tragic f...

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a seminal ‘chase’ thriller, rapid and vivid. It has been widely influential and frequently dramatised: the film directed by A...

Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes… it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick, soft fur… and it had hands and feet like a monkey's. ‘It’ was the Psammead, the grumpy sand-fairy that could, if in the mood, grant a wish a day. When the five children befriend him they find that each wish granted often has a sting in its tail. Golden guineas are too difficult to spend, wings let them down in a most inconvenien...

With an Introduction by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling. Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert's contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist's meticulous account of provincial matters. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments tha...

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 in the New World. Moll Flanders was one of the first social novels to be published in English and draws heav...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics. Antony is divided between the responsibilities of imperial power and the intensities of his sexual relationship with Cleopatra. She, variously generous and ruthless, loving and jealous, petulant and majestic, emerges as Shak...

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 Venetia...

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 t...

Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty was an immediate success on its publication in 1877, and has gone on to sell an estimated 50 million copies. Black Beauty is a horse with a fine black coat, a white foot and a silver star on his forehead. Seen through his eyes, the story tells of his idyllic upbringing and the hardship and cruelty he suffers subsequently, before finding security and happiness in a new home. Black Beauty is one of the most popular children’s books ever written....

These witty stories were originally told by Rudyard Kipling to his own children. In them he gives fanciful accounts of how and why things came to be as they are. Generations of children have delighted to learn how the Leopard got his spots, how the Elephant's Child on the banks of the great grey-green Limpopo acquired his trunk with the help of the Crocodile, and the beginning of the Armadillos. Beautifully illustrated in black-and-white by the author, these delightful tales ...

Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic. It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family ...

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 popular success with sales reaching 40,000 by the final part. In the century and a half since its first appearance, the characters of ...

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Variously melancholy, lyrical, joyous and farcical, Twelfth Night has long been a popular comedy with Shakespearian audiences. The main plot revolve...

NOWY THRILLER AUTORKI MIĘDZYNARODOWEGO BESTSELLERA „DZIEWCZYNA Z POCIĄGU”Witamy na Eris: wyspie z tylko jednym domem, jedną mieszkanką i jedną drogą ucieczki. Położonej u wybrzeży Szkocji, niedostępnej przez dwanaście godzin każdego dnia.Niegdyś mieszkała tu Vanessa. Słynna artystka, której znany z niewierności mąż zniknął przed dwudziestu laty.Teraz to dom Grace. Samotnicy żyjącej w rytmie pływów, szczęśliwej w odosobnieniu.Jednak kiedy w odległej londyńskiej galerii sztuki ...

Jedno z najgłośniejszych odkryć we współczesnej fantastyce – powieść, która zachwyciła świat! Zdobywczyni wielu nagród, m.in. Nebula i Locusa. Wrzeciądz został wychowany na zabójcę, naostrzony niczym nóż, miał odebrać życie swojemu ojcu, czczonemu jako święty. Dorastał w cieniu niewidzialnych diabłów i antybogów, istot wyśmiewających ludzką słabość. Wychowany na mrocznym katechizmie, stracił własny cień. Gdy jego dzieciństwo zakończyło się rozlewem krwi, porzucił prowinc...

Co dzieje się, kiedy umieramy? Czy świadomość gaśnie wraz z mózgiem, czy też istnieje coś jeszcze – tajemniczy wymiar, który od wieków nazywamy duszą? Po śmierci brata te pytania nie dawały spokoju Stéphane’owi Allixowi. Z dziennikarską pasją i determinacją, ruszył tropem największej zagadki ludzkości próbując wyjaśnić sekret ludzkiej świadomości. Szukał śladów zarówno w świecie nauki – w badaniach medycyny, neuronauki i relacjach osób z pogranicza życia i śmierci – jak i ...

Zanim Agatha Christie stała się królową kryminału, była młodą kobietą, która wierzyła w miłość silniejszą niż wszystko. Gdy jako dwudziestolatka poznaje charyzmatycznego Archiego, ma wrażenie, że jej życie układa się jak w powieści, której bohaterowie żyją długo i szczęśliwie. Lata później, w przełomowym roku 1926, to pozornie idealne małżeństwo rozpada się na jej oczach, a Agatha musi zmierzyć się jednocześnie z bolesną stratą ukochanej matki, samodzielnym macierzyństwem ...

POWRACAJĄCY DO DOMU SYN. NIEBEZPIECZNY DŁUG. TAJEMNICE, KTÓRE ZA CHWILĘ ZAPŁONĄ I RODZINA POCHŁONIĘTA PRZEZ OGIEŃ. Roman Carruthers, wezwany do domu po wypadku samochodowym ojca, odkrywa, że jego młodszy brat, Dante, zadłużył się u niebezpiecznych przestępców, a siostra Neveah z trudem radzi sobie z utrzymaniem rodziny i prowadzeniem rodzinnego interesu. Neveah i ich ojciec, właściciel krematorium, codziennie stykają się ze śmiercią. Tym razem jednak śmierć zagraża im ...

ŚMIERĆ NIE JEST ROZWIĄZANIEM, DLA CIEBIE ZA DOBRA. Na placu budowy zostają odnalezione zwłoki. Nadkomisarz Rędzia ze szczecińskiej Komendy Policji wpada na ślad, który łączy śmierć denata z tragedią sprzed lat. Musi cofnąć się w czasie i wrócić do licealnej wycieczki klasowej w okolice Złocieńca, z której jeden z jego kolegów wrócił jako bohater, a kilku innych nie wróciło wcale. Co łączy tajemnicze zabójstwo sprzed lat z odnalezionym niedawno ciałem i dlaczego wszyscy...