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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, ...

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. The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare’s comedies. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boistero...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University. Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor is an historical novel of high adventure set in the South West of England during the turbulent time of Monmouth's rebellion (1685). It is also a moving love story told through the life of the young farmer John Ridd, as he grows to manhood determined to right the wrongs in his land, and to win the heart and hand of the beautiful Lorna Doone. C...

Follow and join in the family's excitement as they wade through the grass, splash through the river and squelch through the mud in search of a bear. What a surprise awaits them in the cave on the other side of the dark forest!

‘All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's’. Saki (H.H. Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried. This collection includes Sredni Vastor and The Unrest Cure. ‘We all know that Prime Ministers are w...

Introduction and Notes by Norman Vance, Professor of English, University of Sussex. Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was ‘…the past was yesterday; never, the day after’, and lastly, of...

In this selection of tales by the master folklorist Andrew Lang, the reader is taken into the romantic world of the gallant Knights of the Round Table and their courageous and chivalrous deeds, fair maidens, castles steeped in history, the quest for the Holy Grail, and the tragic love of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot for Guinevere, and Tristan for Iseult. The Arthurian legends are the most potent of the thrilling and mist-enshrouded tales of adventure to be passed down from pr...

Cavalier and Roundhead battle it out in the turbulent setting of the English Civil war and provide the background for this classic tale of four orphans as they face adversity, survival in the forest, reconciliation and eventual forgiveness.This is the first enduring historical novel for children, which conjures up as much magic today as it did on first publication. The freedom from adult constraint allied with the necessary disciplines to survive in a hostile world make for a...

Lively and mischievous, idle and brave, Tom Brown is both the typical boy of his time and the perennial hero celebrated by authors as diverse as Henry Fielding (in Tom Jones) and Alec Waugh (in The Loom of Youth). The book describes Tom's time at Rugby School from his first football match, through his troubled adolescence when he is savagely bullied by the unspeakable Flashman, to his departure for a wider world as a confident young man. This classic tale of a boy's schoolday...

This popular paperback edition of the classic work of fantasy, with a striking new black cover based on JRR Tolkien’s own design and featuring brand new reproductions of all his drawings and maps.Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away...

When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis are shattered. They and their mother have to move from their comfortable London home to go and live in a simple country cottage, where Mother writes books to make ends meet. However, they soon come to love the railway that runs near their cottage, and they make a habit of waving to the Old Gentleman who rides on it. They befriend the porter, Perks, and through him learn railway lore ...

Before The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the earliest myths and legends of Middle-earth and Valinor were laid down in The Book of Lost Tales, written by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1916 and 1920, and compiled by Christopher Tolkien for publication in 1983. The Book of Lost Tales stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor, for the Tales were the first form of the myths and legends that came to be called The Silmarillion.Embedd...

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series, with Henry V and The Merchant of Venice as its inaugral volumes, 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. Othello has long been recognised as one of the most powerful of Shakespeare’s traged...

The second of a two-book set that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of Tolkien’s epic tale of war, The Silmarillion. This second part of The Book of Lost Tales includes the tale of Beren and Lúthien, Túrin and the Dragon, and the only full narratives of the Necklace of the Dwarves and the Fall of Gondolin, itself the finest and most exciting depiction of a battle that Tolkien ever wrote. Each tale is followed by a commentary in the form of a short ...

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 the same power to move and inspire readers today as they did in Archaic Greece, 2800 years ago. This poem has been translated many times over the year...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Julius Caesar is among the best of Shakespeare's historical and political plays. Dealing with events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the drama vividly illustrates the ways in which power and corruption are linked. The cry ‘Peace, freedom and liberty!’ is used to exculpate brutal realities, while personal ambitions taint public actions....

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 protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers. Lawrence’s nove...

Introduction and Notes by Dr Jeff Wallace, University of Glamorgan. Lawrence's finest, most mature novel initially met with disgust and incomprehension. In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. Women in Love is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The 'progress' of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First W...

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury. Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women. Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to Londo...

Designed to take fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings deeper into the myths and legends of Middle-earthThe Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien's world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them such as Elrond and Galadriel took part. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-Earth, and the High Elves ...

Continuing the story begun in The Hobbit, this is the first part of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, featuring a striking black cover based on Tolkien's own design, the definitive text, and a detailed map of Middle-earth. Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power - the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring - the ring that rules them all - which has fallen into the hands ...

Wielu z nas wydawało się, że po zakończeniu zimnej wojny temat bomby atomowej i nuklearnego wyścigu zbrojeń zszedł na dalszy plan. W USA zaprzestano prób jądrowych, a międzynarodowe traktaty spowodowały, że w amerykańskich laboratoriach nie tworzono już nowych rodzajów tej broni. Jednocześnie przedstawiciele rządu Stanów Zjednoczonych, jak i fizycy jądrowi, pracujący nad spuścizną Projektu Manhattan, zdawali sobie sprawę, że by doktryna odstraszania wciąż mogła działać, arsen...

Reporterska opowieść o szpitalu psychiatrycznym w krakowskim Kobierzynie Stuletnia historia szpitala przedstawiona przez Krystynę Rożnowską to wielobarwna mozaika, niepozbawiona barw ostrych, mrocznych, ale też jasnych i frapujących. prof. Bogdan de Barbaro Ponad sto lat temu w podkrakowskim Kobierzynie otwarto szpital psychiatryczny zaprojektowany według najmodniejszych wzorców. Był świadkiem dramatycznych wydarzeń XX wieku i ewolucji psychiatrii – od izolacji po co...

Najważniejsza powieść w dorobku Lászla Krasznahorkaiego W podupadłej wsi na pustkowiu wegetuje grupa ludzi pozbawionych perspektyw na jakąkolwiek poprawę losu. Rytm ich życia wyznaczają powtarzalna ciężka praca i wieczorne pijaństwo. Wszyscy dawno zatracili się w moralnym zepsuciu i wzajemnej niechęci. Lecz gdy w okolicy pojawia się Irimás – dawny mieszkaniec wioski, uważany przez lata za zmarłego – nieoczekiwanie odzyskują wiarę w przyszłość. Nie mając pojęcia, jakie i...