(Paperback)

Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The heroine, Fanny Price, has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her feelings while enduring the amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her.

(Paperback, New edition)

An analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate. This title includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.

(Paperback)

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy.

(Paperback, New edition)

Traditional rhymes and stories have been collected under the wing of Mother Goose for centuries. This collection contains the old favourites from "Jack and Jill" to comic alphabets and the fearful fate of Anthony Rowley.

(Paperback)

The Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, Big Brother '1984' itself: these terms 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 created by George Orwell in 1949 as he conjured his dystopian vision of a world where totalitarian power is absolute.

(Paperback)

The story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s.

(Paperback)

A collection of Dostoevsky's short stories, including Notes From The Underground which is considered to be one of the first works of existential literature.

(Paperback, New edition)

Anne Elliot lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love Captain Wentworth did in the wars.

(Paperback, New edition)

Carved by Old Gepetto, Pinnochio has an enormous nose which grows longer whenever he tells a lie. He runs away and joins a circus but eventually the conscious of a talking cricket and Pinnochio's guardian fairy restore him to good behaviour, obedience and care for others.

(Paperback)

The garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim - that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this, she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband. This is an ironic novel of manners.

(Paperback)

From its first publication in 1816, "Rob Roy" has been recognised as containing some of Scott's finest writing and most engaging, fully realised characters.

(Paperback)

Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities.

(Paperback, New edition)

Shirley 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 expectations.

(Paperback)

A semi-autobiographical novel that explores the emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and the suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers. It is a pre-Freudian exploration of love and possessiveness

(Paperback)

"Symposium" gives an account of the sparkling society that was Athens at the height of her empire. The other dialogues collected here under the title "The Death of Socrates" tell the tale of how Socrates was put on trial for impiety, found guilty and sentenced to death.

(Paperback, New edition)

Dating for around 300 BC, this is an early work of the Chinese school of philosophy called Taoism. It offers a complete view of the cosmos and how human beings should respond to it. It has mystical insight into the nature of things and forms a basis for a humane morality and political utopia.

(Paperback)

A novel of hypocrisy and double standards. It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy.

(Paperback)

The two political works in this text are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from an epoch in Chinese history known as the "Period of the Warring States" (4003 - 221 BC), they anticipate by nearly 2000 years Niccolo Machiavelli's treatises on the same subjects.

(Paperback, New edition)

Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short story. This collection displays his lively diversity, with tales that vary in theme and tone, ranging from tragedy and satire to comedy and farce.

(Paperback)

The diverse tales selected for this volume display the astonishing virtuosity of Rudyard Kipling's early writings

(Paperback, New edition)

Cavalier and Roundhead battle it out in the turbulent setting of the English Civil war. This book tells the tale of four orphans as they face adversity, survival in the forest, reconciliation and eventual forgiveness.

(Paperback)

This collection allows the reader to become familiar with the complete range of Mansfield's work from the early, satirical stories set in Bavaria, through the luminous recollections of her childhood in New Zealand, and through the mature, deeply felt stories of her last years.

(Paperback, New edition)

The extraordinary stories of 'Saki' are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried.

(Paperback)

In a world where capitalism is no longer held in check by fear of a communist alternative, The Communist Manifesto (with Socialism Utopian and Scientific, Engels's brief and clear exposition of Marxist thought) is essential reading. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 is Engels's first, and probably best-known, book.