(Hardback)

Edgar Allan Poe's gift for the macabre influenced Baudelaire and French symbolism, Freudian analysis, the detective novel and the Hollywood film. His psychologically profound stories, which comprise this book, represent the darker side of the 19th-century American sensibility.

(Hardback)

Describing his collection of Essays as a book consubstantial with its author, Montaigne identified both the power and the charm of a work which introduces us to one of the most attractive figures in European literature.

(Hardback)

Illustrated with vivid portraits of friends, family, colleagues and enemies, this book provides an account of the passage from a life of sensuality and superstition to a genuine spiritual awakening. It is narrative of one man's religious journey which continues to shape the way we write and behave today.

(Hardback)

A brilliant short novel based on Tolstoy's early life as a soldier in the Caucusus, THE COSSACKS has all the energy and poetry of youth while at the same time foreshadowing the great themes of Tolstoy's later years.

(Hardback)

On the day of his wedding, Edmond Dantes, master mariner, is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges and spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d'If, an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely.

(Hardback)

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is probably Edith Wharton's most savage satire on the manners of late nineteenth-century America. This novel, which has scences of comedy and even farce, is a commentary on both certain aspects of feminisim and certain aspects of capitalism in Edith Wharton's time.

(Hardback)

Evelyn was a scholar, a scientific amateur, a garden designer and architect, and a founder member of the Royal Society who published a magisterial book about trees, Sylva, and many pamphlets on assorted subjects. This work is a vivid portrait of the social, personal and political life of a society in ferment by one of its major players.

(Hardback)

This edition prints all three parts of Dante's great poem about the journey of the soul - INFERNO, PURGATORIO and PARADISO - in the recent English translation by Allen Mandelbaum, with an introduction and explanatory notes on each canto by the noted Dante scholar, Peter Armour.

(Hardback)

Second, The Gambler, a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky - who once gambled away his wife's wedding ring- knew intimately from his own experience.

(Hardback)

Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister of England, is widowed and wracked by grief. Struggling to adapt to life without his beloved Lady Glencora, he works hard to guide and support his three adult children.

(Hardback)

Lizzie Eustace can manipulate men and flatter powerful women, and she's determined to make her way in the world by whatever means she can. This comedy of a society adventuress and her necklace is one of the "Palliser" novels, describing the political and social life of mid-Victorian England.

(Hardback)

But this difficult question is addressed in the most vivid terms, as Kierkegaard explores different ways of interpreting the ancient story of Abraham and Isaac to make his point.

(Hardback)

James' novel featuring a complex and bizarre battle between two wives - the shy Maggie, who marries an Italian prince, and the prince's former mistress, who marries Maggie's widowed father. Determined to take back her lover, the brilliant Charlotte is nevertheless defeated by her rival.

(Hardback)

Alone in the social world of New York high society in the late 19th century, with little but her wit and beauty to support her, Lily Bart pays the ultimate price for defying convention and the hostesses of the Social Register.

(Hardback)

Hugo's grand medieval melodrama tells the story of the beautiful Esmeralda, a gypsy girl loved by three men: Archdeacon Frollo, his adoptive son Quasimodo, bell-ringer of Notre-Dame cathedral, and Captain Phoebus.

(Hardback)

Before he has even arrived home he becomes involved with Rogozhin, a rich merchants son whose obsession with the fascinating Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement.

(Hardback)

A translation of Homer's great epic poem. Fitzgerald has also translated Homer's "The Odyssey" and Virgil's "Aeneid".

(Hardback)

While in the service of India's Nizam of Hyderbad, Marmaduke Pickthall converted to Islam, and, with the help of Muslim theologians and linguists, produced this English interpretation of the Holy Koran.

(Hardback)

The concluding episode in Trollope's magnificent sequence of six Barsetshire novels narrates the trials of Joseph Crawley, the obsessive rector of Hogglestovk, as he struggles to clear his name from accusations of theft.

(Hardback)

The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. 99 for the complete edition of the Life in 1344 pages, it compares with Penguin's abridged edition of just 300 pages of text at 6.

(Hardback)

First assembled on paper in the fourteenth century, the eleven stories in The Mabinogion reach far back into the oral traditions of Welsh poetry.

(Hardback)

Two of Stevenson's historical novels set against the Scottish landscape and featuring psychological studies of individuals. The unfinished "Weir of Hermiston", on which the author was working at the time of his death, is an account of the conflict between a powerful father and his rebellious son.

(Hardback)

D H Lawrence remarked that Hardy's best novels were about 'the struggle into love and the struggle with love', and THE MAJOR OF CASTLEBRIDGE is no exception.

(Hardback)

Larger than life like his massive works Berlioz was a seminal figure in the Romantic movement and his book is both a personal testament and an account of his role in that movement.