Classic fiction Books 623 results

Louisa May Alcott

The two American classics here together in one volume, Little Men and Jo's Boys, are worthy sequels to Little Women, one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, and its continuation, Good Wives. In Little Men, Louisa May Alcott takes up the story of the everyday dramas and exploits of the naughty but easy-going boys at Plumfield, now a boarding-school run by Professor...

Jules Verne

Having assured the members of London's exclusive Reform Club that he will circumnavigate the world in 80 days, Fogg - stiff, repressed, English - starts by joining forces with an irrepressible Frenchman, Passepartout, and then with a ravishing Indian beauty, Aouda. Together they slice through jungles, over snowbound passes, even across an entire isthmus - only to get back five ...

Thomas Hardy

'She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air: "Tess- say it is not true! No, it is not true!"' Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich was...

Fyodor Dostoevsky

In this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor and the degradation, in relentless detail. The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Turgenev to pa...

Samuel Richardson

'Pamela under the Notion of being a Virtuous Modest Girl will be introduced into all Familes,and when she gets there, what Scenes does she represent? Why a fine young Gentleman endeavouring to debauch a beautiful young Girl of Sixteen.' (Pamela Censured, 1741) One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Notes from the Underground (1864) is one of the most profound works of nineteenth-century literature. A probing, speculative book, often regarded as a forerunner of the Existentialist movement, it examines the important political and philosophical questions that were current in Russia and Europe at the time. The Gambler (1866), set in the fictional town of Roulettenberg, explor...

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama...

Robert Louis Stevenson

'Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.' Stevenson's short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The res...

Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron (c.1351) was written in the wake of the Black Death, a shattering epidemic which had shaken Florence's confident entrepreneurial society to its core. In a country villa outside the city, ten young noble men and women who have escaped the plague decide to tell each other stories. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in this virtuoso performance...

Alexandre Dumas

One of the most exciting and best-loved novels of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo is a timeless tale of endurance, courage, and revenge. Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned on an island fortress. After years of solitary confinement in a cramped, dank dungeon, he befriends an Italian prisoner who, with his ...

Leo Tolstoy

Here are some of Tolstoy's extraordinary short stories, from "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." in a masterly new translation, to "The Raid," "The Wood-felling," "Three Deaths," "Polikushka," "After the Ball," and "The Forged Coupon," all gripping and eloquent lessons on two of Tolstoy's most persistent themes: life and death. More experimental than his novels, Tolstoy's stories are e...

Emile Zola

His haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics. Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past. The only way he can rest is by forcing her to help hi...

Leo Tolstoy

Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. It describes his search for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth'. Although the Confession led to his excommunication, it also resulted in a large following of Tolstoyan Christians springing u...

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American ReadHeart of Darkness is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gra...

N. H. Kleinbaum

Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to "make your lives extraordinary! Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society--a secret club where, free from the constraints and expectations of school and parents, they let their passio...

Oscar Wilde

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman inthe eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succès de scandale and the book wa...

Elizabeth Taylor

INTRODUCED BY HILARY MANTEL Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth - Sarah Waters Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destine...

David Herbert Lawrence

A collection of three novellas that display D. H. Lawrence's brilliant and insightful evocation of human relationships - both tender and cruel - and the devastating results of war In The Fox, two young women living on a small farm during the First World War find their solitary life interrupted. As a fox preys on their poultry, a human predator has the women in his sights. The ...

Aldous Huxley

For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with Eastern philosophy to create a paradise on earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to research potential oil reserves on Pala, he quickly falls in love with the way of ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating Fyodor Dostoyevsky's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity.From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying a human life, to the anxious antihero of Notes From Underground—a man who both craves and despises affection—this volume...

Michel De Montaigne

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves ? and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives ? and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ide...

Charles Dickens

'The most perfect of all the Dickens novels' Virginia Woolf " David Copperfield" is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant, but ultimately unwort...

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evilDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a morality tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives. Also in this volume are "The Body Snatcher," which ...

Alexandre Dumas

"On what slender threads do life and fortune hang." Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American ReadThrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unear...

Mary Shelley

The world's most famous work of horror fiction: a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American ReadMary Shelley's timeless gothic novel presents the epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes...

John Williams

By the author of Stoner, the surprise international bestseller After the brutal murder of his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, Octavian, a shy and scholarly youth of nineteen, suddenly finds himself heir to the vast power of Rome. He is destined, despite vicious power struggles, bloody wars and family strife, to transform his realm and become the greatest ruler the western world had...

T. A. Shippey

This is the definitive collection of the twentieth-century's most characteristic genre--science fiction. The tales are organized chronologically to give readers a sense of how the genre's range, vitality, and literary quality have evolved over time. Each tale offers a unique vision, an altered reality, a universe all its own. Readers can sample H.G. Well's 1903 story "The Land ...

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic advent...

Anais Nin

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a b...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against his staid, Midwestern upbringing, longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. In his quest for sexual and intellectual enlightenment, he progresses through a series of relationships, until he is cast out into the real world. ...