In contrast with the epic scope of the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola’s short stories are concerned with the everyday aspects of human existence and the interests of ordinary people....

Most famous for his twenty-volume dissection of nineteenth-century French mores and society, the Rougon-Macquart novels, Zola was also an extremely accomplished short-story writer, as exemplified by the tales included in this volume....

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of memorable secondary characters – such as Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Parson Yorick and Widow Wadman – take centre stage, at the expense of the actual l...

Ichabod Crane is a young schoolmaster from Connecticut now living in Sleepy Hollow, a settlement in New York State notorious for rumours of ghostly visitations, especially from the infamous Headless Horseman....

Described by Herman Melville as being “as deep as Dante”, ‘Young Goodman Brown’ is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties over the reality of events that Hawthorne was known for, leading readers to ponder what they have read long after the last page has been turned....

Written in 1727, The Art of Sinking in Poetry was one of Alexander Pope’s contributions to the literary output of the legendary Scriblerus club – a circle of writers dedicated to mocking what they perceived as a culture of mediocrity and false learning prevalent in the arts and sciences of their day....

Having been accused of theft and hounded out of a religious community many years previously, the weaver Silas Marner now lives alone in the village of Raveloe, hoarding the precious wealth he earns....

Arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl called Benedicta, shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman. Ambrosius is drawn into a dangerous friendship with her and, in defiance of the community and his superiors, he starts spending time alone with her....

In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures and infernal lows of an existence dependent on “subtle and mighty opium”....

Presented through an ingeniously overlapping and intertwining series of letters written by six very different characters, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker is the story of Squire Matthew Bramble and his family\"s journey across England and Scotland....

Unique edition presented in its definitive 1941 version with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916 When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that his social experiment wi...

During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received - as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham - what is purported to be an Elizabethan portrait....

Raised in the idyllic setting of Dorlcote Mill, the wild and wilful Maggie Tulliver adores her elder brother Tom and is forever trying to gain the approbation of her parents....

After doubts are raised concerning the trustworthiness of Magua, Cora and Alice Munro’s Native American guide, the warrior slips away into the wilderness, and the vulnerable sisters turn to the scout Hawk-eye and the Mohicans Chingachgook and Uncas to lead them to Fort William Henry, where their father is in command....

When the young naturalist Darwin set sail on a round-the-world expedition at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that the relationships between all life forms, both present and extinct, were more complex than the Christian version of the world’s creation purported them to be....