Series: Evergreens

A Victorian scientist and inventor creates a machine for propelling himself through time, and voyages to the year AD 802701, where he discovers a race of humanoids called the Eloi. Their gently indolent way of life, set in a decaying cityscape, leads the scientist to believe that they are the remnants of a once great civilisation. He is forced to...

Leo Tolstoy’s most personal novel, Anna Karenina, scrutinises fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, “moral” life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat Konstantin Levin is struggling to reconcile reason...

A novel of high romance and great intensity, Jane Eyre has enjoyed popular success and critical acclaim ever since its first publication in 1847. Jane’s journey from a troubled childhood to independence – and her turbulent love affair with the enigmatic Mr Rochester – electrified Victorian readers with its narrative power. With characters that are as unforgettable as the story...

Originally published in Italy in 1928, and unavailable in Britain until 1960, when it was the subject of an infamous obscenity trial, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is now regarded as one of the pivotal novels of the twentieth century. Lawrence’s determination to explore every aspect – sexual, social, psychological – of Lady Chatterley’s adulterous liaison with the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors makes...

In late-Victorian London, two writers of radically different temperaments pursue contrasting approaches to the literary life. The first, the talented and cerebral novelist Edwin Reardon, appears to be doomed by his idealistic nature to a life of impecuniousness. In contrast, the second, the driven but cynical journalist Jasper Milvain, continually reaps the material rewards of a career devoted to market-driven...

Charles Dickens’s second novel is the tale of a young orphan who faces the gruelling conditions of a Victorian workhouse before finding himself sucked into the criminal underworld of London. Teeming with unforgettable characters such as the villainous Fagin, the virtuous Nancy, and the brutal Bill Sikes, Oliver Twist combines dark humour, elements of melodrama and social polemic.

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds. Peopled by...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the captivating tale of Dorian Gray, whose portrait is being painted by Basil Hallward, an artist charmed by his looks. However, when Sir Henry Wotton visits, he seduces Dorian into the worship of youthful beauty with an intoxicating speech. Dorian makes a wish that he will live to regret: that all the marks of...

Through a series of connected monologues, The Waves tells the story of six very different friends – Bernard, Louis, Neville, Jinny, Susan and Rhoda – as they progress from childhood to middle age. Interspersed with evocative descriptions of the seaside at different times of day, the poignant personal histories coalesce into a poetic tapestry of human experience. A commercial and...

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely friendship, details of Gatsby’s impossible love...

Far From the Madding Crowd follows Bathsheba Everdene, a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep farmer, a handsome soldier, and an older, wealthy landowner. As the men vie for her affections, Bathsheba struggles to retain her independence of spirit in the face of their declarations. This compelling narrative introduces readers...

On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading company to its most remote outpost in central Africa, which brought him on the trail of the elusive Kurtz, a brilliant idealist gone rogue. His account relates not only the perils he encounters on his quest, but also the deterioration...

A murderer is forced to reveal his crime by the sound of a beating heart, a mysterious figure wreaks havoc among a party of noblemen during the time of the plague, a grieving lover awakens to find himself clutching a box of his beloved's blood-stained teeth, a man is obsessed with the fear of being buried alive – these are...

Emma is considered by many readers to be Jane Austen’s crowning achievement, a timeless comedy of manners that lays bare the limits on women’s autonomy in Regency England. The disparity between Emma Woodhouse’s self-confidence and self-knowledge, and her determination to arrange marriages for her friends while avoiding one for herself, leads to a painful series of misunderstandings for everyone who...

When Darwin set sail at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that all life forms, both present and extinct, were more strongly related than the Christian version of the world’s creation purported them to be. During his five-year voyage of research and discovery on board HMS Beagle, and later from his home in Kent, he...

When the young salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into a monstrous insect, his shock and incomprehension are coupled with the panic of being late for work and having to reveal his appearance to family and colleagues. Although over the following weeks he gradually becomes used to this new existence confined within the bounds of the apartment, and...

When the young Ishmael joins Captain Ahab’s whaling ship, he unsuspectingly embarks on a mission driven by Ahab's obsessive desire for revenge against Moby Dick, a white whale that has already claimed countless human victims and destroyed many fleets. With some sinister crew members among them and the hazardous conditions of the sea to contend with, the expedition becomes increasingly...

Controversial, scandalous, erudite and funny, Ulysses is undisputedly a landmark of twentieth-century modernism. It charts one day – 16th June 1904 – in the lives of three inhabitants of Dublin: the advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, the artist Stephen Dedalus and Bloom’s wife Molly. Their peregrinations, thoughts and encounters form the basis of the narrative, which becomes a celebration of all...

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime....

We takes place in a distant future, where humans are forced to submit their wills to the requirements of the state, under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor, and dreams are regarded as a sign of mental illness. In a city of straight lines, protected by green walls and a glass dome, a spaceship is being built to spearhead the...

The most ambitious narrative of nineteenth-century realism, Middlemarch tells the story of an entire town in the years leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, a time when modern methods were starting to challenge old orthodoxies. Eliot’s sophisticated and acute characterization gives rich expression to every nuance of feeling, and vividly brings to life the town’s inhabitants – including...

Since it was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley's seminal novel has generated countless print, stage, and screen adaptations. However, none has ever matched the power and philosophical resonance of the original. Composed as part of a challenge with Byron and Shelley to conjure up the most terrifying ghost story, Frankenstein narrates the chilling tale of a being created by...

After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital – from greed, murder, and nihilism to passion, vanity, and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful version of himself, who abuses and victimises the original. As he is increasingly persecuted, Golyadkin finds his social, romantic and professional life unravelling, in a spiral that leads to a...

When an ageing, impoverished nobleman decides to style himself Don Quixote and embarks upon a series of daring endeavours, it is clear that his ability to distinguish between reality and the fantasy world of literary romance has broken down. His exploits turn into comic misadventures, in which everyday objects are transformed into the accoutrements of chivalry, peasant girls become princesses...

The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical, and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him...

Dubliners, James Joyce’s first published book, was written when he was still in his twenties. It is far removed from the bold experimentalism of his later work, yet it is essential for understanding his development as a writer. This collection endures as a masterly example of the short-story form. Although the stories range considerably in tone, mood, and milieu, the...

The pride of high-ranking Mr Darcy and the prejudice of middle-class Elizabeth Bennet conduct an absorbing dance through the rigid social hierarchies of early-nineteenth-century England, with the passion of the two unlikely lovers growing as their union seems ever more improbable.

Against the backdrop of growing discontent in Paris, Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and begins a new life in England with his devoted daughter Lucie. There, the gifted but dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton and the exiled French nobleman Charles Darnay find their lives increasingly intertwined with those of the Manettes. Yet soon...

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people of Earth must come to terms with the prospect of the end of human civilisation and the beginning of...

One of Stevenson’s most famous and enduringly popular works, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde describes the mysterious relationship between a respectable and affable doctor and his brutal associate. Set in the grimy streets of Victorian London, this tale of murder, split personality and obscure science, with its chilling final revelation, became an instant horror classic when...

Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, twenty-nine pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on their long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper. The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the...

Four women, with very different backgrounds and characters – the artless Lottie Wilkins, the pious Rose Arbuthnot, the cantankerous Mrs Fisher, and the haughty Lady Caroline Dester – respond to an advertisement in The Times offering a medieval castle to rent in Italy that April. As their joint holiday begins, tensions flare up between them, but they soon bond over...

At the end of an industrious political career in conflict-riven Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli composed his masterpiece, The Prince, a classic study of power and politics, and a manual of ruthlessness for any ambitious ruler. Controversial in his own time, The Prince made Machiavelli’s name a byword for manipulative scheming, and had an impact on such major figures...

Russia’s literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman – a professor of black magic – arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil’s mission quickly becomes entangled with the...

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood! When sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.” 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...

Sonnets by William Shakespeare are among the most lyrical and moving pieces of poetry in any language. They abound with examples of his genius for wordplay, rhythm, and metaphor, dealing with the eternal themes of love, memory, beauty, and the ravages of time. First published in 1609, after Shakespeare had written many of his most famous works, the Sonnets have...

Gilbert Markham is fascinated by Helen Graham, the beautiful and enigmatic woman who has recently moved into Wildfell Hall. He is swift to befriend her, but when local gossip calls Helen’s character and behaviour into question, Gilbert begins to repent of his congeniality. It is only when Helen presents Gilbert with her diary and instructs him to read it that...

In Thomas More’s hugely influential Utopia, a traveller recounts his discovery of an island nation in which the inhabitants enjoy unprecedented social cohesion and justice. The book imagines a community in which laws, personal relations, and professional ambition are based on reason, in contrast with the tradition-bound superstitions of Europe, which were, in More’s eyes, impediments to equality and peaceful...

The most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for their dialogue but their atmosphere and the tensions expressed between the lines. Collected in this volume are Chekhov’s four most celebrated plays – The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and...

Great Expectations chronicles the fortunes of its young protagonist Pip as he is unexpectedly endowed by a mysterious benefactor with the life of a gentleman, enabling him to escape to London from the prospect of a humble blacksmith’s career in rural Kent. In the bustling, unforgiving capital, he must learn for himself the pitfalls of love and wealth, and how...

As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren...

Inspired by Dostoevsky’s own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the misfortunes of the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich. As he succumbs to the temptations of the roulette table,...

Persuasion narrates the emotional journey of its protagonist Anne Elliot, who chances upon Captain Wentworth, a suitor she was persuaded to reject seven years earlier. His reappearance causes her to reflect on her past decisions and contemplate her marital future. Vividly depicting the society holiday towns of Lyme Regis and Bath, and infused with its author’s trademark wit, Austen’s last...

Beautiful Emma Rouault yearns for the life of wealth, passion, and romance she has encountered in popular sentimental fiction. When her doctor, the well-meaning but awkward and unremarkable Charles Bovary, begins to pay her attention, she imagines that she may be granted her wish. However, after their marriage, Emma soon becomes frustrated with the boredom of provincial life and finds...

Widely considered one of the greatest American novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn and his companion, the slave Jim, as they journey down the Mississippi River after running away from Huck’s alcoholic father and Jim’s owners. As they travel, they encounter a floating house, feuding families, and cunning grifters. More importantly, Huck gets to know...

Sense and Sensibility is the story of the two Dashwood sisters, who embody the conflict between the oppressive nature of "civilised" society and the human desire for romantic passion. Elinor is cautious and unassuming about sentimental matters, while Marianne is wild and passionate, falling hopelessly in love with Mr Willoughby. But the lessons in life and romance see the two...

Unique edition in dual language Dante’s dramatic journey through the circles of hell in search of redemption – and his encounter with devils, monsters and the souls of some of the greatest sinners who ever walked on earth – is one of the cornerstones of Western literature, the summit of medieval thinking and arguably the highest poetic achievement of all...

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a classic novel filled with intricate storytelling and unforgettable characters. After impressing Francis Drake with a feat of daring and bravery, young Ned Hearne is offered a reward of his own choosing. His decision? To sail the seas on Drake’s ship. Little does he know, however, what adventures, dangers and close shaves lie in...

The heir to his grandfather’s considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the attractive but turbulent Gloria, and the couple soon discover the dangerous flip side of a life of glamour and debauchery. Containing...

On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told that he will be set free, but must make regular appearances at a court in the attic of a tenement building while his trial proceeds. Although he never comes to know the particulars of his case, Josef K....

A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and proceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual and somewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who are still registered on the landowner’s estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is not clear what Chichikov’s...

Set in the author’s native Swansea in South Wales, the ten autobiographical stories in this much-loved collection chart his journey from boyhood—movingly and at times comically evoked in tales such as The Peaches and A Visit to Grandpa’s—to early adulthood. Along the way, in Extraordinary Little Cough, among others, the vicissitudes of adolescence and a burgeoning sexuality are explored with...

Having travelled from her native New York to London to meet her relatives, Isabel Archer, a young, independently minded woman, rejects the marriage proposals of two suitors in her determination to stay in control of her destiny. When she suddenly comes into a large legacy, Isabel believes that this windfall will finally ensure the freedom that she yearns for and...

When the world-weary dandy Eugene Onegin moves from St Petersburg to take up residence in the country estate he has inherited, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his neighbour, the poet Vladimir Lensky. Coldly rejecting the amorous advances of Tatyana and cynically courting her sister Olga—Lensky’s fiancée—Onegin finds himself dragged into a tragedy of his own making. Eugene Onegin—presented...

Unique edition in dual language Describing Dante’s second stage in his arduous journey to redemption, Purgatory features a host of unforgettable scenes and characters, and arguably some of the best poetry to be found in the Divine Comedy. The gloom, torments, and evils of Hell have been left behind, but Dante’s ascent of Mount Purgatory towards Paradise remains fraught with...