Must Read Classics

'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life'Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen...

Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his...

The illegitimate son of a landowner and his common-law peasant wife, Arkady Dolgoruky has scarcely seen these parents during his nineteen years of life. In a narrative combining farce and pathos, Dostoevsky describes Arkady's visit to St Petersburg in...

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury. Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English...

Jane Eyre (1847) has enjoyed huge popularity since first publication, and its success owes much to its exceptional emotional power. Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is engaged as governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester. Her integrity...

Dumas’s epic novel of justice, retribution, and self-discovery—one of the most enduringly popular adventure tales ever written—in a newly revised translation.This beloved novel tells the story of Edmond Dantès, wrongfully...

THE CLASSIC BOOK THAT HAS INSPIRED MILLIONS A penetrating examination of how we live and how to live better Few books transform a generation and then establish themselves as touchstones for the generations that follow. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle...

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony'...

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, 36-year-old woman and three centuries...

'The Alices are the greatest nonsense ever written, and far greater, in my view, than most sense.' - Philip Pullman Collecting Alice's complete adventures, a source of delight to children and adults alike for generations, the Penguin Classics edition of...

(Available after 3-20 days) Charlotte Brontë’s contemporary George Eliot wrote of Villette, “There is something almost preternatural in its power.” The deceptive stillness and security of a girls’ school provide the setting for this 1853 novel, Brontë’s...

First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcil­able relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and...

In 1849 the young Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years' hard labour in a Siberian prison camp for advocating socialism. Notes from a Dead House (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead), the novel he wrote on his release, tells of shocking...

‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that,...

As he was finishing Finnegans Wake, Joyce proclaimed, “I have discovered I can do anything with language I want.” Indeed, with his last book, which took him seventeen years to write, Joyce takes literary modernism to new territories by...

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Len Platt, Professor of Modern Literatures and Head of Goldsmiths Learning Enhancement Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London. Finnegans Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and...

An iconic novel dressed in a fierce design by acclaimed fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. This couture-inspired collection also features The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice.Orphaned Jane Eyre...

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen and the White Rabbit all make their appearances, and are now familiar figures in writing, conversation and idiom. So too are Carroll's delightful verses such as The Walrus and the...

A Christmas Carol is the most famous, heart-warming and chilling festive story of them all. In these pages we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is synonymous with greed and parsimony: 'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should...

A beautiful hardback edition of a modern Indian classic and winner of 'The Best of the Booker' - the best novel from Booker Prize history.Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child...