In 1888 Henry James wrote 'There was the customary novel by Mr Le Fanu for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight'. Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories are tales selected from Le Fanu's stories which mostly appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and other periodicals, and their haunting, sinister qualities still have an enormous appeal for the modern reader. The great M.R. James, who collected and introduces the stories in this book, considered that Le Fanu 'stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.
‘The worst parts were the great masses of flesh of the monstrous Worm, in all its red and sickening aspect… The sight was horrible enough, but, with the awful smell added, was simply unbearable. The Worm's hole appeared to breathe forth death in its most repulsive forms.’
Here are two great, neglected horror novels by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, together in one volume for the first time. It is a double treat for lovers of blood-curdling fantasy fiction.
The Lady of the Shroud, published here in its full and unabridged form, is a fascinating and engrossing concoction of a vampire tale, Ruritanian adventure story and science fiction romance. The novel fully demonstrates the breadth and ingenuity of Stoker's imagination.
The spine-chilling The Lair of the White Worm features a monstrous worm secreted for thousands of years in a bottomless well and able to metamorphose into a seductive woman of a reptilian beauty who survives on her victim's life blood. The novel contains some of Stoker's most graphic and grisly moments of horror.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was one of the great masters of Victorian of mystery and horror fiction, and can be regarded as the father of the modern ghost story. In a Glass Darkly (1872), one of his most celebrated volumes, purports to be the casebook of Dr Hesselius, a pioneer psychologist.
These five tales represent some of Le Fanu's most accomplished work, which rises above the staid conventions of the age. Although drawing on Gothic conventions - the book features both ghosts and vampires - Le Fanu redefined the parameters of supernatural fiction. He had little interest in the crude depiction of other worldly phenomena in order to provide the reader with a pleasurable frisson of fear. Le Fanu concern rather lay in the examination of the results of supernatural experience on the psyche of his protagonist, in this he paved the way for the work of Henry James and M. R. James.
Included is 'Carmilla', a classic vampire story, pre-dating (but heavily influencing) 'Dracula' by 26 years and establishing many of the traditional facets of the female vampire.
This volume is an indispensable cornerstone of modern horror and remains one of the finest collections of unsettling fiction in the language.
COUNT LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time.
In the early story Family Happiness, Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In The Kreutzer Sonata he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in The Devil a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.
This volume also includes an Introduction and Notes written specially for this Wordsworth edition by Dr Tim Cook, formely lecturer in literature at the Universities of Kingston and Ulster. Previous work contributed by Dr Cook for Wordsworth includes an introduction and notes to Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.
From "The Crystal Egg": There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near Seven Dials over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished.
The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg.
The Aeneid is Virgil's Masterpiece. His epic poem recounts the story of Rome's legendary origins from the ashes of Troy and proclaims her destiny of world dominion. This optimistic vision is accompanied by an undertow of sadness at the price that must be paid in human suffering to secure Rome's future greatness. The tension between the public voice of celebration and the tragic private voice is given full expression both in the doomed love of Dido and Aeneas, and in the fateful clash between the Trojan leader and the Italian hero, Turnus.
Hailed by T.S. Eliot as 'the classic of all Europe', Virgil's Aeneid has enjoyed a unique and enduring influence on European literature, art and politics for the past two thousand years.
Andrew Lang draws on his classical learning to recount the Homeric legend of the wars between the Greeks and the Trojans. Paris, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, the Amazons and the Wooden Horse all figure in this magical introduction to one of the greatest legends ever told.
Also included in this book are the adventures of Theseus and his dramatic battle with the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, and the quest of Jason for the Golden Fleece with the help of the Princess Medea.
Robin Hood is perhaps the greatest of all British folk heroes. Henry Gilbert's book assembles all the disparate elements of the legend into an elegiac and detailed version of Robin's life and adventures. The book re-conceives all the familiar set-pieces of the story that gives to the whole the grandeur of an epic.
Robin Hood is a dashing romantic hero, an enemy of injustice and a friend to the downtrodden and he emerges from the text as a vivid and fully rounded individual. All the regular characters are here, too, including Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet and Maid Marian. And of course the villainous Guy of Gisborne and the Sherriff of Nottingham play their usual dastardly roles in the drama.
Gilbert's tale begins with an account of why Robin becomes an outlaw and then how he assembles a group of supporters, a band of dispossessed men, sick to death of oppression by the ruling class, who choose a life under Robin Hood in preference to their brutal former existences. While the tale is essentially a merry romp, it also paints a vivid picture of the times, the cruelty, the poverty and the fragility of human life. The novel is a wonderful, engaging realisation of the saga of Robin Hood.
The Phoenix and the Carpet is E. Nesbit's second fantasy novel and is the sequel to Five Children and It.
From Robert, Anthea, Jane and Cyril's new nursery carpet there falls a mysterious egg which is hatched in the fire to reveal a benevolent, resourceful and ingenious Phoenix who explains that the carpet is possessed of magic qualities.
And so begins a series of fantastic and bizarre adventures as the carpet transports the children and the Phoenix to places as diverse as a chilling French castle, a desert island and even the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company's offices, which the Phoenix believes to be a shrine for his followers.
When fifteen-year-old orphan John Trenchard is banished by his Aunt Jane, he goes to live at the local inn with the mysterious Elzevir Block, whose son has been killed by Customs Officers. Unofficially adopted by Block, John comes to learn the reasons for the noises in the graveyard at night, of 'Blackbeard' Mohune's lost treasure and Elzevir Block's secret.
This dashing tale of eighteenth-century Dorset smugglers will be enjoyed by all who love stories of derring-do written in the tradition of Treasure Island.
None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the 'partly real, partly dream country' he founded on his native Dorset, it charts the rise and self-induced downfall of a single 'man of character'.
The fast-moving and ingeniously contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its tragic force, and features some of the author's most striking episodes and brilliant passages of description.
The phrase `life's little ironies' is now proverbial, but it was coined by Hardy as the title for this, his third volume of short stories. While the tales and sketches reflect many of the strengths and themes of the great novels, they are powerful works in their own right. Unified by his quintessential irony, strong visual sense, and engaging characters, they deal with the tragic and the humorous, the metaphysical and the magical. The collection displays the whole range of Hardy's art as a writer of fiction, from fantasy to uncompromising realism, and from the loving re-creation of a vanished rural world to the repressions of fin-de-siecle bourgeois life.
These comic novels will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped by circumstance. Their central characters, Artie Kipps and Alfred Polly, are prisoners of their modest social class, limited education, dull work, and sterile relationships. In Wells' hands they break out of the cages that society has constructed for them, learning after bitter experience the truth that 'if the world does not please you, you can change it'. This message, a revolutionary one in its day for the growing army of Edwardian clerks and drapers, is handled with a rich comedy and freshness that belies its deadly seriousness.
In King Solomon's Mines, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good persuade Allan Quatermain to help them find Sir Henry's brother George, who has gone missing in the unexplored African interior while searching for the legendary treasure trove of a lost kingdom. Quatermain agrees to lead the expedition, though he has little hope they will return alive. After suffering unimaginable hardships, they find the treasure hidden deep within a mountain, but while they are admiring the hoard the vast stone door closes. Their store of food and water rapidly runs out and the trapped men prepare to die, but in the nick of time they find a way of escape. On their return trek to civilisation they succeed in the purpose of their expedition when they miraculously come upon George Curtis, alive and well. They return to England with enough of the treasure to live in style, but Allan Quatermain lures them back for more African adventures.
Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes… it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick, soft fur… and it had hands and feet like a monkey's.
‘It’ was the Psammead, the grumpy sand-fairy that could, if in the mood, grant a wish a day. When the five children befriend him they find that each wish granted often has a sting in its tail. Golden guineas are too difficult to spend, wings let them down in a most inconvenient way, and when they wish for Red Indians, the children forget that they can sometimes be a little warlike.
Generations of children have come to love the fantasy and the whimsy of the stories in the classic book from the author of The Railway Children.
With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.
Enter Arsène Lupin, Gentleman – Cambrioleur, the ‘Prince of Thieves’, one of the most daring and dashing individuals who ever lifted a diamond necklace from under the noses of the authorities. Young and handsome, laughing his way through difficulties and danger, Lupin is also the master of disguise and languages. His sense of humour and conceit make life difficult for the police who attribute most of the major crimes in France to Lupin and his gang of ruffians and urchins.
Maurice Leblanc’s stories are lively and witty, occasionally taking on the air of burlesque, especially when Lupin pits his wits against the English detective named variously ‘Holmlock Shears’ and ‘Herlock Sholmes’
These are significant tales in the history of crime fiction but, more importantly, they are great fun.
In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, now in a new edition, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a simple and loyal woodlander and an exotic and sophisticated outsider. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion, and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous. The Woodlanders, with its thematic portrayal of the role of social class, gender, and evolutionary survival, as well as its insights into the capacities and limitations of language, exhibits Hardy's acute awareness of his era's most troubling dilemmas.
Almayer’s Folly was Conrad’s outstanding debut novel: as well as exploring the culture of a part of the world previously unknown to English fiction, it showed immense sophistication in its handling of narrative, time-shifts and point of view. Hailed as ‘a writer of genius’ by contemporary reviewers, Conrad returned to the same riverine settlement in Borneo in his second novel, An Outcast of the Islands. Set some 15 years earlier, this prequel to Almayer’s Folly tells how Lingard lost his monopoly of trade in Sambir, and follows the dangerous rivalry of his protegés Willems and Almayer. In The Rescue, the narrative moves even further back in time and shows the young, idealistic Lingard torn between his loyalties to his Sulawesi allies and his unexpected attraction to Edith Travers, with explosive consequences. Throughout this sequence of novels, the fascinating figure of Captain Lingard comes steadily into the foreground.
Wordsworth Classics makes the Lingard Trilogy available, for the first time, in a single volume.
At the end of the nineteenth century a stranger arrives in the Sussex countryside and mayhem ensues; in the sleepy county of Kent a miracle food brings biological chaos that engulfs and threatens the entire planet. H. G. Wells's fertile and mercurial imagination never brought us more bizarre and unsettling stories than those revealed in The Invisible Man (1897) and The Food of the Gods, and How It Came to Earth (1904). These are stories of extraordinary physical transformations and are at once extremely funny and richly imaginative. At the same time, Wells poses some very probing questions about the ethical dimensions to science and the human capacity for both pity and cruelty. Brought together for the first time in this new Wordsworth edition, The Invisible Man and The Food of the Gods are two of Wells's most entertaining and thought-provoking works.
It is more than a century since the ascetic, gaunt and enigmatic detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet. From 1891, beginning with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the now legendary and pioneering Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle's matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth patiently assisted by his doggedly loyal and lovably pedantic friend and companion, Dr Watson.
The stories are illustrated by the remarkable Sydney Paget from whom our images of Sherlock Holmes and his world derive and who first equipped Holmes with his famous deerstalker hat. The literary cult of Sherlock Holmes shows no sign of fading with time as each new generation comes to love and revere the penetrating mind and ruthless logic which were the undoing of so many Victorian master criminals.
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