'I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with horror which at all times assails me yet'.
With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it?
This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that The King in Yellow 'achieves notable heights of cosmic fear'.
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.
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb was written to be an 'introduction to the study of Shakespeare', but are much more entertaining than that. All of Shakespeare's best-loved plays, comic and tragic, are retold in a clear and robust style, and their literary quality has made them popular and sought-after ever since their first publication in 1807.
This edition contains the delightful pen-and-ink drawings of Arthur Rackham.
In this selection of tales by the master folklorist Andrew Lang, the reader is taken into the romantic world of the gallant Knights of the Round Table and their courageous and chivalrous deeds, fair maidens, castles steeped in history, the quest for the Holy Grail, and the tragic love of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot for Guinevere, and Tristan for Iseult.
The Arthurian legends are the most potent of the thrilling and mist-enshrouded tales of adventure to be passed down from pre-recorded history, and they have as much appeal today as they did in the age of the troubadours.
`When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life'.
Richard Aldington
This novel is Lawrence's semi-autobiographical masterpiece in which he explores emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers.
Lawrence's novels are perhaps the most powerful exploration in the genre in English of family, class, sexuality and relationships in youth and early adulthood
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.
From its first publication in 1816 Rob Roy has been recognised as containing some of Scott's finest writing and most engaging, fully realised characters. The outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor was already a legendary, disputed figure by the time Scott wrote - a heroic Scottish Robin Hood to some, an over-glamorised, unprincipled predator to others.
Scott approaches Rob Roy indirectly, through the adventures of his fictional hero, Frank Osbaldistone, amid the political turmoil of England and Scotland in 1715. With characteristic care Scott reconstructs the period and settings so as to place Rob Roy and the Scotland he inhabits amid conflicting moral, economic and historical forces.
This edition features, besides a new critical introduction and extensive explanatory notes, an essay outlining clearly the novel's historical context and a glossary of Scottish words and phrases used by Scott's colourful, vernacular characters.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities.
Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politics as the only hope for a civilized and humane life for all. It is a timeless work whose political message is as relevant today as it was in Tressell's time. For this it has long been honoured by the Trade Union movement and thinkers across the political spectrum.
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.
Homer's great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His colourful adventures, his endurance, his love for his wife and son have the same power to move and inspire readers today as they did in Archaic Greece, 2800 years ago.
This poem has been translated many times over the years, but Chapman's sinewy, gorgeous rendering (1616) stands in a class of its own. Chapman believed himself inspired by the spirit of Homer himself, and matches the breadth and power of the original with a complex and stunning idiom of his own. John Keats expressed his admiration for the resulting work in the famous sonnet, 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer': 'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold...'
This new Wordsworth edition of Chapman’s Homer contains accessible annotation, and a detailed introduction that places his masterpiece in the context of his own day, and discusses its influences on later poets.
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.
Life in the March household is full of adventures and accidents as the four very different March sisters follow their varying paths to adulthood, always maintaining the special bond between them. Sensible Meg, impetuous Jo, shy Beth and artistic Amy each have to confront different challenges as they grow up together and attempt to learn how to be both happy and good.
The Little Prince is a modern fable, and for readers far and wide both the title and the work have exerted a pull far in excess of the book's brevity. Written and published first by Antoine de St-Exupéry in 1943, only a year before his plane disappeared on a reconnaissance flight, it is one of the world's most widely translated books, enjoyed by adults and children alike. In the meeting of the narrator who has ditched his plane in the Sahara desert, and the little prince, who has dropped there through time and space from his tiny asteroid, comes an intersection of two worlds, the one governed by the laws of nature, and the other determined only by the limits of imagination. The world of the imagination wins hands down, with the concerns of the adult world often shown to be lamentably silly as seen through the eyes of the little prince. While adult readers can find deep meanings in his various encounters, they can also be charmed back to childhood by this wise but innocent infant.
This popular translation contains the author’s own delightful illustrations, bringing to visual life the small being at the tale’s heart, and a world of fantasy far removed from any quotidian reality. It is also a sort of love story, in which two frail beings, the downed pilot and the wandering infant-prince who has left behind all he knows, share their short time together isolated from humanity and finding sustenance in each other. This is a book which creates a unique relationship with each reader, whether child or adult.
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.
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