English Literature

Inspired by Boileau’s Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the “Ancients”, who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the “Moderns”, who claimed that contemporary...
By: Jonathan Swift

A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed, Directions to Servants takes a caustic and irreverent look at...
By: Jonathan Swift

Although ranging considerably in tone, mood and milieu, the fifteen short stories included in this collection all centre around the city of Dublin and its inhabitants at the beginning of the twentieth century. From the unsettling adventure of two...
By: James Joyce

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...
By: Virginia Woolf

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...
By: Charles Dickens

While Charles Dickens is best known and celebrated for his prolific journalistic output and novelistic creations, he also devoted some of his creative energies to verse. At turns sentimental, melancholy, playful, humorous and satirical, and ranging...
By: Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into...
By: Charles Dickens

A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of...
By: Arthur Conan Doyle

When the blind narrator, the masseur Louis Dunkel, moves into the Cornwall country house of his patient Mrs Nance, he becomes fascinated by her niece Sophie, a haughty young woman. Their resulting romance, however, is unsettled by the arrival of the...
By: Rayner Heppenstall