William Blake's strikingly original poetic world of myth and mysticism continues to fascinate. This selection represents the full range of his accomplishments, from his haunting lyrics to his political works.

Crime and Punishment is one of the most important novels of the nineteenth century. It is the story of a murder committed on principle, of a killer who wishes to set himself outside and above society. It is marked by Dostoevsky's own harrowing experience in penal servitude, and yet contains moments of wild humour.

Writing at the very moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch a concept of life and society free of the past's dogma yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age.

Verne's classic tale of Captain Nemo and the submarine the Nautilus has left a profound mark on the twentieth century. Its themes are universal, its style humorous and grandiose, its construction masterly.

Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, originally published in 1837, opens with the death of Louis XV in 1774 and ends in 1795 when Bonaparte quelled the insurrection of the Vendemiaire. It is a work of great narrative and descriptive power that was itself meant to be revolutionary.

Diodorus of Sicily's The Library, Books 16-20, constitute a unique and vital resource for the careers of Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, and for the Early Hellenistic Period, the time of the Successors.

Arthur Machen is a significant figure in supernatural and horror literature, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This collection brings together his best horror tales with a full contextual introduction and which helps to illuminate Machen's place in the literary and cultural milieu of 1890s Britain.

A fabulous yellow diamond disappears, the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem, and nothing can be taken for granted.

With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity, as misconceptions and hasty judgements lead to heartache and scandal.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre has gripped readers since its 1847 publication. Thousands of readers since then have been drawn by the vigour of Jane's voice and the novel's forceful depiction of childhood injustice, of the restraints placed upon women, and the complexities of both faith and passion.