Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> Historical - General

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.

From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a...

With an Introduction and Notes by Sally Minogue

The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother - also stand at odds to society's expectations. The novel is set in a period of social and political ferment, featuring class disenfranchisement, the drama of Luddite machine-breaking, and the divisive effects of the Napoleonic Wars.

But Charlotte Brontes particular...

An immediate best-seller on publication, Ben Hur remains a dazzling achievement by any standards. A thoroughly exhilarating tale of betrayal, revenge and salvation, it is the only novel that ranks with Uncle Tom's Cabin as a genuine American folk possession.

This was the book that finally overcame the inherent suspicion of fiction that still prevailed in much of america in the late nineteenth century.

Wallace writes with a freshness and immediacy that brings every action-packed scene to life and illuminates the geography, ethnology and customs of the...

HarperCollins is pround to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.'

A tale of sin, punishment and atonement, The Scarlet Letter exposes the moral rigidity of a 17th-Century Puritan New England community when faced with the illegitimate child of a young mother. Regarded as the first real heroine of American fiction, it is Hester Prynne's strength of character that resonates with the reader when her harsh sentence is cast. It is in her refusal to reveal the identity of the...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'How sad it is I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young... If it was only the other way '

Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'I want - I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that - categories like that - won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.'

Newland Archer, a successful and charming young lawyer conducts himself by the rules and standards of the polite, upper class New York society that he resides in. Happily engaged to the pretty and conventional May Welland, his attachment...

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.