Classics - British
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By Anthony Trollope ; text edited by Michael Sadleir and Frederick Page ; introduction and notes by John Sutherland ; with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone.
This 1857 sequel to The Warden wryly chronicles the struggle for control of the English diocese of Barchester. The evangelical but not particularly competent new bishop is Dr. Proudie, who with his awful wife and oily curate, Slope, maneuver for power. The Warden and Barchester Towers are part of Trollope's Barsetshire series, in which some of the same characters recur.
By Charles Dickens ; edited with an introduction and notes by Nicola Bradbury ; preface by Terry Eagleton.
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother's tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love.
By Evelyn Waugh.
One of Waugh's most famous books, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the difficult loves of insular Englishman Charles Ryder, and his peculiarly intense relationship with the wealthy but dysfunctional family that inhabited Brideshead. Taking place in the years after World War II, Brideshead Revisited shows us a part of upper-class English culture that has been disappearing steadily.
A story about the aristocratic Catholic family of Lord Marchmain, set in the period between World War I and World War II.
By Charles Dickens ; with an introduction and notes by Jeremy Tambling.
Born six months after his father's death, David faces many hardships growing up in nineteenth-century England. As a child, David is sent by his stepfather to work in a warehouse. He finally runs away to his great-aunt Betsy who gives him a genuine welcome.
By John Galsworthy ; edited with and introduction and notes by Geoffrey Harvey.
The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.
By Ford Madox Ford.
Originally titled “The Saddest Story” and heralded by Graham Greene as “one of the finest novels of our century,” Ford’s 1915 tale of passion and deceit in the lives of two married couples is a modernist masterpiece.
By Charles Dickens ; with an introduction by David Trotter ; edited and with notes by Charlotte Mitchell.
Great Expectations is at once a superbly constructed novel of spellbinding mastery and a profound examination of moral values. Here, some of Dickens's most memorable characters come to play their part in a story whose title itself reflects the deep irony that shaped Dickens's searching reappraisal of the Victorian middle class.
By Jonathan Swift ; edited with an introduction and notes by Robert DeMaria, Jr.
The unusual voyages of Englishman Lemuel Gulliver carry him to such strange locales as Lilliput, where the inhabitants are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a land of giants; an island of sorcerers; and a nation ruled by horses.
By by Evelyn Waugh.
Laced with cynicism and truth, A Handful of Dust satirizes a certain stratum of English life where all the characters have money, but lack practically every other credential.
By Graham Greene ; introduction by James Wood.
The novel's hero, Scobie, is a police official who has conflated duty with love and who doesn't get much pleasure out of either. We have the fevers, corruption, even a war, but because this is Graham Greene writing, the real damage below the water line is not done by the U-boat, but by our hero's own character.
By by Robert Graves.
The emperor Claudius tells of his life during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and the events that led to his rise to power in a classic novel reconstructing ancient Rome.
By Charlotte Brontë with an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallet.
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret. Charlotte Bronte's novel about the passionate love between Jane Eyre, a young girl alone in the world, and the rich, brilliant, domineering Rochester has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic, ever since its publication in 1847. It lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving affirmation of the prerogatives of the heart in the face of disappointment and misfortune.
By Henry Fielding ; edited with an introduction and notes by Judith Hawley.
Contains two novels by Henry Fielding, including "Joseph Andrews," the story of a footman in eighteenth-century English who must protect his virtue from the advances of several women; and "Shamela," a parody of Samuel Richardson's novel of a servant girl whose virtuous behavior is rewarded with marriage.
By William Golding ; introduction by E.M. Forster ; with a biographical and critical note by E.L. Epstein ; illustrated by Ben Gibson.
The 50th Anniversary Edition of the Lord of the Flies is the volume that every fan of this classic book will have to own! Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. And now readers can own it in a beautifully designed hardcover edition worthy of its stature.
By Thomas Hardy ; with an introduction by Craig Raine.
This is the story of a common field laborer, Michael Henshard, who becomes a leader in a small market town and then through his own failure sinks back miserably to his humble beginnings.
By George Eliot ; edited with an introduction and notes by Rosemary Ashton.
Set in a provincial Victorian neighborhood, the author explores the complex social relationship and the struggle to hold fast to personal tragedy in a materialistic environment.
By Daniel Defoe ; with an introduction by John Mullan.
As Moll Flanders rises from the infamous Newgate Prison to fame, wealth, and respectability, Moll comes to embody all the excess and vitality of an era.
By Wilkie Collins.
The Moonstone was published in 1868 and concerns the huge yellow diamond of the title that was once stolen from an Indian shrine. Rachel Verrinder receives the stone as a gift and does not realise that it has been passed to her in a sinister form of revenge by John Herncastle who, it transpires, acquired the moonstone by means of murder and theft. The jewel also brings bad luck. The stone disappears on the very night it is given to Rachel, though, and the tale concerns the unveiling of the culprit after the intervention of Sergeant Cuff, a famous London detective. A maid who is under suspicion commits suicide and Rachel herself seems reticent when it comes to aiding the investigation. Mysterious Indians appear frequently and there is an air of confusion and the unknown until the mystery is eventually solved.
By Virginia Woolf ; preface by Mark Hussey ; annotated and with an introduction by Bonnie Kime Scott.
A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life.
By by Dorothy L. Sayers.
When the parish church bells toll out the death of an unknown man, Lord Peter investigates the sinister affair.
By W. Somerset Maugham ; introduction by Gore Vidal.
A young man struggling for self-realization, Philip Carey becomes caught in a destructive love affair with a waitress, in a novel about sexual obsession, self-discovery, and the complexities of human relationships.
By Charles Dickens ; with twenty-four illustrations by George Cruikshank ; introduced by Michael Slater.
Deals with the adventures of a young orphan boy trying to survive amid greed and poverty in 19th-century London.
By E.M. Forster.
In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While Adela never actually claims she was raped, the decisions she makes ostracize her from both her countrymen and the natives, setting off a complex chain of events that forever changes the lives of all involved. This intense and moving story asks the listener serious questions about preconceptions regarding race, sex, religion, and truth. A political and philosophical masterpiece.
By Jane Austen ; introduction by Anna Quindlen.
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman, as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
By Thomas Hardy.
An enduring tale of love, desire, and the universal longing both to leave one's home and to return to it, this novel is one of Hardy's greatest and most affecting works. Hardy's passionately drawn characters and his vivid rendering of their valiant but ultimately ineffective struggle in destiny's web result in a masterpiece of melancholy brilliance.
By Jane Austen ; edited with an introduction by Ros Ballaster ; with the original Penguin classics introduction by Tony Tanner.
"Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her behaviour leaves her open to gossip. Meanwhile, Elinor is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment."--P. [4] of cover.
By D.H. Lawrence ; with an introduction by Benjamin DeMott and a new afterword by Dennis Jackson.
Paul Morel's childhood and early manhood in the English midlands are deeply affected by his devotion to and concern for his dominating mother.
By Thomas Hardy ; edited with notes by Tim Dolin ; with an introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet.
A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.
By Henry Fielding ; edited by John Bender and Simon Stern with an introduction by John Bender.
Tom Jones (1749) is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. At the center of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today.
By W.M. Thackeray ; with an introduction by Catherine Peters.
Chronicles the exploits of Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous young woman who is determined to achieve wealth and social success.
By Samuel Butler.
"Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, a year after Butler's death, his marvelously uninhibited satire savages Victorian bourgeois values as personified by multiple generations of the Pontifex family. A thinly veiled account of his own upbringing in the bosom of a God-fearing Christian family, Butler's scathingly funny depiction of the self-righteous hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life was hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement.""--BOOK JACKET.
By Emily Brontë.
Love story set in the foreboding, heather-covered, wind-swept Yorkshire moors in the early 19th century.
