When his love for the Baron's daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his companions begin a breathless tour of Europe, South America and Asia, as an outrageous series of disasters befall them earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, and murder, testing the young hero's optimism.

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour.

Two former lovers embark on a game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a married woman. But the consequences prove to be more serious, than they could have guessed.

Written in secret and copied for her publisher in disguised handwriting, Frances Burney's first novel appeared anonymously in 1778. Subtitled The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World , it records in letters its heroine's encounters with an education at the hands of London society.

A biography of Samuel Johnson which concerns the last twenty years of his life. It establishes Johnson's centrality in 18th century letters. It places him in a literary and cultural context.

Fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, alone in the world, is pursued by her dead mistress' son. Although she is attracted to Mr B, she holds out against his demands, determined to protect her virginity and abide by her moral standards Psychlologically acute in its explorations of sex, freedom and power.

Mr and Mrs Bennet live with their five daughters at Longbourn in Hertfordshire. Jane, the eldest, falls in love with Charles Bingley, a rich bachelor who takes a house nearby with his two sisters and friend Fitzwilliam Darcy. Darcy is attracted to the second daughter, Elizabeth.

Sex, intrigue and adultery in the world of high politics and huge wealth in late eighteenth-century England.

Oliver Goldsmith's hugely successful novel of 1766 remained for generations one of the most highly regarded and beloved works of eighteenth-century fiction. It contains, in the figure of the vicar himself, one of the most harmlessly simply and unsophisticated yet also ironically complex narrators ever to appear in English fiction.

In 1771, at the age of 65, Benjamin Franklin sat down to write his autobiography, having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity. The result is a classic of American literature.

In 1945, Claire is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon in Scotland. Innocently, she walks through a stone circle, and finds herself in a skirmish taking place in 1743. Now, she is in danger from the shock of her own desire for James; and is torn between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

'Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Rreflections brought only regret, and anticipation terror.' Such is the state of mind in which Emily St. Aubuert - the orphaned heroine of Ann Radcliffe's 1794 gothic Classic, The Mysteries of Udolpho - finds herself after ...

Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of marriage are accompanied by unwelcome sexual advances.

Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. In poor health, Bramble sees the world as one of degeneracy and raucous overcrowding, and will not hesitate to let his companions know his feelings on the matter.

The son of Manfred, Prince of Otranto, is mysteriously killed on his wedding day by a huge helmet. The event leads to a fast-paced story of jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena unfolding in an atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight, and dark castle walls - mirroring the inner turmoils of the characters themselves.

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Yet there is one odor he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin.

Ambrosio, the worthy superior of the Capuchins of Madrid, falls to the temptations of Matilda, a fiend-inspired wanton who, disguised as a boy, has entered his monastery as a novice. Ambrosio then falls in love with one of his penitents and finally kills her in order to escape detection. However, he is discovered and sentenced to death.

Roxana (1724), Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune. Its narrator tells the story of her own 'wicked' life as the mistress of rich and powerful men. A resourceful adventuress, she is also an unforgiving analyst of her own susceptibilities, who tells us of the price she pays for her ...

This work follows Daniel Defoe's fictional narrator as he traces the devastating progress of the plague through the streets of London. Here we see a city transformed - some of its streets suspiciously empty and some overwhelmingly full of the sounds and smells of human suffering.

First published in 1792, this book was written in a spirit of outrage and enthusiasm. In an age of ferment, following the American and French revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft took prevailing egalitarian principles and dared to apply them to women. The introduction discusses her ideas.