A depiction of the thieves, informers, prostitutes and highwaymen thronging the slums and prisons of the corrupt London underworld that exposes the dark side of a corrupt and jaded society.

The book that created the modern United States, Paine's incendiary call for Americans to revolt against British rule converted millions to the cause of independence and set out a vision of a just society - free from corruption and cronyism - which remains inspiring today.

A follow-up to the bestseller Cryptonomicon , this book presents a cast of characters in a time of genius and discovery, men and women whose exploits defined the age of the High Baroque. It travels from the infant American colonies to the Tower of London, the glittering courts of Louis XIV, and all manner of places in between.

The Kyoto Costume Institute holds one of the world's most extensive clothing collections and has curated many exhibitions worldwide. This title showcases a vast selection from the Institute's archives of skilled photographs depicting the clothing expertly displayed and arranged on custom-made mannequins.

The Chevalier des Grieux is still a young man, but already life and bitter experience have worn him to a shell. The kindness of a stranger persuades him to reveal his troubles, the story of his helpless and ill-starred love for Manon.

The story of four sisters, Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, great-grandchildren of Charles II, whose extraordinary lives spanned the period from 1740 to 1832. Underlying the drama of their aristocratic existence is a story of everyday life. Winner of the 1995 Fawcett Book Prize.

A story of sixteen-year-old David Balfour, an orphan, who after being kidnapped by his villainous uncle manages to escape and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.

Based on a close examination of letters, diaries and account books, this study offers an insight into the intimate and everyday lives of genteel women and transforms our understanding of the position of women in this period.

Published between 1776 and 1788, this text is acknowledged as a masterpiece of English historical writing. Covering the history of Europe from the 2nd-century AD, to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, this edition includes footnotes, explanatory comments, and a precis of the chapters not included.

A portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. It covers topics that include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

Roderick Random (1748), Smollett's first novel, is full of the dazzling vitality characteristics of all his work, as well as of his own life. Roderick is the boisterous and unprincipled hero who answers life's many misfortunes with a sledgehammer. Left penniless, he leaves his native Scotland for London and on the way meets Strap, and old schoolfellow. Together they undergo many adventures at the

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs - Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the ...

One of the key figures of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot was a passionate critic of conventional morality, society and religion. Among his greatest and most well-known works, these two dialogues are dazzling examples of his radical scientific and philosophical beliefs. In Rameau's Nephew, the eccentric and foolish nephew of the great composer Jean-Philippe Rameau meets Diderot by chance,

A gripping historical novel, based on a true story, which tells the tale of a girl born into rough cloth who hungered for lace and was hanged for murder in 1763. By a well-known Irish writer.

A survey of English literature from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, this edition represents essential works in genres, ranging from Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf to global twentieth-century classics. It contains concise glosses and annotations, period introductions, biographical headnotes, timelines and bibliographies.

The first volume of Hobsbawm's classic and universally acclaimed trilogy on the 19th century, beautifully repackaged as an Abacus History Great

An eloquent and sometimes even erotic book, the Philosophical Enquiry was long dismissed as a piece of mere juvenilia. However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated ...

London in 1700 was recovering from the ravages of fire, plague and revolution. It was a capital on the verge of a new century, poised between the medieval past and a fabulous future.

Vathek (1786), originally written in French, remains one of the strangest eighteenth-century novels and one of the most difficult to classify. Perverse and grotesque comedy alternates with scenes of 'oriental' magnificence and evocative beauty in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek's journey to superb damnation among the subterranean treasures of Eblis. Underlying the elegant prose is a ...