Presents the moral stories of Rabelais that expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy.

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.

This is an intellectual drama of the forces which play upon modern man. Its theatre is a sanatorium in the Swiss mountains - a community organized with exclusive reference to ill-health.

'Every generalisation that we settled forty years ago, is abandoned' As a journalist, historian and novelist born into a family that included two past presidents of the United States, Henry Adams was constantly focused on the American experiment. An immediate bestseller awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919, his The Education of Henry Adams (1918) recounts his own and the country's education from 18

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.

Building on the formula of York Notes, this series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. This enbables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop critical thinking. This text covers The Aeneid by Virgil.

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George.

In The Canterbury Tales , Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This version of the text has been translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill.

Recasts the storytelling heritage of the ancient and medieval worlds into perennial forms that inspired writers including Chaucer and Shakespeare. This book hovers between the fading glories of an aristocratic past - the Crusades, the Angevins, the courts of France, the legendary East - and the squalor of contemporary life.

New edition.

In this story the author recreates her own childhood through the story of the gifted Maggie Tulliver and her spoilt, selfish brother. Though tragic in its outcome, this comic novel combines vivid images of family life with a portrait of the heroine.

Tells the story of Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - although knowing this will ensure his own early death.

Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862. The controversial portrait of Bazarov, the energetic, cynical, and self-assured 'nihilist' who repudiates the romanticism of his elders, shook Russian society. Indeed the image of humanity liberated by science from age-old conformities and ...

Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, this title explores passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. It is about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

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.

This classic of American literature is a tale of bravery and bloodshed and warring tribes in the early American frontier. The readings are supplemented by music from Smetana, Mussorgsky and Koechlin.