While enjoying a six weeks' stay in fashionable Bath, the young and callow Catherine Morland is introduced to the delights of high society. Thanks to a new literary diet of the sensational and the macabre, Catherine travels to Northanger Abbey fully expecting to become embroiled in a Gothic adventure of intrigue and suspense - and, once there, soon begins to form the most gruesome and improbable theories about the exploits of its occupants.An early...

"First published in 1838, ‘Oliver Twist' is one of the most admired novels by Charles Dickens, an English writer, and social critic. It is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, ""Please, sir, I want some more."" After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves,...

"Believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598, William Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice” is considered by some critics as one of his “problem plays.” The controversy over the work stems from its portrayal of the character Shylock, a rich Jewish moneylender. The stereotypical depiction of Jews as avaricious usurers was common to the drama of the Elizabethan period. The story centers on the love of Bassanio, a young Venetian nobleman,...

Working-class Jude Fawley longs to be a scholar. But after scheming local girl Arabella Donn traps him in marriage, Jude finds his university dreams drifting away. When his wife abandons him, a window of opportunity opens, and Jude moves to Christminster to work as a stonemason-his eye still on his studies. Then he falls in love with the modern-minded Sue Bridehead, and his descent into scandal, tragedy, and ruin truly begins. Shunned by society and...

Completely red-edited,the New Folger Library edition of Shakespear's plays puts readers in touch with current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. Each freshly edited text is based directly on what the editors consider the best early printed version of the play. Each volume contains full explanatory notes on pages facing the text of the play, as well as a helpful introduction to Shakespeare's language.

"Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel: a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman...

One of the true classics of English literature, here are the adventures of Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and Toad. Shy Mole is cleaning his underground house until the spring weather lures him above for a cautious encounter with the worldly Water Rat. Their exploration of the Wild Wood includes lunch with Otter and hilarious adventures at Toad Hall. Grahame's idyllic world is as fresh now as when they first discovered his enchanting tales, of Ratty sculling...

In 1751 in Scotland, cheated out of his inheritance by a greedy uncle who has him kidnapped and put on a ship to the Carolinas, seventeen-year-old David Balfour escapes to the Highlands with the help of the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart and there encounters further danger and intrigue as he attempts to clear his name and regain his property.

This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character...

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...