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The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

by: Thomas Hardy

Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of...

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Hard Times for These Times

Hard Times for These Times

by: Charles Dickens

‘The abstract will be added shortly’

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The Trumpet Major: A Tale

by: Thomas Hardy

Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the local squire's nephew Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John. While Festus' aggressive pursuit deters the young woman from considering him as a husband, the indecisive Anne wavers...

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Felix Holt, the Radical

by: George Eliot

Felix Holt, austere, idealistic, and passionate, is pitted against the self-satisfied local landlord Harold Transome in this story set in a Midland borough at the time of the Great Reform Bill of 1832. Every class of society is included in Eliot's vivid picture of political ferment.

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Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels

by: Jonathan Swift

Uses the narrative of a mock travel writer to explore exotic and imaginary locations. This book mounts a scathing attack on the morals, politics and learning of the 18th century, culminating in possibly the greatest satire ever written: the story of the Houyhnhnms.

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Adam Bede

Adam Bede

by: George Eliot

A story which evokes a bygone rural life, and is charged with a personal passion that intensifies the novel's outer dramas of seduction and betrayal and inner dramas of moral growth and redemption.

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David Copperfield

by: Charles Dickens

In this novel, Dickens describes one boy growing up in a world which is by turns magical, fearful and grimly realistic. In a book which is part autobiographical, the novelist transmutes his life-experience into a series of comic and sentimental adventures

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The Eustace Diamonds

The Eustace Diamonds

by: Anthony Trollope

Lizzie Eustace can manipulate men and flatter powerful women, and she's determined to make her way in the world by whatever means she can. This comedy of a society adventuress and her necklace is one of the "Palliser" novels, describing the political and social life of mid-Victorian England.

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Hard Times

by: Charles Dickens

This edition of "Hard Times" includes an introduction by Philip Collins. It tells the tragic story of Louisa, starved of the graces of the imagination so essential to emotional well-being, and trapped in a loveless marriage.

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Jane Eyre

by: Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre (1847) has enjoyed huge popularity since first publication, and its success owes much to its exceptional emotional power. Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is engaged as governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester. Her integrity and independence are tested to the limit as...