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The Karamazov Brothers
The Eustace Diamonds: A Palliser Novel
Barchester Towers: A Barsetshire Novel
Ebook series30 titles

Wordsworth Classics Series

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About this series

With an Introduction and Notes by James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in French, University of Kent

 

Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants' greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy that believes 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'. Through this rites of passage story, with his central character, Candide, a naïve and impressionable young man, Voltaire attacks the social ills of his day, which remarkably remain as pertinent now as ever.


Zadig is a tale of love and detection. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by this story when he created C. Auguste Dupin in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', a story which established the modern detective fiction genre. The Ingenu recounts how a young man raised by Huron Indians discover the ways of Europe.  Nanine is a sharp three act comedy concerned with marital dilemmas. In all these works Voltaire manages to combine humour with trenchant satire in a highly entertaining fashion.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 16, 2016
The Karamazov Brothers
The Eustace Diamonds: A Palliser Novel
Barchester Towers: A Barsetshire Novel

Titles in the series (72)

  • Barchester Towers: A Barsetshire Novel

    Barchester Towers: A Barsetshire Novel
    Barchester Towers: A Barsetshire Novel

    Barchester Towers is the second of Trollope's six Barsetshire novels, following on directly from The Warden, though each novel is complete in itself. The political intrigues of the cathedral close unfold and we are delighted by the dominant Mrs Proudle, wife of the ineffectual Bishop; the scheming Chaplain, Obadiah Slope; and the wordly and ambitious Archdeacon Grantly. We meet again from The Warden, the kindly old Mr Harding, and his daughter, Eleanor, now newly widowed.  Trollope's comic genius and ironic wit reveal a past world, which is nevertheless recognisable today.

  • The Karamazov Brothers

    The Karamazov Brothers
    The Karamazov Brothers

    Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writhings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships. At the same time he shows - from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil - that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. The Karamazov Brothers, completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise. It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

  • The Eustace Diamonds: A Palliser Novel

    The Eustace Diamonds: A Palliser Novel
    The Eustace Diamonds: A Palliser Novel

    This is the third of Trollope's Pallister novels and one of his most compelling works. The plot centres on the fabulous necklace owned by the Eustace family, which the beautiful but ruthless opportunist Lizzie, claims as her own after she marries Sir Florian Eustace for his money and becomes his widow after only a few months. Lizzie plots to keep the necklace, while at the same time she spreads her net over several prospective new suitors, in order to entrap another husband to keep her in the manner to which she has so rapidly become accustomed. This novel is both a gripping detective story and a fascinating study of moral duplicity.

  • The House of the Seven Gables

    The House of the Seven Gables
    The House of the Seven Gables

    Hypocrisy, witchcraft, murder and betrayal are the recurring themes in The House of the Seven Gables. It is the story of a curse. Moreover, it is based on the tradition of a curse pronounced on author's own family. In mid-19th century Salem, Massachusetts, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is determined to find the property deeds of his rich uncle, seemingly murdered by his cousin Clifford. His machinations and their effect on the rest of the family, together with the consequences of past misdeeds that come back to haunt the action, make this great novel comparable to The Scarlet Letter. 

  • The Iron Heel

    The Iron Heel
    The Iron Heel

    The Iron Heel is an essential work in the canon of Socialist literature. It caused great controversy on its first publication in 1908 and was banned in several parts of America. Set between 1912 and 1918, the 'Iron Heel' is the fascistic and militaristic oligarchy which, in collusion with subsidised unions, ruthlessly suppresses democracy and free institutions in America, thus driving voices of dissent and opposition underground, from where this powerful story is presented as the manuscript of the Socialist leaders, Avis and Ernest Everhard.

  • Ulysses

    Ulysses
    Ulysses

    With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. James Joyce's astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom's voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its Modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, Ulysses offers the reader a life-changing experience.

  • The Well of Loneliness

    The Well of Loneliness
    The Well of Loneliness

    ‘As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved…It was good, good, good…’ Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents – a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928.

  • Les Misérables Volume Two

    2

    Les Misérables Volume Two
    Les Misérables Volume Two

    With an Introduction and Notes by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by Charles E. Wilbour (1862). One of the great Classics of Western Literature, Les Misérables is a magisterial work which is rich in both character portrayal and meticulous historical description. Characters such as the absurdly criminalised Valjean, the street urchin Gavroche, the rascal Thenardier, the implacable detective Javert, and the pitiful figure of the prostitute Fantine and her daughter Cosette, have entered the pantheon of literary dramatis personae. Volume 2 of 2

  • Resurrection

    Resurrection
    Resurrection

    With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs Translated by Louise Maude This powerful novel, Tolstoy’s third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution. She is found guilty on a technicality, and he determines to overturn the verdict. This pitches him into a hellish labyrinth of Russian courts, prisons and bureaucracy, in which the author loses no opportunity for satire and bitter criticism of a state system (not confined to that country) of cruelty and injustice. This is Dickens for grown-ups, involving a hundred characters, Crime and Punishment brought forward half a century. With unforgettable set-pieces of sexual passion, conflict and social injustice, Resurrection proceeds from brothel to court-room, stinking cells to offices of state, luxury apartments to filthy life in Siberia. The ultimate crisis of moral responsibility embroils not only the famous author and his hero, but also you and me. Can we help resolve the eternal issues of law and imprisonment?

  • Riders of the Purple Sage

    Riders of the Purple Sage
    Riders of the Purple Sage

    Riders of the Purple Sage is an acknowledged western classic. Although it is a book of some complexity, it encompasses the themes that have since been witnessed on a thousand movie screens: the strong, silent and incorruptable cowboy, the fallen woman with the heart of gold, the greedy land baron. Grey was deeply concerned with the loss of wilderness, and the stirring tale of the love of the fast-drawing Lassiter for the gentle Jane Withersteen is set against the majesty of untamed Utah.

  • Puddn'head Wilson: Includes Those Extraordinary Twins

    Puddn'head Wilson: Includes Those Extraordinary Twins
    Puddn'head Wilson: Includes Those Extraordinary Twins

    Puddn'head Wilson has in recent years been reassessed as one of Mark Twain's very best, most daring and innovative works. Roxanne who is certainly one of Twain's most colourful characters, is a nearly-white slave; she gives birth to a son whose father is a Virginian gentleman and she also brings up Tom, the son of Percy Driscoll a prosperous slave owner. The two boys are the same age and extremely similar in appearance. Child swapping, cross-dressing, deception and skulduggery ensure that this is a sensational and melodramatic novel as well as a declaration of Twain's sympathy to the plight of the enslaved African-American and reveals sinister forces that he felt to be threatening the American dream.

  • 100 Selected Stories

    100 Selected Stories
    100 Selected Stories

    With a new Introduction by Professor Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D. This selection of a hundred of O. Henry’s succinct tales displays the range, humour and humanity of a perennially popular short-story writer. Here Henry gives a richly colourful and exuberantly entertaining panorama of social life, ranging from thieves to tycoons, from the streets of New York to the prairies of Texas. These stories are famed for their 'trick endings' or 'twists in the tail': repeatedly the plot twirls adroitly, compounding ironies. Indeed, O. Henry's cunning plots surpass those of the ingenious rogues he creates. His style is genial, lively and witty, displaying a virtuoso’s command of language and allusion. This great collection offers delights for the mind, imagination and emotions.

  • Doctor Thorne: A Barsetshire Novel

    Doctor Thorne: A Barsetshire Novel
    Doctor Thorne: A Barsetshire Novel

    In Dr.Thorne, the third of the six Barchester novels, Trollope moves outside the cathedral close to follow the fortunes of Dr Thorne, an upright and principled country doctor, and his niece Mary. She falls in love with Frank Gresham, heir to the heavily mortgaged Greshambury estate, but he is constrained in his choices by the need to marry well so that he can restore the family fortunes.

  • The Europeans

    The Europeans
    The Europeans

    Felix Young and his sister the Baroness Munster descend upon their Puritan cousins, the Wentworths, in the Arcadian setting of the New England countryside of mid-nineteenth century America. The inevitable clash between European epicureanism and Puritan restraint ensues, providing humour, paradox, and some revealing insight. Truly one of James's masterpieces, The Europeans constitutes a dazzling performance of delicacy and wit.

  • The Virginian

    The Virginian
    The Virginian

    The American frontier literature of cowboys, Indians, scouts and trappers stretches back to the dime novels of the late nineteenth century, but it was not until the publication of The Virginian in 1902 that the Western genre came of age. Because of this, it has had as profound an effect on entertainment, through film and television, as any American book of the 20th century. Set in cattle country of Wyoming in the 1870s, it tells of the rivalry of the eponymous hero and the villain Trampas, and the wooing of the pretty Vermont schoolteacher Molly Wood. 

  • A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol
    A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol is the most famous, heart-warming and chilling festive story of them all. In these pages we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is synonymous with greed and parsimony: 'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart'. This attitude is soon challenged when the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, returns from the grave to haunt him on Christmas Eve. Scrooge is then visited in turn by three spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future, each one revealing the error of his ways and gradually melting the frozen heart of this old miser, leading him towards his redemption. On the journey we take with Scrooge we encounter a rich array of Dickensian characters including the poor Cratchit family with the ailing Tiny Tim and the generous and jolly Fezziwig. When Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 he fashioned an enduring gift to the world, capturing the essence of the love, kindness and generosity of the Christmas season. It is a timeless classic and the story’s uplifting magic remains as potent today as when it was first published.

  • Can Such Things Be?

    Can Such Things Be?
    Can Such Things Be?

    Can Such Things Be? is a spine-chilling collection of tales of the uncanny and of the effects of supernatural horror; several are concerned with episodes of the American Civil War and the California Frontier. Ambrose Bierce, a skillful manipulator of sensational effects, uses a medium in The Moonlit Road and An Inhabitant of Corcosa, whilst One Summer Night and John Mortonson's Funeral are brief essays in pure terror. The tales are filled with a psychological realism which accentuates Bierce's sardonic humour.

  • Framley Parsonage

    Framley Parsonage
    Framley Parsonage

    Framley Parsonage is the fourth of Trollope's six Barsetshire novels and is a splendid mixture of clerical, political and amorous intrigue. It reintroduces the frightful Mrs Proudie as well as other familiar friends from the earlier books, and the reader meets for the first time the Parson of Framley, Mark Robarts, his strong-minded and delightful sister Lucy, and the excellent Lady Lufton, that exemplar of 'Victorian values'.

  • Scottish Murders

    Scottish Murders
    Scottish Murders

    Here are twenty true tales of murder most foul: dark deeds at the court of Mary, Queen of Scots; the great Victorian trials of Madeline Smith and Dr Edward Pritchard (‘The Human Crocodile’); the grisly exploits of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare; and the still-undetected ‘Bible John’, who terrorised a famous Glasgow dancehall in the 1960s. The famous Scottish murder cases gathered here are by no means straightforward crimes. Some are still unsolved; in some, the apparently innocent are found guilty, in others the guilty have surely walked free – some by means of that uniquely Scottish verdict, ‘Not Proven’. The legal process could produce some unlikely results, leading to trials nearly as notorious as the crimes they sought to prosecute. From the busy city streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow to the remote, desolate beauty of the Scottish Highlands, these cases are in turn chilling and heart-breaking, but never less than fascinating.

  • The Small House at Allington

    The Small House at Allington
    The Small House at Allington

    Although The Small House at Allington, the fifth in Trollope's Barsetshire series, is primarily a love story, it mixes requited and unrequited love, disgrace, scandal and near-disgrace with a delightful leavening of wit and social satire in a complicated but lively plot that has delighted generations of readers.

  • Heart of Darkness

    Heart of Darkness
    Heart of Darkness

    Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social and political exploitation of European and African societies and the cataclysmic behaviour this induced in some individuals. The other two stories in this book – Youth and The End of the Tether – concern the sea and those who sail upon it, a genre in which Conrad reigns supreme.

  • The Heir of Redclyffe

    The Heir of Redclyffe
    The Heir of Redclyffe

    The Heir of Redclyffe was the novel which established Charlotte M. Yonge as one of the most popular and successful Victorian novelists. In the engaging and impulsive Guy Morville, Yonge created a hero who inspired William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; his qualities of self-sacrifice touched a chord with generations of female readers. Deeply influenced by the Oxford Movement's quest to recharge England's spiritual life, The Heir of Redclyffe is a surpassingly lively and unpreachy novel which gives us a vivid picture of nineteenth century domestic life and a clearer understanding of Victorian sentiment. 

  • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg & Other Stories

    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg & Other Stories
    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg & Other Stories

    The title story tells how the reputation of Hadleyburg, a small town which prides itself on its honesty and incorruptibility, is forever besmirched by the actions of a disaffected stranger. Though this parable of communal self-deception was written in 1900, it remains as trenchant today as when it first appeared, and has much to reach modern America. Dealing with guilt and responsibility, it is shot through with humour as well as reflecting the darker side of Twain's later life.

  • Macbeth

    Macbeth
    Macbeth

    Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is one of the greatest tragic dramas the world has known. Macbeth himself, a brave warrior, is fatally impelled by supernatural forces, by his proud wife, and by his own burgeoning ambition. As he embarks on his murderous course to gain and retain the crown of Scotland, we see the appalling emotional and psychological effects on both Lady Macbeth and himself. The cruel ironies of their destiny are conveyed in poetry of unsurpassed power. In the theatre, this tragedy remains perennially engrossing.

  • The Government Inspector and Other Works

    The Government Inspector and Other Works
    The Government Inspector and Other Works

    Translated by Constance Garnett Notes and Introductions by David Rampton, Department of English, University of Ottawa Gogol’s works constitute one of Russian literature’s supreme achievements, yet the nature of their brilliant originality, comic genius, and complex workings is difficult to summarize precisely. The Government Inspector, a perennial favourite on stage and screen, is considered a national institution in Russia, and Gogol’s stories present us with one of the most marvellous worlds a writer has ever created. His quirky characters - the lowly official who imagines himself to be the King of Spain, the man committed to chase his nose around St. Petersburg, a whole village paralyzed at the prospect of being visited by an authority from the capital - are immortal. Although Gogol’s fiction was commandeered by Russia’s progressive critics as the work of an important social commentator, he was in many ways an arch-conservative, and there is a madcap strain in it that makes him a precursor of Kafka and absurdist drama.

  • The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

    The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
    The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

    The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities. Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politics as the only hope for a civilized and humane life for all. This Wordsworth edition includes an exclusive foreword by the late Tony Benn.

  • Dubliners

    Dubliners
    Dubliners

    Introduction and Notes by Laurence Davies, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Living overseas but writing, always, about his native city, Joyce made Dublin unforgettable. The stories in Dubliners show us truants, seducers, gossips, rally-drivers, generous hostesses, corrupt politicians, failing priests, amateur theologians, struggling musicians, moony adolescents, victims of domestic brutishness, sentimental aunts and poets, patriots earnest or cynical, and people striving to get by. In every sense an international figure, Joyce was faithful to his own country by seeing it unflinchingly and challenging every precedent and piety in Irish literature.

  • The Wind in the Willows

    The Wind in the Willows
    The Wind in the Willows

    Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad (with his ‘Poop-poop-poop’ road-hogging new motor-car), have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall. Grahame's book was later dramatised by A. A. Milne, and became a perennial Christmas favourite, as Toad of Toad Hall. It continues to enchant and, above all perhaps, inspire great affection.

  • Northanger Abbey

    Northanger Abbey
    Northanger Abbey

    Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent. Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her. In this, her first full-length novel, Austen also fixes her sharp, ironic gaze on other kinds of contemporary novel, especially the Gothic school made famous by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine's reading becomes intertwined with her social and romantic adventures, adding to the uncertainties and embarrassments she must undergo before finding happiness.

  • A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four

    A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four
    A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four

    With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. 'Doctor Watson, Mr Sherlock Holmes' - The most famous introduction in the history of crime fiction takes place in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, bringing together Sherlock Holmes, the master of science detection, and John H. Watson, the great detective's faithful chronicler. This novel not only establishes the magic of the Holmes myth but also provides the reader with a dramatic adventure yarn which ranges from the foggy, gas-lit streets of London to the burning plains of Utah. The Sign of the Four, the second Holmes novel, presents the detective with one of his greatest challenges. The theft of the Agna treasure in India forms a catalyst for treachery, deceit and murder. With these two classic novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, you have the brilliant foundation of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Reading pleasure rarely comes any finer.

Author

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist whose work centred on social commentary and realism. Her works of romantic fiction are set among the landed gentry, and she is one of the most widely read writers in English literature.

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