English Literature

Inspired by Boileau’s Lutrin and illustrating the debate within European intellectual circles between the “Ancients”, who argued that all essential knowledge was to be found in classical texts, and the “Moderns”, who claimed that contemporary...
By: Jonathan Swift

When the blind narrator, the masseur Louis Dunkel, moves into the Cornwall country house of his patient Mrs Nance, he becomes fascinated by her niece Sophie, a haughty young woman. Their resulting romance, however, is unsettled by the arrival of the...
By: Rayner Heppenstall

A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed, Directions to Servants takes a caustic and irreverent look at...
By: Jonathan Swift

Although ranging considerably in tone, mood and milieu, the fifteen short stories included in this collection all centre around the city of Dublin and its inhabitants at the beginning of the twentieth century. From the unsettling adventure of two...
By: James Joyce

As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue...
By: Virginia Woolf

Charles Dickens’s second novel is the tale of a young orphan who faces the gruelling conditions of a Victorian workhouse before finding himself sucked into the criminal underworld of London. Teeming with unforgettable characters such as the...
By: Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into...
By: Charles Dickens

First published in 1797, The Italian , with its archetypal villain Schedoni, its intense romance between Vincenzo di Vivaldi and Elena di Rosalba and lofty poetics of the sublime, is the masterpiece of Gothic fiction. Enlisted by Vincenzo's mother...
By: Ann Radcliffe

As a group of Western tourists travel down the Nile on the steamer Korosko towards the historical sites near Egypt’s southern border, they are kidnapped by a marauding band of dervishes who demand their conversion to Islam. Cut off from the world,...
By: Arthur Conan Doyle