Accompanied in this volume by its equally superb sequel, Nocturnal Expedition around My Room, in which a similar voyage is made at night several years later, Journey around My Room is a masterly and i
Travelling salesman Enrico Gaia decides to play a trick on the conceited ageing littérateur Mario Samigli: he dupes him into thinking that a representative of a prestigious Viennese publishing house w
Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusio
While at a party organized by the local landowner for the officers of his brigade, the shy and awkward Ryabovich is suddenly kissed by an unknown woman in a dark room. This unexpected, electrifying en
As ideological ferment grips Russia, a small group of revolutionaries, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky and inspired by Nikolai Stavrogin, plan to spread destruction and anarchy throughout the country. Moral
When the young nobleman Des Grieux lays eyes on the beautiful and charming lower-class Manon Lescaut, he immediately falls in love with her and runs away with her to Paris, incurring the wrath of his
Zazie has just received a beautiful new notebook, and decides to keep a diary. Brimming with imagination, she writes down herimpressions of her cat Roudoudou, her awful cousin Lucas and her new teache
When Conrad, son of Prince Manfred of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances on his wedding day, his father, fearing his line is at an end, declares that he will divorce his wife and marry his
First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman's lifetime ambition to create a new voice that could capture the sp
Gilbert's libretti of the comic operas composed by Arthur Sullivan are hugely well known, and lines such as “let the punishment fit the crime” have entered the English lexicon – but his short stories
“Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.” Described by his friend Charles Lamb as “an archangel slightly damaged”, Coleridge was
“I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater…”“I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night – nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium p
“Pronounce quickly, monarch. If you die and make no sign on the subject, woe to Angria… The sword of war is unsheathed and the blade will rankle in many a bosom ere Adrian be cold in his grave.”Inspir
Ichabod Crane is a young schoolmaster from Connecticut now living in Sleepy Hollow, a settlement in New York State notorious for rumours of ghostly visitations, especially from the infamous Headless H
Mademoiselle Charlotte, the new teacher, is not like the others: she wears a large hat and a crumpled dress that make her look like a scarecrow, and she talks to a rock. The children think she is craz
As they relax after dinner on Christmas Eve, the members of a family and their guests turn to telling ghost stories. These ghoulish accounts range from the melancholy to the macabre, and get increasin
When the descendant of an ancient aristocratic family moves from Massachusetts to Exham Priory, his ancestral home in the south of England, he is plagued by the constant noise of rats scurrying within
Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end of his career and considered by him the culmination of all his life's work, Eureka is an extended treatise about the creation, existence a
Encapsulating in luxurious detail the phenomenon of consumer society - obsessed with image, fashion and instant gratification - Ladies' Delight vividly depicts the workings of a new commercial entity,
