Examines the attempts of an increasingly bemused researcher to establish certain facts about a famous French novelist and the stuffed bird which used to sit on his desk. This book blends fact and fict
A fictional autobiography of a rumbustious adventurer and poker-player who sets off his native Chicago in the spirit of a latter-day Columbus to rediscover the world - and more especially, twentieth-c
Dostoesky's drama of sin, guilt and redemption transmutes the sordid story of an old woman's murder by a desperate student into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical n
Set in the Caucasus, the scene of Russia's military campaigns in the 19th century, this is both an adventure story and a sardonic look at the heroic ideals of the author's contemporaries - which makes
Born in 1469, Niccolo Machiavelli undertook diplomatic missions to various courts, before his imprisonment and exile. To quote his own words, this book discusses "what a principality is, what kinds th
A portrayal of genius possessed, through the biography of the composer Adrian Leverkuhn, narrated by his friend Zeitblom in the years 1943-45, as Germany faces ruin.
How can the individual be both free and happy? What are freedom and happiness and how do they relate to each other? These are the questions that Mill aims to answer from both a political and a philoso
Homer's Odyssey is one of the supreme masterpieces of Western literature. Of this much acclaimed translation by Robert Fitzgerald, George Steiner has written, 'Fitzgerald is taking his place beside Ch
This account of the Roman Empire was in its time a landmark in classical and historiographical scholarship and remains a powerful contribution to the interpretation of Roman history.
This is a three-volume boxed set of Tolstoy's historical chronicle of Russia's struggle with Napoleon. The novel is an affirmation of life itself, focusing on the lives of individuals and the physical
This volume presents a complete text of all Milton's verse. Coleridge linked Milton and Shakespeare as the greatest of English poets, and even in our time Milton continues to exert a powerful influenc
Although Plato's celebrated work of philosophy describes a society which to some seems the ideal human community and to others like a totalitarian nightmare, it also raises enduring questions about po
Edgar Allan Poe's gift for the macabre influenced Baudelaire and French symbolism, Freudian analysis, the detective novel and the Hollywood film. His psychologically profound stories, which comprise t
First published in 1922, and modelled on Homer's "Odyssey", this is Joyce's account of one day in 1904 in the life of Dublin. It is an earthy story which focuses on the humble Lionel Bloom and his sen
When a man needs only two hundred pounds to marry his cook and buy a public house, one would expect his life to be trouble free, but the fifth Earl of Shortlands has to reckon with his haughty daughte
Frederick, Earl of Ickenham, is not the man to run away from other people's romantic problems, not even when faced with the tangled relationships of his godson, Johnny, Johnny's girlfriend, Belinda, b
When Jimmy falls for a girl in London and vows to reform himself as a result, the quest for love leads him to his Aunt Nesta's house in New York, where his escapades involve impersonating himself and
A Hollywood star and an English aristocrat exchange souls while under ether at the dentist and the result is mayhem. Though his golden curls and sweet expression make him the idol of mothers throughou