As a scandalized Victorian society looks on, Alice Vavasor, Lady Glencora, and the Widow Greenow continue their romantic entanglements with disreputable suitors
"The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity." When Dr Primrose loses his fortune in a disastrous investment, his idyllic life in the cou
The Penguin English Library Edition of Villette by Charlotte Brontë 'That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol - blind, bloo
'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show' Dickens's epic, exuberant novel is one of the greatest coming-of-a
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells 'People screamed. People sprang off the pavement ... "The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!"' With his face
The Penguin English Library Edition of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 'It was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching in
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it' In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of m
Presents a story woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho.
The Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne 'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my
The Penguin English Library Edition of Ivanhoe by Walter Scott 'Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!' Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joi
The Penguin English Library Edition of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 'Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!' Described by Dickens as
The Penguin English Library Edition of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my delivera
The Penguin English Library Edition of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 'To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her l
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 'Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, - stern and wild ones, - and they had made her strong, but taug
The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?' Elizabeth Gas
The Penguin English Library edition A dense yellow miasma swirls in the streets of London as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson accompany a beautiful young woman to a sinister assignation. For Mary Marston
The Penguin English Library Edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 'A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, desp
