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
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me ... Why did
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
L'Abbé C is a shocking, unnerving narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a pries
Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, this title provides an account of depravity and violence. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, it is torn between ide
The quickest way to get rich is to marry someone rich, but how do you do this if you aren't yet rich? TV chat-show host Ronnie Appleyard is preoccupied with this question as he pursues wealthy heiress
Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the h
In these three works of erotic prose Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly personal and philosophical vision of the self. My Mother is a frank and intense depiction of a young man's
'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature commu
A philosopher, essayist, novelist, pornographer and fervent Catholic who came to regard the brothels of Paris as his true 'churches', Georges Bataille ranks among the boldest and most disturbing of tw
A mummy is stolen from a small town museum along with some Roman coins and a soaking wet man collapses in fourteen year old Peter Furneaux's living room bleeding from the head. What was a suspected st
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Confidence - Man and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville 'Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, stand ready in a sensible
The Penguin English Library Edition of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope 'What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his maste
The Penguin English Library Edition of Evelina by Frances Burney 'O Sir, how much uneasiness must I suffer, to counterbalance one short morning of happiness!' In this comic and sharply incisive satire
The Penguin English Library Edition of Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster 'I had got an idea that everyone here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn't care for,
'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 Time Machine by H. G. Wells 'Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks shelter
The gripping story of the First Crusade, as witnessed by contemporary writersThe fall of Jerusalem in 1099 to an army of exhausted and starving western European soldiers was one of the most extraordin
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Warden by Anthony Trollope 'It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be disturbed and muddied ... that his quiet paths should be m
The Penguin English Library Edition of Persuasion by Jane Austen 'Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been the
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 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
The Penguin English Library Edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens "What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with her stick; 'that, where those cobwebs are?" "
The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 'Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness' A twisted, upside-down creation
The Penguin English Library Edition of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift 'Fifteen hundred of the Emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and an half high, were employed to draw me towards
The Penguin English Library Edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker 'Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window' A chilling masterpiece of the
The Penguin English Library Edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 'The frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft compl
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe '... an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive,
The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself' Passionate, poetic and revoluti
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 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 of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 'I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!' she exclaimed. 'Nor will I for a minute' Hardy's powerf
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 'I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. A
The Penguin English Library Edition of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming! Death!' In this pioneering, shocking and nightmarish tale, naïve suburban Londoners in
The Penguin English Library Edition of Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 'Lady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 'Here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand pas
Jane Austen's timeless works of romantic fiction have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and adored writers in the English language. Now any fan of Austen's sparkling literary satires c
Listen to audio presented by Literary Affairs: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.View our feature on Jane Austen.During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences the joys of
