Secondhand Classics

Joseph Andrews, Fielding's first novel, and Shamela, a splendidly bawdy parody of Richardson's Pamela, tellingly reveal Fielding's great comic gifts. The great success of Tom Jones owed much to the...

Probably the most important single figure in nineteenth century American literature, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) exerted an enormous influence over later writers, especially French Symbolist poets, including Baudelaire and Mallarme,...

'Among the most powerful things Dickens ever did in fiction' GuardianGreed has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and misanthropic, leaving his grandson and name-sake to make his...

"Moonfleet" (1898) begins as a mystery and an adventure story, a tale of smuggling set among the cliffs, caves, and downs of Dorset. What will be the outcome of the...

In the city of Johannesburg a father seeks his delinquent son. His search takes him through a labyrinth of murder, prostitution, racial hatred and, ultimately, reconciliation. In CRY, THE BELOVED...

"MRS BATHURST"(LYDEN'S IRENIUS) "BELOW THE MILL DAM"(OUR FATHERS ALSO)

"Abe Ravelstein IS the American mind and Bellow its finest living (thank God) voice." John Sutherland, Sunday Times "Bellow's return with RAVELSTEIN to an earlier, freer, more voice-driven exuberance is...

'no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman ...from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence' Chance(1914)...

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a vivid psychological account of a young man's experience of fighting in the American Civil War, based on Crane's reading of popular descriptions...

Liz, Alix and Esther are old friends whose lives continue to cross and uncross. As the years pass, they are more than ever disposed to question, to re-evaluate, to examine...