This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it?

This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that ‘[It] achieves notable heights of cosmic fear’.

The King in Yellow – Robert W. Chambers- Introduction bu David Stuart Davies – 9781840226447

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In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity.

This book is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The ‘progress’ of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War. What, then, did it mean to call ourselves ‘human’? On what grounds could we place ourselves above and beyond the animal world? What are the definitive forms of our relationships – love, marriage, family, friendship – really worth? And how might they be otherwise? Without directly referring to the war, this novel explores these questions with restless energy.

As a sequel to The Rainbow, the novel develops experimental techniques which made Lawrence one of the most important writers of the Modernist movement.

Women in Love – D. H. Lawrence – 9781853260070

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Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare’s works. The Textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.

Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature. First performed around 1600, this a gripping and exuberant drama of revenge, rich in contrasts and conflicts. Its violence alternates with introspection, its melancholy with humour, and its subtlety with spectacle.

The Prince, Hamlet himself, is depicted as a complex, divided, introspective character. His reflections on death, morality and the very status of human beings make him ‘the first modern man’. Countless stage productions and numerous adaptations for the cinema and television have demonstrated the continuing cultural relevance of this vivid, enigmatic, profound and engrossing drama.

Hamlet (Wordsworth Classic) – William Shakespeare – 9781853260094

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We see her grow from a girl to a young woman of sixteen, making her mistakes. And not always learning from them. Intelligent, hot-headed as her own red hair, unwilling to take a moral truth as read until she works it out for herself, she must also face grief and loss and learn the true meaning of love.

The sequel, Anne of Avonlea, follows her progress as a teacher as she seeks to put into practice the lessons she has learnt. Helping at the same time to keep Green Gables going, pursuing her enduring friendships, and finding first love where she least expects it.

Both books conjure an enchanting landscape of wild blossom, lakes and brooks, woods and ocean, seen through Anne’s ‘beauty-loving eyes’, whose vision of the world she brings us to share.

Anne of Green Gables & Anne of Avonlea – Lucy Maud Montgomery – 9781840227598

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With an Introduction and Notes by Adam Roberts, Royal Holloway, University of London. Homer’s great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His colourful adventures, his endurance, his love for his wife and son have the same power to move and inspire readers today as they did in Archaic Greece, 2800 years ago.

This poem has been translated many times over the years, but Chapman’s sinewy, gorgeous rendering (1616) stands in a class of its own. Chapman believed himself inspired by the spirit of Homer himself, and matches the breadth and power of the original with a complex and stunning idiom of his own. John Keats expressed his admiration for the resulting work in the famous sonnet, ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’: ‘Much have I travelled in the realms of gold…’This new Wordsworth edition of Chapman’s Homer contains accessible annotation, and a detailed introduction that places his masterpiece in the context of his own day, and discusses its influences on later poets.

The Odyssey – Homer – 9781853260254

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This novel is a highly autobiographical account of the adolescence of Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses, and who comes to realize that before he can become a true artist, he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics and essential bigotry of his background in late 19th century Ireland. Written with a light touch, this is perhaps the most accessible of Joyce’s works.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce – 9781853260063

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This volume brings together Virginia Woolf’s last two novels, The Years (1937) which traces the lives of members of a dispersed middle-class family between 1880 and 1937, and Between the Acts (1941), an account of a village pageant in the summer preceding the Second World War which successfully interweaves comedy, satire and disturbing observation. Rewriting the traditional family saga and the pageant, these unsettling novels provide extraordinary critiques of Englishness and English identity while pursuing compelling existentialist and psychological themes such as the nature of time, memory, personal relationships and sexual desire. Their tightly constructed narratives enable the reader to experience the fragmented lives of their characters and the difficulties that they have in communicating with each other and even understanding themselves.

Read together, these novels illuminate each other in ways that will engage both the student and the general reader.

The Years & Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf – 9781840226812 – 6,90€

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‘White Nights‘ is one of Dostoevsky’s earlier short stories but one of his most enduringly popular. It tells the story of four nights in the life of the lonely narrator, who meets and falls in love with the mysterious and beautiful Nastenka.

‘Poor Folk‘ was Dostoevsky’s first novel, written to try and alleviate his financial plight, and was a commercial success. It tells the story of Makar Devushkin, a clerk, and Varvara Dobroselova, a seamstress, by means of the letters they exchange; they are in love, but too poor to marry. Its exploration of humanitarian themes led to it being described as Russia’s first ‘social novel’.

By contrast, Dostoevsky’s second novel, « The Double » was not well received. First published in 1846, it was revised and republished by Dostoevsky in 1866, but he did not consider it a success.

Wordsworth Editions have been making great literature available at a price that all can afford.

Fyodor Dostoevsky – White Nights; Poor Folk; The Double – 9781840228793 – 5,90 €

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Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the « roaring twenties », and a devastating expose of the « Jazz Age ». Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick’s cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him.

Wordsworth Editions have been making great literature available at a price that all can afford.

9781853262883 – Anton Chekhov – Selected Stories – 6€90

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With illustrations by Edward Landseer, Daniel Maclise, Clarkson Stanfield, Frank Stone, Richard Doyle, John Leech and John Tenniel, and with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts.

In these five long stories, written specifically for Christmas, Dickens combines his concern for social ills with the myths and memories of childhood and traditional seasonal lore.

A Christmas Carol, the first of the selection, has become a touchstone of English festive fiction and an enduring favourite internationally. Repeatedly adapted, parodied, staged and filmed, this richly influential tale is powerfully vivid and moving.

The other stories, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man, blend whimsy, sentiment, comedy, satire, the didactic and the fantastic, developing resourcefully the theme of individual and social regeneration.

Christmas Book – Charles Dickens – 9781853262685 – 6,90€

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