CRW Publishing

This is the story of Dorothy and her little dog Toto, who are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone and transported to the wonderful world of Oz. She meets three companions — the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion — and the three journey to the Emerald City of Oz to ask the Wizard of Oz to give them their hearts' desires, which in Dorothy's case is to return home to Kansas. On their way to Oz and while fulfilling the tasks that the surprising Wizard asks of them they encounter witches, winged monkeys, the Deadly Desert, fighting trees and magic shoes. This edition is evocatively illustrated with the original drawings of W. W. Denslow which have been sensitively re-coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's leading colourists.

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there', begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories and sexual awareness. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary describing one long, hot summer with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, where he acted as a messenger between Ted, a local farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the Hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire. This haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed. Soon a pitched battle breaks out over who will take power, involving, among others, the zealous reformer Dr Proudie, his fiendish wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope, the smooth Archdeacon Grantly and his father-in-law, the saintly Mr Harding. Barchester Towers is one of Trollope's best-loved novels and captures nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterisation.

Each volume in the Collector's Library series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of is by Ned Halley.This is the story of Dorothy and her little dog Toto who are carried away from Kansas by a cyclone and transported to the wonderful world of Oz. She meets three companions — the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion — and the three journey to the Emerald City of Oz to ask the Wizard of Oz to give them their heart's desires, which in Dorothy's case is to return home to Kansas.On their way to Oz and while fulfilling the tasks that the surprising Wizard asks of them they encounter witches, winged monkeys, the Deadly Desert, fighting trees and magic shoes.

This book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell when he lived with his family lived on the island of Corfu. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. The procession of animals includes toads, and tortoises, bats and butterflies scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses and rose-beetles, Ulysses, the Scops owl, Quasimodo the pigeon, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and of course the magpies. The family is fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro, and Gerald is mentored by the polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides who provides his education in natural history.

John Leech's original magnificent illustrations to A Christmas Carol have been beautifully hand-coloured by Barbara Frith. A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways. With heart-rending characters, rich imagery and evocative language, the message of A Christmas Carol remains as significant today as when it was first published.

Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road. Two men — Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest — are fired by a quest. While Kim plays the Great Game, the Intelligence-led rivalry with Russia's expansionist ambitions in the north, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.

Little Women is an outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century American literature, and the first children's novel written in the United States to have become an enduring classic. The March girls are shown throughout as real people and not mere moral examples as we follow them from childhood through Little Women and Little Women Part Two (known in Europe as Good Wives). The portrayal of the strains and delights of family life is unsurpassed in literature of the time, and has a telling message for the modern world.

In his lifetime, Kipling was widely regarded as the unofficial Poet Laureate, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His poetry is striking for its many rhythms and popular forms of speech, and Kipling was equally at home with dramatic monologues and extended ballads. He is often thought of as glorifying war, militarism, and the British Empire, but an attentive reading of the poems does not confirm that view. This edition has the endorsement of the Kipling Society, of which Dr Welby is a Council Member.

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience contain some of Blake's finest and best-loved poems, which are presented here in the form which best satisfied the high expectations of his poetic and artistic aspirations. The fifty-four plates which Blake originally etched and coloured by hand are beautifully reproduced, and each has the text of the poem printed on the facing page. Here the reader will find The Lamb, The Little Black Boy, The Chimney Sweeper, Infant Joy, The Sick Rose, The Tyger and Infant Sorrow.

The Collector's Library volumes of short stories — Best Ghost Stories, Best Fairy Stories, Celtic Fairy Tales and Tales of the Macabre have proved popular throughout the world. This new collection of chilling tales is designed to be read as autumn nights draw in as Hallowe'en approaches. Stories from famous writers such as Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and Elizabeth Gaskell are matched with equally terrifying tales from E.F. Benson, Edith Wharton, W.W. Jacobs, W.F. Harvey, F. Marion Crawford, Ambrose Bierce and many others.

This is Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel, written when he was twenty-four, appeared in 1920 and immediately established him as a leading literary figure in the brilliant and dangerous world of 1920s America. Its instant appeal could be compared to the success of The Catcher in the Rye thirty years later. The novel tells the story of a spoilt child in search of happiness. Pampered, wealthy, brilliant at school, Amory Blaine looks for the love of others but only finds himself. A short, sharp masterpiece with an intriguing religious undertow, this is also a touchingly autobiographical novel which reflects ominously on Fitzgerald's own future.

A classic of Victorian literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, Tom Brown's Schooldays has long had an influence well beyond the middle-class, public school world that it describes. The book describes Tom's time at Rugby School from his first football match, through his troubled adolescence when he is savagely bullied by the unspeakable Flashman, to his departure for a wider world as a confident young man. This classic tale of a boy's schooldays under the benevolent eye of the renowned Dr Arnold still retains the appeal for which it was acclaimed on its first publication.

The Collector's Library volumes of short stories — Best Ghost Stories, Best Fairy Stories, Celtic Fairy Tales and Tales of the Macabre have proved popular throughout the world. This new collection of detective stories of the golden age includes intriguing tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Wallace, G.K. Chesterton, 'Sapper', E.W. Hornung, and Arnold Bennett. These masters of the genre are joined by less well-known but equally skilled writers such as Arthur B. Reeve, Maurice LeBlanc, Ernest Bramah, Mrs Henry Wood, Stacy Aumonier and Herbert Jenkins among others.

This collection of Poe's work contains some of the most exciting and haunting tales ever written. They range from the poetic to the mysterious and the darkly comic, yet all possess the genius of the grotesque that defines Poe's writing. The stories are so alive with compelling mysteries, vibrant images and unforgettably tormented characters, that it is easy to associate Edgar Allan Poe solely with entertainment and forget that he was also one of the greatest innovators in modern literature. This volume contains all of Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and a selection of his poetry.

The Great Gatsby lives in a luxurious Long Island mansion, playing lavish host to hundreds of people, and yet no-one seems to know him or how he became so rich. He is rumoured to be everything from a German spy to a war hero. Jay Gatsby doesn't heed them. He cares for one person alone — Daisy Buchanan, the woman he has waited for all his life. Little does he know how his infatuation will end...

To celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, the Collector's Library will publish its lavishly illustrated edition in colour in January. Jane Austen's best-loved novel is a memorable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, about the power of reason, and above all about the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions. Here, where Hugh Thomson's delightful period illustrations were originally black-and-white, they have been sensitively coloured by Barbara Frith, one of Britain's most accomplished colourists. Hugh Thomson (1860-1920) was the finest exponent of period illustration in what is sometimes known as the 'powder and patch' school.

Published in 1922, the eleven Tales of the Jazz Age feature the flappers and lost young men of the period as well as a great variety of characters and scenes. Among them, the critically acclaimed novella May Day contrasts drunken debutantes with a mob of war veterans battling socialists in the streets, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, filmed with Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, is a fantasy about a man who ages in reverse, and A Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a surreal fable of excess.

Cider with Rosie is the first part of the poet Laurie Lee's (1914-1997) autobiographical trilogy. It describes his life in the Gloucestershire village of Slad from his earliest years until he was twenty. He tells of thin winters, fat summers, local legends and ghosts, of neighbours and relations, and of growing up against a half-pagan landscape in which violence and madness, country follies and feasts were all part of one pastoral mess-pot.

Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916) was a noted literary and folklorist. He edited a number of books of fairy tales, including this work and its sequel, More Celtic Fairy Tales. It includes the famous stories Conal Hammerclaw, The Story of Deirdre, Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree, The Wooing of Olwen, Jack and His Comrades, The Sea Maiden, Fairm Brown and Trembling, The Battle of the Birds, Brewery of Eggshells and many others. It is illustrated throughout with black and white Art Nouveau style plates and vignettes by John D. Batten.

Shakespeare's history of Henry V's remarkable victory over the French at Agincourt and the subsequent peace between the two nations is also a study of war and kingship. From his wild youth, Henry comes to embody all of the kingly virtues: courage, justice, integrity and honour. Ironically these qualities are brought to the fore by the realities of war. Written at the end of the life of Elizabeth I, Henry V told the British people that with strong leadership, they had little to fear at a time of uncertainty.

The Merchant of Venice is perhaps most associated not with its titular hero, Antonio, but with the complex figure of the money-lender, Shylock. The play was described as a comedy in the First Folio but its modern audiences find it more problematic to categorize. The vilification of Shylock 'the Jew' can be very uncomfortable for a post-holocaust audience, and debates continue as to whether Shakespeare's portrayal of this complex man is sympathetic or anti-semitic. A exacting and controversial comedy, The Merchant of Venice explores prejudice and the true nature of justice.

Playwright, novelist, essayist, poet and epigrammatist, Oscar Wilde was Ireland's greatest and most inspired wit. Today he is remembered for the brilliance of his writing, and this complete edition of his works contains all his plays, his only novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, as well as his essays, poems and stories for children, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and his more worldly stories for adults, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator, caricaturist, poster-designer and novelist, and Charles Robinson, one of the most popular black-and-white artists of the Edwardian era.

This is an intense drama of love, deception, jealousy and destruction. Desdemona's love for Othello, the Moor, transcends racial prejudice; but the envious lago conspires to devastate their lives. In its vivid rendering of racism, sexism, contested identities, and the savagery lurking within civilisation, Othello is arguably the most topical and accessible tragedy from Shakespeare's major phase as a dramatist. The play raises uncomfortable questions about ongoing questions of not only racial identity but also sexuality, as Othello and Desdemona's sexual relationship becomes the voyeuristic site of lago's attempt to destroy them.