Wordsworth

This title includes an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly. This Side of Paradise was Fitzgerald's first novel, and its instant success made him famous. The Beautiful and the Damned was Fitzgerald's second novel, and describes the beginning of what became known as 'The Jazz Age'. This title's publication date is 15 May 2011.

This title includes a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. In «The Prisoner of Zenda», Rudolf Rassendyll's close resemblance to the King of Ruritania leads him into intrigue, romance and perilous escapades. Enmeshed in a plot by the villainous Duke of Strelsau to depose the King, Rudolf is entranced by the beautiful Princess Flavia, and finds that both his life and his honour are imperilled. The sequel, «Rupert of Hentzau», tells how Rupert ('who feared neither man nor devil') seeks to ruin Flavia's reputation and wreak vengeance on Rudolf. Events accelerate to a dramatically violent climax. Both these swashbuckling novels offer the appeal of romantic adventure in a land now legendary. Numerous adaptations on screen and stage have extended the fame of Anthony Hope's 'Ruritania'. This title is complete and unabridged.

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was internationally famous as the author of novels based on extraordinary voyages. His visionary use of new travel technologies inspired his readers to look to the industrial future rather than the remote past for their dreams of adventure. The popularity of his novels led directly to modern science fiction. In From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, Jules Verne turned the ancient fantasy of space flight into a believable technological possibility an engineering dream for the industrial age. Directly inspired by Verne s story, enthusiasts worked successfully at overcoming the practical difficulties, and within a century, human beings did indeed fly to the Moon. Curiously, however, Verne is unlikely to have thought it possible that a manned projectile could actually be fired out of a giant cannon, rising higher than the Moon, swinging around it, and then landing safely back on Earth. He had used the science of the day to construct a literary conjuring trick, a hoax, one of the most successful in all history. By skilful misdirection he drew the attention of readers away from weaknesses in the project. Read the book and you, too, will be fooled into accepting the realistic possibility in Verne s time of that dream of flying to the Moon.

David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English, as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals. It applies the experimental method of reasoning to human nature in a revolution that was intended to make Hume the Newton of the moral sciences. Disappointed with the Treatise's failure to bring about such a revolution, Hume later recast Book I as An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1751), and Book III as An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which he regarded as 'incomparably the best' of all his works. Both Enquiries went through several editions in his lifetime. Hume's works, controversial in his day, remain deeply and widely influential in ours, especially for his contributions to our understanding of the nature of morality, political and economic theory, philosophy of religion, and philosophical naturalism. This volume also includes Hume's anonymous Abstract of Books I and II of the Treatise, and the short autobiographical essay, 'My Own Life', which he wrote just before his death.

The final letters and diary entries of Robert Falcon Scott — written in his last days, while hopelessly trapped in a tiny tent by a raging blizzard on the Great Ice Barrier — are among the most poignant and haunting passages ever penned. 'Had we lived', he wrote, 'I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman'. Scott's diaries, discovered with his body the next spring and then used as the essence of the book Scott's Last Expedition, caught the public imagination in a way few tales of exploration ever have. The account of Scott's second Antarctic expedition describes the near-disastrous voyage south, the dangers and beauties of the long, dark winter, and the brutal hardships of the trek to the South Pole. But it was the Polar Party's unflagging stamina, bravery, and spirit on their tragic return after finding they had been beaten to their goal by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen that so resonated with the British public. Scott's evocative telling of this story created a legend that would grip the world for generations.

This selection of Kafka's shorter prose writings includes one of the few works published during his lifetime: the harrowing story of Gregor Samsa's overnight transformation into a verminous insect, his record of the effect of this sudden metamorphosis on himself and the reaction of his family. It conveys with an unsettling mixture of subjective involvement and objective detachment the complex feelings of guilt, affection, responsibility and self-doubt that characterise Kafka's perception of intimate emotional relationships — themes that are continued in the quasi-fictional story The Judgement and the quasi-autobiographical Letter to his Father. Issues of guilt, punishment and penance are also treated with startling brutality in the story set in a tropical penal colony that describes in horrific detail a machine designed to inflict an ingenious and barbaric form of execution on victims of a summary and arbitrary justice — a machine, however, that in this instance destroys not its intended victim, but its zealous operator and, simultaneously, itself. Kafka's enigmatic fables deal, often in dark and quirkily humorous terms, with the insoluble dilemmas of a world in which there appears to be no reassurance, no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.

Sticker lovers, rejoice! There's a new addition to the successful EyeLike Stickers series, and it's a perfect gift for under the tree. EyeLike Stickers: Christmas is packed with 400 full-colour and photo-real stickers that can be peeled and placed again and again. Plus, the inside covers are glossy and illustrated — perfect backgrounds on which kids can place their stickers to create unique and changeable Christmas scenes. Plus, it's perfect place to store your stickers year after year. Twinkling Christmas trees, jolly Santas, and plenty of beautifully-wrapped Christmas gifts set the seasonal tone in this sticker book dedicated to the most wonderful time of the year. You can use the stickers to decorate notebooks, classrooms, cards, scrapbooks, binders, Christmas party invitations — you name it! And for older kids, here's the perfect book for anyone who loves scrapbooking, arts-and-crafts, or just adding a little bling to their holiday gift wrapping!

Edited and with an Introduction by Aidan Arrowsmith, Manchester Metropolitan University The literary and dramatic work of J.M. Synge is most famous for the riots provoked by his 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World and, indeed, this was neither the first nor the last time that Synge's dramas incited passionate disagreements. But, one hundred years on, it's clear that his writings are amongst Ireland's most brilliant and significant, as well as controversial. Here, for the first time, a single volume collects all of Synge's published plays, including Playboy, along with his Poetry and Translations, and the prose works that detail his travels in The Aran Islands, In Wicklow, In Kerry and In Connemara. These are works of lasting and universal value, bringing together the sensibilities of Romanticism and Modernism, and arguing passionately for the freedom of the imagination. At the outset of the twentieth century, they not only gripped audiences with their drama, poetry and humour, they also shaped discussions about the formation of the Irish nation. Now, reading these works together in one volume reveals Synge's value system and shines a penetrating light on a key period in Irish history.

With an introduction and bibliography, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson may fairly be regarded as Australia's national poet. Waltzing Matilda, Clancy of the Overflow and The Man from the Snowy River still strike a chord in the hearts of Australians wherever they may be, evoking, as they do, the rough life and values of the outback. The apparent simplicity of the ballad form which 'Banjo' embraced so wholeheartedly is balanced by many syllabic irregularities and internal rhyme. This harks back to the old ballads of the English and considerable ingenuity of stress and Scottish borders, as well as the heroic songs of Ireland. Banjo Paterson's poetry is the authentic voice of a frontier society in which song and campfire recitation were the only entertainment open to tired stockmen and drovers.

E.F.Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific English novelist. He wrote some very highly rated Supernatural fiction, but his most famous creations were the protagonists in the six novels known under the collective title of Mapp and Lucia, the comic exploits of two upper-middle-class ladies living in a seaside town, very like Rye in East Sussex, in the 1920 and 1930s. These stories, of enduring popularity, were made into a TV series in the 1980s. Volume One contains: Queen Lucia (1920); Miss Mapp (1922); and, Lucia in London (1927).

E.F.Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific English novelist. He wrote some very highly rated Supernatural fiction, but his most famous creations were the protagonists in the six novels known under the collective title of Mapp and Lucia, the comic exploits of two upper-middle-class ladies living in a seaside town, very like Rye in East Sussex, in the 1920 and 1930s. These stories, of enduring popularity, were made into a TV series in the 1980s. Volume Two contains: Mapp and Lucia (1931); Lucia's Progress (1935); and, Trouble for Lucia (1939).

Somehow, Christmas and ghost stories go well together, and here too Dickens was a master of the art. This title presents a collection of his supernatural tales, including such classics as «The Signalman» and «The Trial for Murder».

With an Introduction by Kathryn White. 'He saw her wounded, and bleeding to death; saw her ashy countenance, and her wasting eyes... turned piteously on himself, as if imploring him to save her from the fate that was dragging her to the grave...' Ann Radcliffe, author of The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho, is the high priestess of the gothic novel. In The Italian, first published in 1797, she creates a chilling, atmospheric concoction of thwarted lovers, ruined abbeys, imprisonment and dark passages, with an undercurrent of seething sexuality and presents us with a cunning villain in the sinister monk Schedoni. A contemporary review commented on, 'Radcliffe's uncommon talent for exhibiting, with picturesque touches of genius, the vague and horrid shapes which imagination bodies forth...' Radcliffe's work was hugely influential and H.P. Lovecraft, early twentieth century master of the uncanny, was impressed by the, 'eerie touch of setting and action contributing artistically to the impression of illimitable frightfulness which she wished to convey.' The novel remains a fascinating, engrossing and unnerving masterpiece of gothic fiction.

Translated, with explanatory notes, by Michael Karpelson. Moscow, 1929: a city that has lost its way amid corruption and fear, inhabited by people who have abandoned their morals and forsaken spirituality. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town with a bizarre entourage that includes a giant talking cat and a fanged assassin, all hell breaks loose. Among those caught up in the strange and inexplicable events that transpire in the capital are the Master, a writer whose life has been destroyed by Soviet repression, and his beloved Margarita. Their adventures reveal a story that began two thousand years ago in ancient Jerusalem — and its resolution will decide their fate. Considered one of the finest creations of Russian literature in the 20th century, The Master and Margarita is an amazing work of fantasy, a love story, a biting satire on Soviet life, and a lot more. Mikhail Bulgakov's last book and crowning achievement, it has been written in secrecy, burned and restored, and banned for decades. Its author, who worked on it until his final days, never saw it in print. This new translation faithfully reproduces the style and idiomatic flow of the text, so that English-speaking audiences may fully enjoy Bulgakov's masterpiece.

This title is selected and introduced by M.J. Elliott. 'They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from the centuried wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out into the laboratory in single file; led by a stalking thing with a beautiful head made of wax'. From the dark, mind-expanding imagination of H P Lovecraft, Wordsworth presents a third volume of tales penned by the greatest horror writer of the 20th Century. Here are some of Lovecraft's weirdest flesh-creeping masterpieces, including Pickman's Model, The Shunned House, his famous serial Herbert West — Reanimator, and several classic tales from the Cthulhu Mythos, in which mankind is subjected to the unimaginable terrors known only to those who have read from the forbidden Necronomicon. Also included in this compelling collection are the complete Randolph Carter stories, chronicling his adventures in this world and the realm of his dreams, where he faces perils beyond comprehension.

This title includes an introduction and notes by Professor Roger Cardinal. The author of dozens of adventure novels and fantastical tales, Robert Louis Stevenson was also an enthusiast of travel, whether wandering on foot through France in the company of a donkey, crossing the plains of North America in a train crammed with emigrants, or cruising under sail with his wife in the waters of the Pacific. A lively curiosity stimulated his observations of distant places and unknown people: and this selection from his travel writings bears the imprint of a generous and plucky spirit, always eager to embrace the unfamiliar and the exotic. 'There are no foreign lands', Stevenson once wrote, 'it is the traveller only who is foreign'. This volume includes the well-known Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), along with The Amateur Emigrant (1895), Across the Plains (1892) and The Silverado Squatters (1883), and other material from Stevenson's American journeys. Roger Cardinal is Emeritus Professor of Literary & Visual Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. He is the author of Figures of Reality (1981) and The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash (1989). He has also written extensively on German Romanticism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Outsider Art.

As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to patricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writhings of this one distunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships. At the same time he shows — from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil — that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. The Karamazov Brothers, completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise. It cast a long shadow over D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. Here are two great, neglected horror novels by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, together in one volume for the first time. It is a double treat for lovers of blood-curdling fantasy fiction.The Lady of the Shroud, published here in its full and unabridged form, is a fascinating and engrossing concoction of a vampire tale, Ruritanian adventure story and science fiction romance.The novel fully demonstrates the breadth and ingenuity of Stokers imagination. The spine-chilling The Lair of the White Worm features a monstrous worm secreted for thousands of years in a bottomless well and able to metamorphose into a seductive woman of a reptilian beauty who survives on her victims life blood. The novel contains some of Stokers most graphic and grisly moments of horror.

A spectre is haunting Europe (and the world). Not, in the twenty-first century, the spectre of communism, but the spectre of capitalism. Marx's prediction that the state would wither away of its own accord has proved inaccurate, and he did not foresee the tyrannies which have ruled large parts of the globe in his name. Indeed, he would have been appalled if he had witnessed them. But his analysis of the evils and dangers of raw capitalism is as correct now as when it was written, and some of his suggestions (progressive income tax, abolition of child labour, free education for all children) are now accepted with little question. In a world where capitalism is no longer held in check by fear of a communist alternative, «The Communist Manifesto» (with «Socialism Utopian and Scientific», Engels's brief and clear exposition of Marxist thought) is essential reading. «The Condition of the Working Class» in England is Engels's first, and probably best-known, book. With Henry Mayhew's «London Labour and the London Poor», it was and is the outstanding study of the working class in Victorian England.

Murderous ghosts, horrific curses and monstrous beings haunt an unforgiving landscape into which travellers stray at their peril. Journey through the dark byways of Australia's Gothic past in the rare stories gathered in this memorable new collection. Work by acclaimed Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and Edward Dyson appears alongside many lesser-known authors such as Beatrice Grimshaw, Mary Fortune and Ernest Favenc. Many of the stories collected here have never been reprinted since their first publication in 19th and early 20th century periodicals, and showcase the richness and variety of the Australian ghost and horror story. James Doig provides an authoritative introduction full of fresh insights into Australian Gothic fiction with detailed biographical notes on the authors represented.

This title includes an introduction by A.D.P. Briggs and translated by Constance Garnett. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of «Devils», a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time. The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated — until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the novel, however, is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin, another product of rationalism run wild, exercises his charisma with ruthless authority and total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he confesses to a ghastly sexual crime — in a chapter long suppressed by the censor. This prophetic account of modern morals and politics, with its fifty-odd characters, amazing events and challenging ideas, is seen by some critics as Dostoevsky's masterpiece.

This is translated by Constance Garnett, with an introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships. At the same time he shows — from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil — that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. «The Karamazov Brothers», completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise. It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

With an Introduction by Alex Dolby Jules Verne (1828-1905) is internationally famous as the author of a distinctive series of adventure stories describing new travel technologies which opened up the world and provided means to escape from it. The collective enthusiasm of generations of readers of his 'extraordinary voyages' was a key factor in the rise of modern science fiction. In «The Mysterious Island» a group of men escape imprisonment during the American Civil War by stealing a balloon. Blown across the world, they are air-wrecked on a remote desert island. In a manner reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe, the men apply their scientific knowledge and technical skill to exploit the island's bountiful resources, eventually constructing a sophisticated society in miniature. The book is also an intriguing mystery story, for the island has a secret.

Two of Sherlock Holmes' most exciting, dangerous and challenging adventures are here in one volume. In «The Shadow of the Rat», a body is found floating in the river — a body that has been deliberately infected with the plague virus. Holmes and Watson find themselves seeking answers at The Bridge of Dreams, a club where a person's darkest wish can be granted — for a price. Holmes falls under the control of a will stronger than his own which threatens the life of his closest friend Watson and leaves the government — indeed Britain itself — open to a deadly terror, the monstrous Giant Rat of Sumatra. In «The Tangled Skein», it is the autumn of 1888, and following the successful conclusion of the investigation into the affair of the Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes is faced with an even darker mystery. A strange package, an attempt on Holmes' life, murders on Hampstead Heath and a strange phantom lady lead Holmes and Watson to return to Devon and the bleak terrain of Dartmoor where they encounter the true embodiment of evil, Count Dracula, the Lord of the Undead.