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Confessions of a Thug was the first dramatic account to expose a European readership to the fantastic world of the murderous Thugs, or highway robbers, who strangled their victims and who have ever since been a stable of Western popular culture

Originally published in 1871, Alice Through the Looking-Glass describes Alice's further adventures. A masterpiece of carefree nonsense for children which embodies layers of satire, mathematical, linguistic, and philosophical jokes.

Flora Thompson's classic evocation of a vanished world of agricultural customs and rural culture is reissued in a handsome hardback edition including the original wood-engravings by Julie Neild and a new introduction that looks at the background to the trilogy and its enduring popularity.

Emma is considered by many to be Austen's finest and most representative novel. The story of Emma Woodhouse's matchmaking, and her awakening to the true feelings of others as well as herself, is told with consummate wit and humour. This new edition contains lively notes and an introduction that explores how Austen transmutes the everyday into the revelatory.

This anthology, Elegies of Chu, will provide readers with an understanding of Chinese literature, examining its evolution from free-spirited, mythico-religious songs to the more formal, polished style of the Han court.

This new scholarly edition of von Arnim's popular novel will tease out the interplay between seriousness and comedy as a response to war trauma and the wider historical context, while engaging with notions of literary fashion, popularity, and film in the period.

This edition of Herman Melville's monumental novel includes a new introduction that is attentive both to the rich literary history of Moby-Dick, and to the book's sharp relevance to issues of environmentalism, disability, power, race, and sexuality today.

Xenophon recounted several Socratic dialogues which included his Symposium and Oeconomicus and both are concerned with Athenian private life. They are literary creations that reveal Xenophon as a skilled literary artist, an innovative thinker, and far from merely reflecting the conventional thinking of the world around him.

Cranford is a vivid and affectionate portrait of a provincial town in early Victorian England, dominated by its independent and refined women, a blend of social comedy and astute observation. This edition includes two related short works by Gaskell and contemporary comment on the novel, household management, fashion, and financial scandals.

In this series of sketches Dickens brings the city of London and its inhabitants vividly to life. His travels take him to the workhouse, the theatre, and further afield to the Liverpool docks and the Paris morgue. Combining autobiography with reportage, the book showcases Dickens's characteristic wit, humour, and social concerns.

The Alexandra, attributed to Lykophron is a minor poetic masterpiece. At 1474 lines, it is one of the most important and notoriously difficult Greek poems dating from the Hellenistic period.

In The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells invented the myth of invasion from outer space. Martians land near London, conquering all before them, and ruin the metropolis; the fate of civilization and even of the human race remains in doubt until the very last.

One night in the depths of winter, a bizarre and sinister stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in a remote English village. In this pioneering novella, Wells combines comedy, both farcical and satirical, and tragedy - to superbly unsettling effect.

Stevenson's classic tale of buccaneers, a treasure map, and a hunt for buried gold introduced the character of Long John Silver and brought moral ambiguity into children's books. This new edition celebrates the ultimate book of pirates and examines its innovations and unrivalled place in literary history.

George F. Babbitt is a real estate agent in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. Complacent, acquisitive, and conformist, his awareness of something lacking in his life finally leads him to rebel. Lewis's hilarious, poignant satire on small-city businessmen exposes the hypocrisies of middle America and still has power to provoke.

Featuring 218 poems and songs in Scots, English, and Gaelic, this collection places Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and other major writers of the period alongside lesser known or even entirely forgotten figures. A significant number of important long poems are given in full, and many of the shorter works feature for the first time in a modern edition.

A Son at the Front offers a vivid portrait of American expatriate life in Paris during World War I. Wharton's only full-length novel dealing with the war, it portrays the relationship between an American expatriate artist father and his soldier son.

Xenophon's Memorabilia and Apology provide a passionate defence of Socrates against the charges brought against him that lead to his execution. The two texts together provide a moving account of what happened immediately before, during, and after his trial.