Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... In "The Great Gatsby", F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age. "The Great Gatsby" lives mysteriously 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. People clamour for invitations to his wild parties. But Jay Gatsby doesn't heed them. He cares for one person alone - Daisy Buchanan, the woman he ... |
|
Abridged, introduced and annotated by Tim Mackintosh-Smith. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... Ibn Battutah - ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist - was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than forty countries on the modern map, covering seventy-five thousand miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China and as far south as Tanzania. He wrote of his travels, and comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, ... |
|
Complete and unabridged with an afterword by Peter Harness. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... Beautiful Emma Bovary dreams of love and riches but her marriage to Charles, a dull country doctor, is far from satisfying. In an attempt to escape the narrow confines of her life, she embarks on a series of passionate affairs, hoping to find the romantic ideal she always dreamed about in the arms of other men, but it soon becomes clear that she is hurtling towards tragedy. Gustave Flaubert’s daring portrait of adultery caused a national scandal when Madame Bovary was first published, and this masterpiece of realist ... |
|
Compiled by Rosemary Gray. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... "London: An Illustrated Literary Companion", captures the varying moods of the great city over recent centuries, through diary entries, with quotations, poems, essays and extracts from great works written in its honour. It is beautifully illustrated with drawings and engravings from distinguished artists, including Gustave Doré, George Cruikshank, James McNeill Whistler and Hugh Thomson, and contains contemporary prints and photographs. ... |
|
Complete and unabridged with an afterword by Oliver Francis. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... A compelling story of a brutal double murder and its aftermath. An impoverished ex-student, Rodion Raskolnikov, kills a pawnbroker and her sister, apparently for financial gain. But as he encounters friends and family, strangers and adversaries, Raskolnikov is compelled to face the true forces that have led him to murder. His struggle with himself and those around him becomes a battle of the individual against society, radicalism against tradition, and ultimately the will of man against the mysteries of divine providence. ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language, a grizzled old sailor stops a man on his way to a wedding and tells a terrifying story. He speaks of how he doomed the crew of his ship by shooting dead an albatross, awakened the wrath of ocean spirits, met Death himself, and must now walk the earth for ever and share his tragic tale of sin, guilt and - ultimately - redemption. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s longest major poem features ... |
|
Complete and unabridged with an afterword by Sam Gilpin. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... Henry David Thoreau is considered one of the leading figures in early American literature, and "Walden" is without doubt his most influential book. It recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, to see if he could live "deliberately" - independently and apart from society. The result is an intriguing work which blends natural history with philosophical ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... "Les Misérables" is a magnificent, sweeping story of revolution, love and the will to survive set amidst the poverty stricken streets of nineteenth-century Paris. Escaped convict Jean Valjean turns his back on his criminal past to build his fortunes as an honest man. He takes in abandoned orphan Cosette and raises her as his own daughter. But Jean Valjean is unable to free himself from his previous life and is pursued to the end by ruthless policeman Javert. As Cosette grows up, young idealist Marius catches a glimpse of her and falls ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... Gorgeous, strange and magical, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is perhaps the best loved of William Shakespeare 's plays. A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites soon take an interest in human affairs, dispensing love potions and casting mischievous spells. In this dazzling comedy, confusion ends in harmony, as love is transformed, misplaced, and - ultimately - restored. This Macmillan ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic license of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular 'room of one's own', prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential. As relevant in its insight and indignation today as it was when first delivered in those hallowed lecture theaters, A Room of One's Own remains both a beautiful work of literature and an ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... In this thrilling and hugely influential tragedy, ageing King Lear makes a capricious decision to divide his realm between his three daughters according to the love they express for him. When the youngest daughter refuses to take part in this charade, she is banished, leaving the king dependent on her manipulative and untrustworthy sisters. In the scheming and recriminations that follow, not only does the king's own sanity crumble, but the stability of the realm itself is also threatened. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition is illustrated ... |
|
Complete and unabridged. A pocket sized book - 10 x 15.5 cm. ... On board the whaling ship Pequod a crew of wise men and fools, renegades and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by crazed Captain Ahab, a man hell-bent on hunting down the mythic White Whale. Herman Melville transforms the little world of the whale ship into a crucible where mankind's fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate. Teeming with ideas and imagery, and with its extraordinary intensity sustained by mischievous irony and moments of exquisite beauty, Moby-Dick is both a great American epic and a profoundly ... |