Like rotting stakes in a forest clearing' The great journalist of conflict in the Third World finds an even stranger and more exotic society in his own home of post-War Poland.

Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any young minds. As a consequence, his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman a... read more

In a small island community a young reclusive fisherman falls dangerously in love with a beautiful local girl. Her uncle, himself an intrepid seaman, owns a paddle-steamer which plies its trade to and from St Malo on the coast of Brittany. The vessel is wrecked on a re... read more

In the hope of saving her brother's life, should a woman submit to rape? Should the law be respected when its administrator is corrupt? How powerful in the state should religion become? Although Measure for Measure ends like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marri... read more

The Wordsworth Dictionary of Synonyms & Antonyms will enable readers to find the most appropriate word to use on a wide range of occasions. It is designed in particular for students, those writing reports, letters and speeches, and crossword solvers, but everyone who enjoys the r... read more

During his tragically short life, Stephen Crane gained fame as a vividly distinctive writer. His stories of evolving American society are unflinchingly realistic and shrewdly ironic. 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' tells of Maggie's seduction and down... read more

In The Idiot, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young... read more

Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr T... read more

An improved, larger-format edition of the Cambridge School Shakespeare plays, extensively rewritten, expanded and produced in an attractive new design. An active approach to classroom Shakespeare enables students to inhabit Shakespeare's imaginative world in acc... read more

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York.
This novel, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.
As the... read more

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens A satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap's expected heir, is found in the Thames,... read more

The Professor is Charlotte Brontes first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and consciousness of a man, William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like Lucy Snowe in Villette he leaves the certainties of England to forge a life in Brussels. But as a man, Wil... read more