Published in 1801, Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda is an absorbing novel that mirrors social and domestic life among the English gentry. In her pursuit of a suitable marriage, Belinda...

Written in 516, The Rule of Saint Benedict for monastic living has been soul-inspiring for a countless number of people – not only monks, nuns and priests, but also a...

William James was one of the most influential figures in 19th-century American philosophy and psychology. His Pragmatism is a set of lectures that he gave in 1906–07 in answer...

Published in 1884, Against Nature (À rebours) concerns the attempts of its cultured and neurotic anti-hero, Des Esseintes, to escape contemporary Parisian life. At his rural...

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and...

George MacDonald, described by W.H. Auden as ‘one of the most remarkable writers of the 19th century’, was valued in his own time as an original thinker and spiritual guide....

Daisy Miller is a young American girl travelling Europe with her mother and younger brother. While in Vevey, Switzerland, she becomes acquainted with Frederick Winterbourne, an...

Peter Wickham talks about the infamous libertine Giacomo Casanova, and his explosive autobiography, The Story of My Life. Perhaps best known for his serial womanising, Casanova...

The story begins in Hamburg, 1863. The brilliant Professor Lidenbrock, inspired by an ancient, encoded manuscript, impetuously decides to take his reluctant nephew Axel on a...

Following the success of the first Great Scientists title in the ‘Junior Classics’ range, this collection features the lives of nine more remarkable scientists, with...