This is the only novel that Conrad set in London, and it communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. Verloc, (a Russian spy who is also working for the police) is ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho.

This edition of one of Dickens's earlier novels is based on the accurate Clarendon edition of the text and includes the prefaces to the 1850 and 1867 editions and Dickens's Number Plans.

This novel is an unashamed and picturesque portrait of the long-vanished pastoral society of early Victorian England. It is a humorous study of resistance to change, and it enabled Hardy to express his affection and love for the Wessex countryside.

Esther Waters (1894) was one of the first English novels to defeat Victorian moral censorship. George Moore's story of a mother's fight for the life of her illegitimate son won Mr Gladstone's approval and was admitted, unaltered, into those bastions of Victorian conformity, the circulating libraries.

During Shakespeare's lifetime 'Henry IV, Part I' was his most reprinted play, and it remains enormously popular with theatre- goers and readers. David Bevington's introduction discusses the play in both peformance and criticism from Shakespeare's time to our own, illustrating the variety of interpretations of which the text is capable.

In its towering central characters, vast geographical & historical sweep, 'Antony & Cleopatra' is perhaps the most ambitious of Shakespeare's designs. Yet the degree & nature of its success remain surprisingly contentious, & performances of the play have seldom matched the extravagant expectations of its admirers.

This volume offers excellent value by bringing together four of the most popular, most frequently studied and performed, city comedies by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries. Each of the plays features tradesmen - a shoemaker, goldsmith, merchant, shop-keepers - and depicts bustling city life.

Florent Quenu returns to Paris after being unjustly imprisoned and finds the city utterly changed. The great new food market, Les Halles, has been built, and food dominates the political and social life of the capital.

'The Brontes' is a topical exploration of the novels of the three Bronte sisters in relation to the age in which they lived, and in modern contexts such as film and television. The book traces the origins of novels such as 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' and examines the 20th century's remaking of the novels in film and TV.

This is the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the 'Strand' magazine, in which they were first published, and won immense popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The volume includes 'The Red-Headed League', 'The Blue Carbuncle', and 'The Speckled Band'.