Satan is out for revenge. His rebellion has failed, he has been cast out from heaven & is doomed to spend eternity in hell. Somehow he must find a way to prove his power & wound his enemies. He fixes upon Gods beloved new creations, Adam & Eve, as the vehicles of his vengeance.

'You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?' A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity. When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, a man of shabby grandeur, long...

John Harmon returns to England after years in exile to claim his inheritance: a great fortune and a beautiful young woman to whom he is betrothed, but has never met. When Harmon's body is pulled out of the Thames, all of London is fascinated by the mystery of the murdered man and his unclaimed riches. Scavengers, social-climbers, lawyers and teachers, a money-lender and a dolls-dressmaker, men and women both honest and villainous, will all become...

Widely regarded as Dickens?s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which ?whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.? Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther?s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery,...

'Pericles' was one of the most popular plays in the Jacobean theatre, and it has regained much of that popularity in the modern theatre. In a wide-ranging introduction, Roger Warren draws on his experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to explore the reasons for this enduring popularity.

Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road.

'The Oxford Shakespeare' series offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate classic works for modern readers. A detailed introduction considers composition, sources, and critical and theatrical history.

When Dr Primrose loses his fortune in a disastrous investment, his idyllic life in the country is shattered and he is forced to move to an impoverished living on the estate of Squire Thornhill. Taking to the road in pursuit of his daughter, Primrose becomes embroiled in a series of misadventures.

This adventure story begins as Crusoe leaves the English coast for Africa and finds himself the sole survivor of a shipwreck. On a desert island, he finds another human footprint on the shore, encounters cannibals, and befriends a native.

'Hard Times' is Dickens's shortest novel, and arguably his greatest triumph. This edition contains an appendix of the author's working notes, together with an introduction and full explanatory notes.