A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published in 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled "Women and Fiction", and hence the essay, are considered non-fiction. The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn began life as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer but is now seen in its own right as one of the most important of all American novels. Rather than be 'sivilized' by the Widow Douglas, Huckleberry Finn and Jim, an escaped slave, set off to find freedom on the Mississippi. Their adventures teach them much about the society in which they live, and the book combines an exuberant sense of nostalgia with subtle undertones of adult melancholy.With an Afterword by Peter Harness.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the greatest collection of detective short stories ever written. From his residence at 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes solves a series of baffling and bizarre cases using his inimitable deductive powers, recounted to us by the faithful though sometimes bemused Dr Watson. With an Afterword by David Stuart Davies, a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, and an authority on Sherlock Holmes. He has written the Afterwords for all the Collector's Library Holmes volumes.

This timeless collection brings together three hundred of the most enduringly popular of Aesop fables in a collection that will delight young and old readers alike. Here are all the age-old favourites - the wily fox, the vain peacock, the predatory cat and steady tortoise - just as endearingly vivid and relevant now as they were for their very first audience. Arthur Rackham was the leading decorative illustrator of the Edwardian period, and in this volume his delightful pen-and-ink illustrations have been beautifully and sensitively coloured by Barbara Frith.

When Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole one summer afternoon in pursuit of a White Rabbit, she finds herself in Wonderland. And here begin the adventures that have made Alice the stuff of legend and ensured that Lewis Carroll's book is the best loved and most widely read in children's literature. Illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, with an Afterword by Anna South.

This classic novel of the First World War is written in the first person by a young German soldier, Paul Bauer. Only eighteen when he is pressured by his family, friends and society to enlist and fight at the front, he enters the army with six school friends, each filled with optimistic and patriotic thoughts. Within a few months they are all old men, in mind if not completely in body. They witness such horrors, and endure such severe hardship and suffering, that they are unable to even speak about it to anyone but each other.

The sweeping love story of two people who defy the conventions of their age to follow the dictates of their hearts. Trapped in a stifling marriage, Anna Karenina is swept off her feet by the dashing Count Vronsky. When the truth about their passionate liaison comes out, Anna'shusband is more concerned with keeping up appearances than anything else, but at last he seeks a reluctant divorce.

When red-headed orphan Anne arrives at the Cuthbert's home, Green Gables, she feels sure she's found the home she has longed for. They are less certain however; their request to the orphanage had been for a boy. But before long Anne's irrepressibly optimistic, loving nature has charmed them. While her temper is unpredictable and her extravagant imagination makes her dreamily whimsical and prone to comic mishap, the Cuthberts come to love Anne as if she were their own child. Montgomery's classic tale is a celebration of the transformative power of love and the unique qualities of a girl who has a second chance at childhood.

Around the World in Eighty Days (Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours)is a classic. The story starts in London on 2 October 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy, solitary man with regular habits, who fires his former butler for getting wrong the temperature of his shaving water. Hehires Passepartout as a replacement. Later that day he gets involved in an argument over an article in the Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in eighty days. The exciting, if now dated, adventure of Fogg and Passepartout will entertain modern readers as much as it did the Victorians.With an Afterword by John Grant

This is a new translation of The Art of War for the 21st century. As well as its historical importance it is one of the most influential political and business books of our era. This edition rediscovers the essential clarity of the ancient masterpiece, cited by generals from a dozen Chinese dynasties, international business leaders, and modern military field manuals. This edition also contains a full commentary on Sun Tzu, the man and his ideas, contemporary of Confucius and Buddha; and a critical guide to further reading. This is the perfect introduction to one of the world's best-known classics. This edition translated and edited by Jonathan Clements.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the Roman Emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and Aurelius's own emotions. The Meditations are a readable exposition of the system of metaphysics known as stoicism. Stoics maintained that by putting aside great passions, unjust thoughts and indulgence, man could acquire virtue and live at one with nature. This classic translation is by A. S. L. Farquharson.

Ballet Shoes was Noel Streatfeild's first children's novel and has remained her most popular, delighting generations of children - and adults - since its publication in 1936. At the heart of the novel are Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil, three very different girls who 'vow to try and put their name into history books'. When money at home is short, all three are sent to train for the stage: for Pauline, it is a chance to shine; for Petrova, it is something to be endured; and, for Posy, it is the beginning of a dream come true . . .Illustrated by Ruth Gervis, with an Afterword by Juliette Mitchell.

Barchester Towers is Anthony Trollope's comic masterpiece. Ranged either side of the unfathomable Victorian divide between the High Anglican clergy and their modern, evangelical brethren we meet the saintly Septimus Harding and the furious Archdeacon Grantly and, opposing, the fearsome bishop's wife Mrs Proudie and her oleaginous chaplain, Obadiah Slope. Exquisitely crafted, this classic tale of love amid ecclesiastical warfare from Trollope's series of Barsetshire Chronicles carries a benign and reassuring message - that the Church of England has always been a rich source of divine comedy.

The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, the relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Cafe Society. As with all of his other novels, it is a brilliant character study and is also an early account of the complexities of marriage and intimacy, largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald.With an Afterword by Ned Halley.

Of the various types of mythological literature, fairy tales are the simplest and purest expressions of the collective unconscious and thus offer the clearest understanding of the basic patterns of the human psyche. Every people or nation has its own way of experiencing this psychic reality, and so a study of the world's fairy tales yields a wealth of insights into the archetypal experiences of humankind. Folk tales and fairy stories were originally intended for both adults and children - Grimms' Household Tales, for instance - and this international anthology brings together 'The Frog Who Became an Emperor' from China, 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' from Norway, and 'Pinocchio' from Italy as well as the classic stories of Aesop, Andersen, the Grimm Brothers, Charles Perrault and Oscar Wilde, among many others.

Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writer and storyteller who revolutionized literature for children. He gave us the now standard versions of some traditional fairy tales - with an anarchic twist - but many of his most famous tales sprang directly from his imagination. The thirty stories here range from exuberant early works such as 'The Tinderbox' and 'The Emperor's New Clothes' through poignant masterpieces such as 'The Little Mermaid', 'The Little Match Girl' and 'The Ugly Duckling', to more subversive later tales such as 'The Ice Maiden' and 'The Dryad'. This is the classic translation by Jean Hersholt.Illustrated by various artists, with an Afterword by Ned Halley.

The short story is the perfect format for traditional ghost stories. They have their roots in folklore, but in modern form they can be tracedb back to the romanticised writers of the Gothic tradition. Authors include Charles Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, F. Marion Crawford, Elizabeth Gaskell and H. H. Munro (Saki). Perhaps the finest exponent of the genre was M. R. James whose sly, academic tales are well represented in this collection, as well as those of Le Fanu, whom James acknowledged as his inspiration. This is a book to be relished by the fireside, with the curtains drawn against ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

The short stories of Saki give brief but dazzling glimpses into the lives of the Edwardian rich: a class that virtually disappeared with the advent of the First World War. In the splendour of Edwardian drawing rooms we encounter the opinionated and divinely dressed Reginald, the acid-tongued sophisticate Clovis and a host of other wealthy and well-to-do Englishmen and women from duchesses and dowagers to great-aunts, nannies and a talking cat. With delicious malice, Saki portrays the follies, eloquence, tradition and foibles of his characters. In a style that brings to mind the wit of Oscar Wilde, the satire of Swift and the macabre humour of Waugh, these stories nevertheless demonstrate that Saki`s voice was uniquely his own:wickedly amusing and as sharp and sparkling as cut glass.

These fifteen short stories, chosen by David Stuart Davies, former Editor of Sherlock magazine, show the master detective Sherlock Holmes at his most ingenious. Faithfully supported by his chronicler, Dr Watson, Holmes pits his wits against 'the Napoleon of Crime', Professor Moriarty, assists European royalty threatened by disgrace, helps to solve the mysterious death of a young woman due to be married, and becomes involved with other intrigues that defeat the detectives of Scotland Yard. The original illustrations from The Strand magazine by Sidney Paget accompany each story.

Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself.

At the court of Chancery, the interminable law suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce rolls on and on, encompassing so many diverse characters in its thrall like the fog that smothers the great city of London, including Esther Summerson, the heroine of the novel and one of Dickens' more feisty and characterful leading ladies. We are drawn in and fascinated by the complex set of relationships at all levels of society, from Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, cocooned in their stately home in Lincolnshire, to Jo, the crossing sweeper in the hell hole known as Tom-All-Alone's.

'He was ready for more deaths.' Pinkie Brown, a young gangster wielding a razor blade and a bottle of vitriol, will kill anyone to stay alive andfree. In the first of his major novels, Graham Greene looks into this brutal mind and finds there a yearning for repentance. Brighton Rock (1938) is both a thriller and the study of soul in torment. Pinkie is hunted down both by Ida, a woman bursting with easy certainties about what is right and wrong, and by a mysterious power of pity and mercy.

Two of Jack London's best-loved masterpieces. Call of the Wild tells a compelling tale of adventure during the Yukon Gold Rush, and captures the unquenchable spirit of Buck, a kidnapped dog trying to survive in the harshest of environments. White Fang follows the savage life of a magnificent half wolf, half dog.

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes contains Conan Doyle's last twelve stories about his great fictional detective. Compared with earlier collections these tales are darker, exploring such themes as treachery, mutilation and the terrible consequences of infidelity, and containing such gothic touches as a blood-sucking vampire and crypts at midnight. With an Afterword by David Stuart Davies, a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, and an authority on Sherlock Holmes. He has written the Afterwords for all the Collector's Library Holmes volumes.

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends, George and Harris, decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to aT. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian clerking classes, it hilariously captured the spirit of its age. Illustrated by A Fredericks, with an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.

The two volumes of Celtic folk tales collected by the leading British folklorist Joseph Jacobs introduced the children of the world to the special vision and color, the unique magic of the Celtic folk imagination. These stories are engaging brief episodes of fancy and fantasy from the oral tradition, which were designed to engage and fascinate the young mind, and readers are encouraged to pause awhile to savor such delights from a simpler and less pressured age.

John Leech's original magnificent illustrations to A Christmas Carol have been beautifully hand-coloured by Barbara Frith. A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways. With heart-rending characters, rich imagery and evocative language, the message of A Christmas Carol remains as significant today as when it was first published.Original illustrations by John Leech, with an Afterword by Anna South.

A Christmas Carol was an overnight success when first published in 1843,and was followed by two further Christmas books, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, also included in this volume. But A Christmas Carol's Ebenezer Scooge is one of Dickens's most unforgettable characters, a miserable skinflint without equal. Even he, however, can be redeemed by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future.Illustrated by John Leech and others, with an Afterword by Anna South.

Cider with Rosie is the first part of the poet Laurie Lee's (1914-1997) autobiographical trilogy. It describes his life in the Gloucestershire village of Slad from his earliest years until he was twenty. He tells of thin winters, fat summers, local legends and ghosts, of neighbours and relations, and of growing up against a half-pagan landscape in which violence and madness, country follies and feasts were all part of one pastoral mess-pot. John Ward (1917-2007) was born in Hereford and was a noted book illustrator who gave the Prince of Wales his first professional lessons in painting.With an Afterword by Anna South

The seductive art of the short story as an entertaining, engaging, thrilling format is fully realised in these tales from the Golden Age of crime fiction. In this collection you will encounter all kinds of felonious acts including murders, thefts, and strange disappearances. Some stories feature brilliant amateur detectives such as John Dickson Carr's Dr Fell, R. Austin Freeman's, Dr Thorndyke and, of course, Sherlock Holmes; other tales will allow the reader to gradually unravel the mystery for themselves, unaided by a smart sleuth.

The dictionary defines 'macabre' as something that is 'grim, gruesome and grotesque'. This definition sums up splendidly the flavour and the content of the excellent stories you will find in this collection. Here are tales written by masters of the genre which feature ghosts, monsters, magic, and horror - everything and anything which is out of kilter with the norm and challenges the imagination, while creating that special tingle of fear which is generated by uncertainty. In reading these pleasantly disturbing stories it is as though one is looking at the world through a glass darkly. This wonderfully potent brew of macabre titbits is guaranteed to entertain and enthral.

As well as being one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is the greatest lyric poet that Ireland has produced. He was the acknowledged leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. His early lyrical poetry includes 'When You are Old', 'The Cloths of Heaven' and 'The Lake Isle of Innis free' but, unusually for a poet, Yeats's later work surpasses the poems of his youth. This volume contains all the poems from the 1933 edition of Collected Poems, the last anthology to be published in the poet's lifetime.With an Introduction by Dr Robert Mighall.

The art of telling a ghost story is a refined one and Montague Rhodes James was a master of it. With gentle cunning, he draws the reader into a narrative that at first seems innocuous but which by gentle turns becomes darker and darker until he transfixes you with his prose, creating the most unforgettable, alarming and frightening images. This volume contains all his timeless masterpieces from the four collections of his eerie tales: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925).

This classic adventure, set in nineteenth-century France and Italy, tells the story of Edmund Dants, a young man falsely imprisoned who eventually finds himself in a position of power and able to seek his revenge against those who plotted against him. Eventually he begins to question his obsessive search for revenge. This edition has been sensitively abridged.With an Afterword by Marcus Clapham.

Crime and Punishment is the story of a brutal double murder and its aftermath. Raskolnikov, a poor student, kills a pawnbroker and her sister, and then has to face up to the moral consequences of his actions. The novel is compelling and rewarding, full of meaning and symbolism, and raises profound questions about the individual and society, and the nature of free will. Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Afterword by Oliver Francis.

Dickens's tale of David Copperfield follows him from birth through to his successful career as a novelist. The novel boasts a famously rich cast of outlandish characters: the glamorous Steerforth, the cheerful MrMicawber, the villainous Uriah Heep and David's eccentric aunt Betsy Trotwood, among others. Dickens described this energetic and enjoyable novel as his 'favourite child' and it is easy to see why. Illustrated by H K Browne 'Phiz', with an Afterword by Sam Gilpin.

One of the greatest thrillers of all time, The Day of the Jackal is a novel about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organization, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. Using his own specialised knowledge assembled from his journalistic work and encounters with mercenaries, For syth creates a spine-tingling suspenseful tale told in a convincing realistic documentary style. We follow the Jackal, the unnamed assassin, as he plans meticulously for his mission appearing always to be more than one step ahead of the authorities.

Don Quixote is a masterpiece of world fiction, a brilliant satire on traditional romances and an uproarious comedy and a prose-epic in a new genre for its time. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Don Quixote's mount is an old, bedraggled horse named Rocinante on which he travels through sixteenth-century Spain in search of adventure, dedicating his actions of valour to a simple country girl whom he calls Dulcinea, seeing her as his lady. He takes on spirits, evil enchanters and most famously, of course, giants in the form of windmills. Translated by J M Cohen, With an Afterword by Ned Halley.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a masterpiece of Victorian literature and one of the most potent and enduring of modern myths. Why has Dr Jekyll begun to associate with the ugly and violent Mr Hyde? WhenJekyll's friend Utterson tries to solve this mystery he uncovers a horrific story of murder and suffering which leads eventually to the terrible revelation of Mr Hyde's true identity. Also in this volume are three other memorable stories: The Body Snatchers, Markheim and Olalla.With an Afterword by Peter Harness.

When Jonathan Harker is summoned to Transylvania to finalise a property deal for the mysterious Count Dracula he little suspects that he is unleashing a terrible evil on his fellow countrymen. In this classic novel about vampires Bram Stoker captured the fears of his age. Dracula represents everything everything the Victorians feared: the irrational, the pagan, the erotic and the foreign.With an Afterword by Jonty Claypole.

Dubliners was first published in 1914. The book depicts middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The topics related in the opening stories include the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence, and the importance of sexual awakening. Joyce was 25 years old when he wrote this miscellaneous collection of short stories, among which 'The Dead' is probably the most famous. Considered at the time as a literary experiment, they are refreshingly original and as surprising at the beginning of this century as they were at the beginning of the last.With an Afterword by Peter
Harness.

When Emma Woodhouse sets out on a career of match-making in the little town of Highbury she manages to cause confusion at every step. Jane Austen was particularly proud of Emma, in which she takes apart the desires and foibles of small-town society with unnerving accuracy. Ilustrated by Hugh Thomson, with an Afterword by David Pinching.

To celebrate ten successful years of the Collector's Library, this everlasting literary diary has been specially devised to mark the occasion. Recorded on each day is an event which took place on the same date in the past concerning a writer whose work is published in the series; a relevant quote accompanies every entry and illustrations from the best-loved titles appear throughout. Because each day is dated, but not named, it is suitable for use in any calendar year as a diary or as a birthday and anniversary log. Being uniform in size with the rest of the Collector's Library, this versatile volume will make an elegant and personal ready-made commonplace-book.

Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart. Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to give the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England, and is set against the backdrop of the unchanging natural cycle of the year, the story both upholds and questions rural values with a startlingly modern sensibility. Illustrated by Helen Allingham, with an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.

Father Brown, a small, round Catholic priest with a remarkable understanding of the criminal mind, is one of literature's most unusual and endearing detectives, able to solve the strangest crimes in a most fascinating manner. This collection draws from all five Father Brown books, and within their remarkable range these stories contain as much wisdom as they do wonder.

Frankenstein is the most famous novel by Mary Shelley: a dark Faustian parable of science misused that was an immediate success on its publication in 1818. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but wayward scientist, builds a human from dead flesh and then, horrified at what he has done, abandons his creation. The creature, an outcast because of his appearance, learns language and becomes civilized, but when rejected by society seeks revenge on his creator. So begins a cycle of destruction in which Frankenstein and his 'monster' lose all vestiges of their humanity in monomaniacal hatred.With an Afterword by David Pinching.

Charles Dickens' fascination with ghosts and the macabre is traced to his childhood, to the grim and ghoulish stories told him by his nursemaid, Mary Weller, whom he referred to as Mercy, 'though she had none on me'. Along with the horrors of the 'penny dreadful' magazine, The Terrific Register - a publication which made Dickens 'unspeakably miserable and frightened the very wits out of my head' - the stories recounted by Weller were so powerful as to colour Dickens' imagination and shape much of the enduring fiction he created. This collection brings together all Dickens' ghost stories - twenty in all - including several long tales. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge. Illustrated by various artists, with an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.

Ford Madox Ford's shocking insight into the lives of two rich and idle couples whose vacuous existences are filled to bursting point with selfishness, jealousy and lust is a milestone in twentieth-century literature. Brilliantly cast and featuring the most deviously unreliable narrator since Iago, The Good Soldier tells a roller-coaster tragic-comic tale of characters who are by no means what they seem, and get exactly what they deserve. And as the author observes with chilling truthfulness, such people can wreak terrible damage on the innocent along the way.

Robert Gravess autobiographical masterpiece chronicles his life as a schoolboy at Charterhouse, as a soldier fighting amid the horror of the Western Front and wounded at the Somme, and finally as a writer on the brink of success.

One of Dickens's most renowned and enjoyable novels, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, an orphan boy who wishes to transcend his humble origins and finds himself unexpectedly given the opportunity to live a life of wealth and respectability. Over the course of the tale, in which Pip encounters such famous characters as Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket and Joe Gargery, he comes to realise that his money is tainted and the girl he loves will not return his affections; happiness must be found inthe things he gave up in pursuit of a more sophisticated life. Illustrated by various artists, with an Afterword by David Pinching.