A sensational assembly of salacious stories selected from the secret shelves of the libraries of libertines, long-gone gentlemen, rakes and roues. These pages are patinated with the pulsating passion of vigorous youths, willing wenches, innocent initiates, meddling madames and vicarious voyeurs.

Poignant, wry, chilling, challenging, amusing, thought-provoking and always intriguing, these accomplished tales from the pens of great writers are object-lessons in the art of creating a literary masterpiece on a small canvas. From the straightforwardly anecdotal to the more analytical of human behaviour, all are guaranteed to capture the imagination, stir the emotions, linger in the memory and whet the reader's appetite for more.

Jane Eyre, Villette, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Professor

Edgar Poe was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters - a genius who, thanks to his dire reputation, was tragically misunderstood during his lifetime. It was not until Baudelaire enthusiastically translated his work that he found a wider audience in Europe, and became not only an enormous influence on modern French literature but also on the acclaimed work of writers such as Dostoevsky,Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.

Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. His essays - in particular De Profundis- and his Ballad of Reading Gaol,both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century.

Puck of Pook's Hill relates how Dan and Una's magical meeting with Puck,the last of the People of the Hills, leads to their adventures with Romans and Crusaders, Saxons and Vikings... And later, in Rewards and Fairies, the three meet an array of characters ranging from Iron Age warriors to `Good Queen Bess' and Sir Francis Drake.

For 150 years Hans Christian Andersen's stories have been delighting both adults and children.Packed with a light-hearted whimsy combined with a mature wisdom they are as entrancing as ever. Here are all of Andersen's 154 tales, and among the favourites are The Red Shoes, The Mermaid, The Real Princess, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Tinder Box and of course The Ugly Duckling.

Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and his brother Wilhelm (1786-1859) were philologists and folklorists. The brothers rediscovered a host of fairy tales, telling of princes and princesses in their castles, witches in their towers and forests, of giants and dwarfs, of fabulous animals and dark deeds.

Jane Austen is without question, one of England's most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature's most charismatic and believable heroines, she mesmerises her readers as much today as when her novels were first published.

Dorothy and Toto have many adventures before the Good Witch grants them their wish - to return home to Kansas. But that is just the beginning; many more adventures lie ahead, with the weirdest folk to meet and the most fantastical places to explore - all in the Land of Oz.

It is more than a century since the ascetic, gaunt and enigmatic detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet. From 1891, beginning with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the now legendary and pioneering Strand Magazine began serialising Arthur Conan Doyle's matchless tales of detection, featuring the incomparable sleuth patiently assisted by his doggedly loyal and lovably pedantic friend and companion, Dr Watson.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talenten compasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness.

The Little Prince is a modern parable for our time, of equal appeal to children and adults. This much loved story is joined by the following classic titles, to give a collection that has something for everyone, whatever their age: Black Beauty, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Robin Hood, The Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, The Jungle Book and Peter Pan.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age.

Scott Moncrieff's delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieff's translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Proust's style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation

Lord Jim, set in the Malay Archipelago, not only does provide a gripping account of maritime adventure and romance, but also an exotic tale of the East. Nostromo is the only man capable of the decisive action needed to save the silver of the San Tome mine and secure independence for Sulaco, Occidental Province of the Latin American state of Costaguana. Is his integrity as unassailable as everyone believes, or will his ideals, like those which have inspired the struggling state itself, buckle under economic and political pressure? The Secret Agent, Conrad'sstory of espionage and anarchists, tells of Winnie Verloc and her devotion to her peculiar and simple-minded brother, Stevie. This volume also includes a selection of Conrad's matchless short stories - Youth, Typhoon, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether and The Shadow-Line.

The delicate artistry and lyrical prose of Woolf's novels have established her as a writer of sensitivity and profound talent. Virginia Woolf displays genuine humanity and concern for the experiences that enrich and stultify existence.