Category Archives: Travel Guides
Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens` working title for the novel, Nobody`s Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens` childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor`s prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of
Age of Innocence
Widely regarded as one of Edith Wharton`s greatest achievements, The Age of Innocence is not only subtly satirical, but also a sometimes dark and disturbing comedy of manners in its exploration of the `eternal triangle` of love. Set against the backdrop of upper-class New York society during the 1870s, the author`s combination of powerful prose
Under the Greenwood Tree
Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy`s most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and quiet irony, established Hardy as a writer. However, the novel is not merely a charming rural idyll. The double-plot, in which the love story of Dick Dewey and Fancy Day
Iliad
The product of more than a decade`s continuous work (1598-1611), Chapman`s translation of Homer`s great poem of war is a magnificent testimony to the power of The Iliad. In muscular, onward-rolling verse Chapman retells the story of Achilles, the great warrior, and his terrible wrath before the walls of besieged Troy, and the destruction it
Middlemarch
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other
Old Curiosity Shop
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque and the socially concerned, and its story of pursuit and courage, which sets the downtrodden and the plucky against the malevolent and the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens` most celebrated characters, who so captured
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare`s most popular comedies. The central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, is wittily combative until love prevails. Broader comedy is provided by Dogberry, Verges and the watchmen. The drama ranges between the destructively sinister and the lyrically romantic, giving the whole a complex and
Little Prince
The Little Prince is a classic tale of equal appeal to children and adults. On one level it is the story of an airman`s discovery, in the desert, of a small boy from another planet – the Little Prince of the title – and his stories of intergalactic travel, while on the other hand it
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf`s singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose
Christmas Books
Each of these short stories was written specifically for Christmas. They combine concern for social ills with the myths and memories of childhood and traditional Christmas spirit-lore. The stories include A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Battle of Life and The Cricket on the Hearth.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
With an introduction by David Stuart Davies. The father of science fiction, Jules Verne, invites you to join the intrepid and eccentric Professor Liedenbrock and his companions on a thrilling and dramatic expedition as they travel down a secret tunnel in a volcano in Iceland on a journey which will lead them to the centre
Thirty-Nine Steps
Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a seminal `chase` thriller, rapid and vivid. It has been
Madame Bovary
Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert`s contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist`s meticulous account of provincial matters. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments that underpin Madame Bovary look
Around the World in Eighty Days
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) relates the hair-raising journey made as a wager by the Victorian gentleman Phileas Fogg, who succeeds – but only just! – in circling the globe within eighty days. The dour Fogg`s obsession with his timetable is complemented by the dynamism and versatility of his French manservant, Passepartout, whose
Bleak House
Bleak House is one of Dickens` finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great
Railway Children
When Father goes away with two strangers one evening, the lives of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis are shattered. They and their mother have to move from their comfortable London home to go and live in a simple country cottage, where Mother writes books to make ends meet. However, they soon come to love the railway
Return of Sherlock Holmes
Once again Mr Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents.` Evil masterminds beware! Sherlock Holmes is back! Ten years after his supposed death in the swirling torrent of the Reichenbach Falls locked in the arms of his arch enemy
Dubliners
Living overseas but writing, always, about his native city, Joyce made Dublin unforgettable. The stories in Dubliners show us truants, seducers, gossips, rally-drivers, generous hostesses, corrupt politicians, failing priests, amateur theologians, struggling musicians, moony adolescents, victims of domestic brutishness, sentimental aunts and poets, patriots earnest or cynical, and people striving to get by. In every
Kim
Kim is Rudyard Kipling`s finest work. Now controversial, this novel is a memorably vivid evocation of the life and landscapes of India in the late nineteenth century. Kim himself is a resourceful lad who befriends a lama, an ageing priest; and both embark on a combined quest. Whereas Kim has an insatiable interest in the
North and South
Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author`s first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine`s movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell`s skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven
