First published in 1757, the treatise "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", by the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, provides a distinct transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Burke's treatise was the first fully realized exposition that separated the definition of the sublime from the beautiful. His work received much attention from other philosophers upon its publication and influenced thinkers...

Paradise Lost is the greatest epic poem in English literature, and Milton's Satan one of its most compelling figures. The controversy has been exceeded only by its tremendous influence: countless masters of English verse have paid homage to Milton and Paradise Lost. A profound meditation on the role of man under God, Pardise Lost is essential reading.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. Pride and Prejudice tells the story...

Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution opens with the death of Louis XV in 1774 and ends with Napoleon suppressing the insurrection of the 13th Vendemaire. Both in its form and content, the work was intended as a revolt against history writing itself, with Carlyle exploding the eighteenth-century conventions of dignified gentlemanly discourse. Immersing himself in his French sources with unprecedented imaginative and intellectual engagement,...

Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the evils of slavery to the consciences and hearts of the American people by its moving portrayal of slave experience. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has an afterword by Pat Righelato. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows us in scenes of...

Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile is the eighth book by American writer Herman Melville. When Israel Potter leaves his plow to fight in the American Revolution, he's immediately thrown into the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he receives multiple wounds. However, this does not deter him, and after hearing a rousing speech by General George Washington, he volunteers for further duty, this time at sea, where more ill fortune awaits him. Israel is...

First published serially between 1859 and 1860, “The Woman in White” is Wilkie Collins’s epistolary novel that tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and after they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where...

In The Sketch-Book (1820-21), Irving explores the uneasy relationship of an American writer to English literary traditions. In two sketches, he experiments with tales transplanted from Europe, thereby creating the first classic American short stories, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Based on Irving's final revision of his most popular work, this new edition includes comprehensive explanatory notes of The Sketch-Book's sources for...

Rachel Verrinder receives the stone as a gift and does not realize that it has been passed to her in a sinister form of revenge by John Herncastle who, it transpires, acquired the moonstone by means of murder and theft. The jewel also brings bad luck. The stone disappears on the very night it is given to Rachel, though, and the tale concerns the unveiling of the culprit after the intervention of Sergeant Cuff, a famous London detective.

No Name by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century novel revolving upon the issue of illegitimacy. It combines social commentary - the absurdity of the law as it applied to children of unmarried parents - with a densely-plotted revenge thriller.