Fiction

Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy''s Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love.

'It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known' is perhaps one of literature's most famous lines. Spoken by the dissolute barrister Sydney Carton as he goes to his death at the guillotine, it sees the end of a passionate story that moves between two great European capitals, London and Paris, before and during the F

Published in 1826, The Last of the Mohicans is an adventure story centred on the kinship between white frontiersman, Natty Bumppo - or 'Hawkeye' - and two Mohican Indians, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. The action takes place during the French and Indian War. Alice and Cora, daughters of a British fort commander, are on a perilous journey through the dark forests of western New York. Their Huron

First published in serial form in Le Gaulois, Gaston Leroux's bitter-sweet tale of love and rejection was inspired by real events that took place at the Paris Opera, now the Opera Garnier, in the 19th century. It tells the tale of the opera singer, Christine, her love for her childhood sweetheart Raoul, and the obsessions of the 'phantom', a disfigured man called Erik who lives beneath the Opera

Gibran's masterpiece has furnished individuals the world over with words of joy or consolation on occasions of birth, marriage, death and all of life's other milestones. The concise and deeply profound discourses cover a whole range of topics on life and the human condition, including love, children, work, delight and sorrow, reason and passion, self-knowledge, freedom, pleasure and beauty. Sta

The Yellow Wallpaper, first published in January 1892, is regarded as an important piece of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental. It explores key issues imposed by the patriarchal society and paved the way for other leading feminist writers; Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Classics

When shy Fanny Price arrives at Mansfield Park to live with her cousins, she is overwhelmed and only put at ease by her cousin, Edmund Bertram, whom she soon comes to love. But Edmund's head is turned by the beautiful Mary Crawford and she and her brother Henry spark a series of romantic entanglements that lead the Bertram family to the brink of social disaster. It becomes apparent to Fanny that

The publication of this masterpiece of realism gave rise to an obscenity trial in 1857, which earned Flaubert an acquittal, and established Emma Bovary as one of literature's greatest characters. The eponymous Emma is a victim of the smug, self-deluding French bourgeoisie that Flaubert despised. Trapped in a marriage to a second-rate provincial doctor, she escapes the suffocating confines of her

Follow curious Alice as she ventures down a rabbit hole and into Wonderland, filled with unforgettable characters such as the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts. Then enter a topsy-turvy universe the other side of the Looking Glass, where Alice encounters old and new friends, like Humpty Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Class