From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying life to the anxious antihero of Notes from Underground—who both craves and despises affection—the writer's often-tormented characters showcase his evolving outlook on our fate.Thomas Mann described Dostoyevsky as "an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul" and Notes from Underground as "an awe- and terror- inspiring example of this sympathy."

    One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

    With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the ‘ant-hill’ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence ‘underground’. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him – his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulson’s introduction discusses the stories’ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksy’s great novels.

    In this book the entire manuscript has been photographed in colour and reproduced with precise fidelity to the original.

    Who was a witch! That evil aunt vented her spleen by casting a spell on the Princess that left her immune to gravity. Which was a strange (and often inconvenient!) way for things to be -- more than once the wind caught hold of her while she slept, and you can go the most amazing places on the wind if you have no weight. Then, when the princess got to be a young woman, she met a young prince and fell in love -- and the results of that love are the very essence of this tale . . . "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master . . . The quality that had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live." -- C.S. Lewis on George Macdonald

    The Gambler explores the compulsive nature of gambling, one of Dostoevsky's own vices and a subject he describes with extraordinary acumen and drama. Both works are new translations, specially commissioned for the World's Classics series.

    A princess doomed by a witch to lose her “gravity” results in a silly heroine that has neither physical nor spiritual weight. George MacDonald’s masterful teaching on the subject of sacrificial love is delivered eloquently in the events and characters of this engaging story.

    1846–Bednye lyudi/Бедные люди/Poor Folk 1859–Selo Stepanchikovo i ego obitateli/Село Степанчиково и его обитатели/The Village of Stepanchikovo/The Friend of the Family/The Friend of Stepanchikovo 1864–Zapiski iz podpolya/Записки из подполья/Notes from Underground

    Set in 1861 in a fictionalized rural village in east Tennessee, the story revolves around four main characters who find themselves trapped together with other unionists in “Cudjo’s Cave.”Penn Hapgood is a Quaker schoolmaster who openly voices his antislavery sentiments and support for the Union but refuses to fight even when faced with the probability of being shot for his stance. Virginia Villars, a clergyman’s daughter who loves Hapgood, is hotly pursued by the sinister planter and slave master Augustus Blythewood. Pomp, an intelligent man trained as a doctor, is a runaway slave, and Cudjo, another runaway who has been dehumanized by slavery’s violence, still risks all to save others. John Townsend Trowbridge’s fine literary skill and storytelling ability lift the Victorian plot. He artfully maps out many of the cultural and political tensions regarding the issues of slavery and secession, giving the reader access to the popular sentiments of the period. More important, he offers a rare 19th-century depiction of a character of full African descent as a strong, intelligent leader. Released to popular acclaim in the summer of 1863, this novel was designed to awaken patriotism in northern citizens wearied by the losses of conflict and to refocus attention on the moral purposes of the war—emancipation of the slaves. Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this stimulating story contributed vital power to the success of the Union war effort.