Lois the Witch


Elizabeth Gaskell - 1861
    Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. A God-fearing and honest girl, she has little to concern her in this new life. Yet as she joins her distant family, she finds jealousy and dissension are rife, and her cousins quick to point the finger at the “imposter.” With the whole of Salem gripped by a fear of the supernatural, it seems her new home is where she is in most danger. Lonely and afraid, the words of an old curse return to haunt her. Collaborator and friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell is a leading figure in Victorian literature.

The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence


D.H. Lawrence - 1964
    This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctioned, his Collected Poems of 1928, the unexpurgated version of Pansies, and Nettles, adding to these volumes the contents of the two notebooks in which he was still writing poetry when he died in 1930.It therefore allows the reader to trace the development of Lawrence as a poet and appreciate the remarkable originality and distinctiveness of his achievement. Not all the poems reprinted here are masterpieces but there is more than enough quality to confirm Lawrence's status as one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century.

Weir of Hermiston


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1896
    The old "riding Rutherfords of Hermiston," of whom she was the last descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands to their wives though not their properties.

Party Going


Henry Green - 1939
    Party Going describes their four-hour wait in a London railway hotel where they shelter from the grim weather and the throngs of workers on the platform below.

The Vampyre


John William Polidori - 1819
    A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade.   When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.   John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.

The Great God Pan


Arthur Machen - 1890
    A version of the story was published in the magazine Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication (together with another story, "The Inmost Light") in 1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism. The title was taken from the poem "A Musical Instrument" published in 1862 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which the first line of every stanza ends "... the great god Pan.

The Victorian Chaise Longue


Marghanita Laski - 1953
    This is the story of a trip backward in time in which a nostalgia for the quaint turns into a hideous nightmare.

A Shropshire Lad


A.E. Housman - 1896
    E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. Scholars and critics have seen in these timeless poems an elegance of taste and perfection of form and feeling comparable to the greatest of the classic. Yet their simple language, strong musical cadences and direct emotional appeal have won these works a wide audience among general readers as well.This finely produced volume, reprinted from an authoritative edition of A Shropshire Lad, contains all 63 original poems along with a new Index of First Lines and a brief new section of Notes to the Text. Here are poems that deal poignantly with the changing climate of friendship, the fading of youth, the vanity of dreams — poems that are among the most read, shared, and quoted in our language.

Don Juan


Lord Byron - 1819
    The manner is what Goethe called 'a cultured comic language'-a genre which he regarded as not possible in Geman and which he felt Byron managed superbly.

The Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne


Algernon Charles Swinburne - 1925
    Castigated by his contemporaries for his treatment of moral, spiritual and political rebellion, and his sometimes sadistic and blasphemous subject matter, his poetry is imaginative through both classical and romantic traditions.

The Complete Poems


Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1834
    The period of his creative friendship with William Wordsworth inspired some of Coleridge’s best-known poems, from the nightmarish vision of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and the opium-inspired "Kubla Khan" to the sombre passion of "Dejection: An Ode" and the medieval ballad "Christabel." His meditative ‘conversation’ poems, such as "Frost at Midnight" and "This Lime-Tree Bower Mr Prison," reflect on remembrance and solitude, while late works, such as "Youth and Age" and "Constancy to an Ideal Object," are haunting meditations on mortality and lost love. This volume contains the final texts of all the poems published during Coleridge’s lifetime and a substantial selection from those still in manuscript at his death, arranged in chronological order of composition to show his development as a poet. Also included are an introduction, table of dates, further reading, extensive notes, and indexes of titles and first lines.

Poor Things


Alasdair Gray - 1992
    Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished author.

Goblin Market


Christina Rossetti - 1862
    Published in 1862, this phantasmagoric tale of two maidens seduced by lewd goblin men provides a startling glimpse into the depths of the Victorian psyche. Full color throughout .

The Bride of Lammermoor


Walter Scott - 1819
    For Lucy Ashton and Edgar Ravenswood, acts of heroism are thwarted and love is doomed by social, political and historical division. This edition restores the action to the years of uncertainty and political flux before the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, rather than after, as Scott's later revision had placed it.

Orley Farm


Anthony Trollope - 1861
    With its concern for social issues and its extensive coverage of middle-class and landed life, 'Orley Farm' is a novel that demands attention in the rich field of nineteenth-century fiction.