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A Christmas Carol is the most famous, heart-warming and chilling festive story of them all. In these pages we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is synonymous with greed and parsimony: ‘Every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart’. This attitude is soon challenged when the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, returns from the grave to haunt him on Christmas Eve. Scrooge is then visited in turn by three spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future, each one revealing the error of his ways and gradually melting the frozen heart of this old miser, leading him towards his redemption. On the journey we take with Scrooge we encounter a rich array of Dickensian characters including the poor Cratchit family with the ailing Tiny Tim and the generous and jolly Fezziwig. When Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 he fashioned an enduring gift to the world, capturing the essence of the love, kindness and generosity of the Christmas season. It is a timeless classic and the story’s uplifting magic remains as potent today as when it was first published. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. After Mr Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine’s brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Treasure Island is the seminal pirates and buried treasure novel, which is so brilliantly concocted that it appeals to readers both young and old. The story is told in the first person by young Jim Hawkins, whose mother keeps the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old seadog, a resident at the inn, hires Jim to keep a watch out for other sailors whom he fears but, despite all precautions, the old man is served with the black spot which means death. Among the dead man’s belongings Jim discovers a map showing the location of the buried treasure of the notorious pirate Captain Flint. It is not long before he, along with Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney, sets sail to find the treasure. However, amongst the hired hands is the one-legged Long John Silver who has designs on the treasure for himself. The continuing fascination with this tale of high drama, buried treasure and treachery bears out what Stevenson wrote about the book to his friend W. E. Henley: ‘if this don’t fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day.’ The book not only continues to ‘fetch the kids’ but the grown-ups too – in fact all those with the spirit of adventure in their hearts. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame’s classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad (with his ‘Poop-poop-poop’ road-hogging new motor-car), have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall. Grahame’s book was later dramatised by A. A. Milne, and became a perennial Christmas favourite, as Toad of Toad Hall. It continues to enchant and, above all perhaps, inspire great affection. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend to it, a change comes over her and her life. She meets and befriends a local boy, the talented Dickon, and comes across her sickly cousin Colin who had been kept hidden from her. Between them, the three children work astonishing magic in themselves and those around them. The Secret Garden is one of the best-loved stories of all time. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Wilde’s only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to believe in ‘art for art’s sake’, to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design. Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the ‘note of doom’ which runs like ‘a purple thread’ through its carefully crafted prose. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
The Little Prince is a modern fable, and for readers far and wide both the title and the work have exerted a pull far in excess of the book’s brevity. Written and published first by Antoine de St-Exupéry in 1943, only a year before his plane disappeared on a reconnaissance flight, it is one of the world’s most widely translated books, enjoyed by adults and children alike. In the meeting of the narrator who has ditched his plane in the Sahara desert, and the little prince, who has dropped there through time and space from his tiny asteroid, comes an intersection of two worlds, the one governed by the laws of nature, and the other determined only by the limits of imagination. The world of the imagination wins hands down, with the concerns of the adult world often shown to be lamentably silly as seen through the eyes of the little prince. While adult readers can find deep meanings in his various encounters, they can also be charmed back to childhood by this wise but innocent infant. This popular translation contains the author’s own delightful illustrations, bringing to visual life the small being at the tale’s heart, and a world of fantasy far removed from any quotidian reality. It is also a sort of love story, in which two frail beings, the downed pilot and the wandering infant-prince who has left behind all he knows, share their short time together isolated from humanity and finding sustenance in each other. This is a book which creates a unique relationship with each reader, whether child or adult. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli’s parents, and of the friendship between the man-cub and Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the sleepy brown bear, who instructs Mowgli in the Laws of the Jungle. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Generally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the “roaring twenties”, and a devastating expose of the ‘Jazz Age’. Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick’s cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him. The Great Gatsby is an undisputed classic of American literature from the period following the First World War and is one of the great novels of the twentieth century. About our Collector’s Editions: These compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Having firmly established the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was retained by The Strand Magazine to contribute a series of twelve short stories, which began with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ in 1891 and were published monthly for the next year. The stories, in which the master sleuth receives a stream of clients presenting him with baffling and bizarre mysteries in his consulting room at 221B Baker Street, were instantly popular and by the time of the publication of the final story, ‘The Copper Beeches’, they had become the mainstay of the magazine. They included such classic tales as ‘The Five Orange Pips’ and ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, and were gathered together in a collection known as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, representing some of the finest detective stories ever written. About our Collector’s Editions: These compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
‘Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security’. Jane Austen’s sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor’s character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival. This book, the first of Austen’s novels to be published, remains as fresh a cautionary tale today as it ever was. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
The magical Peter Pan comes to the night nursery of the Darling children, Wendy, John and Michael. He teaches them to fly, then takes them through the sky to Never-Never Land, where they find wolves, Mermaids and… Pirates. The leader of the pirates is the sinister Captain Hook. His hand was bitten off by a crocodile, who, as Captain Hook explains ‘liked me arm so much that he has followed me ever since, licking his lips for the rest of me’. After lots of adventures, the story reaches its exciting climax as Peter, Wendy and the children do battle with Captain Hook and his band. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
What does persuasion mean – a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen’s quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love Captain Wentworth did in the wars. Even though she is nearly thirty, well past the sell-by bloom of youth, Austen makes her win out for herself and for others like herself, in a regenerated society. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her. In this, her first full-length novel, Austen also fixes her sharp, ironic gaze on other kinds of contemporary novel, especially the Gothic school made famous by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine’s reading becomes intertwined with her social and romantic adventures, adding to the uncertainties and embarrassments she must undergo before finding happiness. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results.The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Little Women is one of the best-loved children’s stories of all time, based on the author’s own youthful experiences. It describes the family of the four March sisters living in a small New England community. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Laurence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever. Soon after the success of Little Women, Louis May Alcott wrote a sequel called Good Wives. In the U.K. and around most of the world, this has continued to be published as a separate book, but many American editions have incorporated both books under the title of Little Women. Readers should note that our editions do not contain material from Good Wives unless specifically stated. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester. However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors. Ultimately the grand passion of Jane and Rochester is called upon to survive cruel revelation, loss and reunion, only to be confronted with tragedy. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a ‘heroine whom no one but myself will much like’, but Emma is irresistible. ‘Handsome, clever, and rich’, Emma is also an ‘imaginist’, ‘on fire with speculation and foresight’. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married. Her matchmaking maps out relationships that Jane Austen ironically tweaks into a clearer perspective. Judgement and imagination are matched in games the reader too can enjoy, and the end is a triumph of understanding. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Black Beauty is a perennial children’s favourite, one which has never been out of print since its publication in 1877. It is a moralistic tale of the life of the horse related in the form of an autobiography, describing the world through the eyes of the creature. In taking this anthropomorphic approach, the author Anna Sewell broke new literary ground and her effective storytelling ability makes it very easy for the reader to accept the premise that a horse is recounting the exploits in the narrative. The gentle thoroughbred, Black Beauty, is raised with care and is treated well until a vicious groom injures him. The damaged horse is then sold to various masters at whose hands he experiences cruelty and neglect. After many unpleasant episodes, including one where he becomes a painfully overworked cab horse in London, Black Beauty finally canters towards a happy ending. Although Anna Sewell’s classic is set firmly in the Victorian period, its message is universal and timeless: animals will serve humans well if they are treated with consideration and kindness. There have been many film and television adaptations of the story, but it is only the novel that captures the authentic voice of the central character. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
Anne Shirley is an eleven-year-old orphan who has hung on determinedly to an optimistic spirit and a wildly creative imagination through her early deprivations. She erupts into the lives of aging brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a girl instead of the boy they had sent for. Thus begins a story of transformation for all three; indeed the whole rural community of Avonlea comes under Anne’s influence in some way. We see her grow from a girl to a young woman of sixteen, making her mistakes, and not always learning from them. Intelligent, hot-headed as her own red hair, unwilling to take a moral truth as read until she works it out for herself, she must also face grief and loss and learn the true meaning of love. Part Tom Sawyer, part Jane Eyre, by the end of Anne of Green Gables, Anne has become the heroine of her own story. About our Collector’s Editions: These new compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen and the White Rabbit all make their appearances, and are now familiar figures in writing, conversation and idiom. So too are Carroll’s delightful verses such as The Walrus and the Carpenter and the inspired jargon of that masterly Wordsworthian parody, The Jabberwocky. About our Collector’s Editions: These compact hardbacks are cloth-bound, with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations.
The extraordinary sequel to Dune, the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Twelve years after his victory over House Harkonnen, Paul Atreides rules as emperor from the desert planet Arrakis - but his victory has had profound consequences. War has been brought to the entire known universe, and billions have already perished. Despite having become the most powerful emperor known to history, Paul is powerless to bring an end to the fighting. While former allies conspire to dethrone Paul and even his own consort acts against him, Paul accepts a gift from the Tleilaxu, a guild of genetic manipulators, hoping to find a single spark of peace and friendship amidst the betrayal and chaos. But this act undermines Paul's support from the Fremen, his own people. The Fremen are the true source of Paul's power; losing them is the one thing that could truly topple his empire. As matters escalate, Paul will be forced to choose between his throne, his wife, his people and his future - and the future of the entire universe. An epic novel of the cost of victory . . . and the price of war.
Middle-aged history professor George, and his wife Martha, are joined by another college couple. The result is an all-night drinking session that erupts into a nightmare of revelations.
THE EXTRAORDINARY LOST NOVEL FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Amid sultry days and tropical downpours, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire, and the fear that sits quietly at her heart. Constantly surprising and wonderfully sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love, from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.
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