The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled 'Thieftaker General', controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed f ...

Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson's Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parod ...

How did the camel get his hump? Why won't cats do as they are told"? Who invented reading and writing? How did an inquisitive little elephant change t ...

Fanny Price is taken to live at Mansfield Park, the home of her wealthy uncle. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzli ...

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (commonly known as Fanny Hill), the most famous erotic novel in English, was denounced by its author as 'a Book I disda ...

Collins's ability to construct a gripping situation and to create an atmosphere of mystery and menace is fully evident in the three novellas reprinted ...

This selection offers a cross-section from the 6,000 surviving sheets that constitute Leonardo's notebooks, including his thoughts on landscape, optic ...

The new Oxford World's Classics edition of Oliver Twist is based on the authoritative Clarendon edition, which uses Dickens's revised text of 1846. It ...

Anne Elliot, persuaded by family and friends that the charming and handsome Frederick Wentworth is not worthy of her regard, questions her decision to ...

The Phaedo is acknowledged to be one of Plato's masterpieces, showing him both as a philosopher and as a dramatist at the height of his powers. For it ...

Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely enterta ...