Search results for ""alma books ltd""

With his last opera Mozart created a piece of theatre which defies categorization. In theory it is a Singspiel, a mixture of songs and dialogue, in which the spectacular effects and comedy fit naturally: they appeal today as much as they did when it first opened in popular Viennese theatre two hundred years ago. Rodney Milnes recalls some of the other pieces playing at the time, such as Kaspar the Bassonist, or The Magic Zither. On the other hand, it belongs to a tradition of Enlightenment texts in which a young Prince, destined to be a ruler, learns from his adventures how to behave wisely as a social being. This is a re-working of the Orpheus myth, in the context of the Age of Reason and Freemasonry. David Cairns describes the many beauties of the score in loving detail, taking the reader through the complex plot, to clarify and interpret it. Famous commentaries by Goethe, Berlioz, E.T.A. Hoffmann and G.B. Shaw reveal their enthusiasm for the opera. A useful and unusual feature of this guide is the complete dialogue, in German with an English translation, which is often badly cut in performance. Like so many fairy-tales, The Magic Flute repays careful attention: its music has a charm to inspire the child in every listener.

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Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular operas of all time, despite its disastrous premiere, after which it was immediately withdrawn and revised. This guide explores how and why the libretto was softened to suit the tastes of European opera-goers, and the different variants are set out, side by side. Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann introduces the story and shows how the theme of a Japanese girl deserted by a heartless foreigner became a classic. Since John Luther Long’s novella – on which the opera was based – is included as well, it is possible to judge how successful Puccini was in catching its essence in his hauntingly beautiful score. Contents: Images of the Orient, John-Pierre Lehmann; Tribulations of a Score, Julian Smith; Madame Butterfly, John Luther Long; Madama Butterfly: Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi lllica after the book by John Luther Long and the play by David Belasco; Madam Butterfly: English version based on that of R.H. Elkin

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The most celebrated of French medieval poets, François Villon makes poetry out the basest material the raw urban life of Paris with its petty officials, students, clergy, tradesmen, pimps, whores and thieves. Despite successful studies, the young Villon immersed himself in this world, embarking on a career of petty crime that brought him repeated imprisonment. Condemned to death, but then reprieved and banished from Paris, he disappears from history in 1463, leaving behind a legend of poète maudit that has never lost its fascination. Violent, indignant, ribald and often brutally physical, Villon s verse has a formidable satiric thrust, and yet it also encompasses passages of poignant nostalgia and haunting lyric expression, culminating in his digressive autobiographical masterpiece, The Testament, which counts among the most popular texts of French poetry.

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Dante’s dramatic journey down the circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and through the spheres of Heaven in search of redemption – and his encounter with devils, monsters and the souls of sinners and saints – is one of the cornerstones of Western literature, the summit of medieval thinking and arguably the highest poetic achievement of all time. This 700th Anniversary Edition of The Divine Comedy is presented in a verse translation by acclaimed poet and prize-winning translator J.G. Nichols, together with extensive notes, illustrations by Gustave Doré and a critical apparatus focusing on the author’s life and works.

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Once again the eminent detective is presented with a series of seemingly impenetrable cases: an anonymous but illustrious client employs him to rescue the daughter of a famous personage from the clutches of a roguish aristocrat and suspected murderer; a retired art-supply dealer asks him to investigate the suspicious disappearance of his wife with a neighbour and a stash of money; a veteran of the Boer War appeals to him to track down a missing friend; a man has become convinced that his wife has been sucking their baby son’s blood. Will the most famous of sleuths be persuaded to offer his services and set off in pursuit of the criminals? The final collection of Holmes adventures, containing twelve brilliant, unpredictable stories, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes is a fitting conclusion to its protagonist’s long career and a powerful send-off for Conan Doyle’s greatest creation.

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Deeply bored by the lack of mental stimulus and the dull routine of existence, Sherlock Holmes is about to resort to his daily dose of cocaine when an elegantly dressed young woman called Mary Morstan enters his room and presents her case to him and Watson. Following the mysterious disappearance of her father ten years ago, and after answering, four years later, a newspaper advert enquiring for her, she has begun to receive each year, on the same date, a precious pearl in the post from an unknown benefactor. Now, with the last pearl, she has also received a message, telling her she is “a wronged woman” and asking for a meeting that very night outside the Lyceum Theatre. Will the great detective accompany her and help her unravel the mystery? First published in 1880, The Sign of the Four – the second Sherlock Holmes novel after A Study in Scarlet, published three years earlier – will sweep the readers away into a story of murders, betrayals, double-crossings and stolen treasures, and is an enduring testament to the storytelling genius of Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Nathanael remains haunted by his childhood fear that the lawyer Coppelius, a strange night-time visitor who used to come to his house to conduct alchemical experiments with his father – the latter dying as a consequence of one of these sessions – was none other than the Sandman, a mythical figure who was said to steal the eyes of children who refused to go to sleep. When a mysterious Italian salesman comes to town, Nathanael’s suspicions are reawakened, pushing him to the brink of madness as extraordinary events unfold. First published in 1816, this classic of German Gothic fiction has enthralled generations ever since, and has spawned countless interpretations by critics intrigued by its powerful symbolism. Sigmund Freud famously examined the novella in relation to his concept of the “Uncanny”, and an extract from this analysis is included in this volume.

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An enigmatic countess is tormented by a dark secret. An English aristocrat, Lord Montbarry, falls ill and dies in a decaying Venetian palazzo. An Italian servant disappears, and his wife receives a note containing one thousand pounds. With the palazzo now transformed into a luxury hotel, and the late Lord Montbarry’s family in residence, these strands begin to come together, yet strange and macabre events are occurring, and the dead seem unable to rest.

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Saddened with his country’s loss of freedom, disillusioned with life and racked with loneliness and ennui, university student Jacopo Ortis can only find some comfort in the company of his friends and in his love for Teresa. But when his studies call him back to Padua and he is separated from her, Jacopo’s torments become unbearable, and he feels that there is only one way out of his misery – a symbolic gesture against fate, God and all the tyrants of this world. Allegedly based on the real-life tragic story of the Italian student Girolamo Ortis, and suffused with the author’s own autobiographical experiences, Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis is a masterly prose work by one of Italy’s most celebrated poets, and perhaps the greatest Italian novel of the Romantic movement.

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An unnamed young governess is sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Yet she is soon oppressed by a sense of foreboding and deep disquiet, becoming convinced that something dark is menacing her young charges. But are supernatural forces at work, or is the danger something altogether more earthly? Henry James's masterpiece, and widely considered to be the greatest ghost story ever written, The Turn of the Screw remains the apogee of suspenseful, haunting writing in the English language. This new edition of The Turn of the Screw offers students the definitive text and extensive appendices.

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Having been accused of theft and hounded out of a religious community many years previously, the weaver Silas Marner now lives alone in the village of Raveloe, hoarding the precious wealth he earns. But when Silas's beloved gold is stolen, and an orphaned girl finds her way into his home, he is given the opportunity to transform his selfish and embittered life. George Eliot's favourite novel - rich in symbolism, humour and social criticism - Silas Marner is one of the great nineteenth-century portrayals of rural life. Based on the most authoritative edition and edited using a fresh, intelligent editorial approach, this edition contains extensive notes on the text together with extra material about the author's life and works.

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"A masterpiece of the Gothic genre, The Monk tells the story of the Capuchin friar Ambrosio and his fall from grace through desire, greed and lust. Favourably reviewed at first, the novel was later so widely and raucously denounced for its perceived licentiousness, blasphemy and corrupting influence that Lewis had to remove controversial passages from future editions. Unsurprisingly, amidst this furore, the book was immensely popular with the reading public. Suffused with eroticism, and focusing on the corrupting influence of power, The Monk pioneered a shocking new form of Gothic novel, where elements such as mob violence, incest and brutal murder replaced the gentler horrors of earlier practitioners of the genre."

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Having lived in the city of Orphalese for twelve years, the revered Prophet is about to board a ship taking him back to the isle of his birth. Before he departs, a group of people gather round and ask him to share his wisdom. Written as a collection of poetic essays, and detailing such diverse and sprawling topics as love, death, pleasure and prayer, The Prophet was an immediate success on its initial publication in 1923, and has since been translated into more than a hundred languages. This edition contains the original illustrations by the author himself.

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When the peaceful atmosphere of Barchester is destroyed by a scandal concerning the financial affairs of an almshouse, Septimus Harding, the kindly but unworldly warden who is responsible for the care of the establishment’s twelve elderly residents, finds himself in conflict with his daughter’s suitor, the zealous reformer John Bold, who unwittingly unleashes the full might of the press against his prospective father-in-law. The first in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, The Warden is both a humorous satire on the Church of England and a poignant insight into the manner in which public matters can affect private lives.

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A celebrated journalist in his lifetime, Ambrose Bierce’s began circulating his own sardonic, mischievous definitions of words in his various columns for San Francisco newspapers. Over several years these were then compiled and expanded into entries for a mock dictionary originally published as The Cynic’s Word Book. One of the most popular satirical works of American literature, The Devil’s Dictionary – here published in its most complete 1911 version – brilliantly lays bare the hypocrisies of American society and displays a razor-sharp wit to rival that of Bierce’s contemporary Mark Twain.

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"Published in the Christmas edition of Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round, Mugby Junction is the spellbinding result of a literary collaboration between some of the leading writers of the day, and contains four unforgettable contributions by Dickens himself, including ‘The Signalman’ – a chilling tale of a spectral apparition whose appearances forebode fatal accidents on the line. The eight stories included in this volume range from the hilarious to the hair-raising, and not only remain as fresh today as when they first appeared in 1866, but stand as a testament to the versatility and exuberance of Dickens’s unrivalled genius. Includes: ‘Barbox Brothers’, ‘Barbox Brothers and Co.’, ‘Main Line: The Boy at Mugby’ and ‘No. 1 Branch Line: The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens, ‘No. 2 Branch Line: The Engine Driver’ by Andrew Halliday, ‘No. 3 Branch Line: The Compensation House’ by Charles Collins, ‘No. 4 Branch Line: The Travelling Post-Office’ by Hesba Stretton and ‘No. 5 Branch Line: The Engineer’ by Amelia B. Edwards"

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Born in Newgate Prison to an incarcerated mother, Moll Flanders is compelled from earliest childhood to make her own way in the world and to live off her wit and beauty. Her desire to climb the rungs of society leads her through a tangled web of incest, adultery, prostitution, deception and theft, before she is eventually transported to the New World for her crimes. Presented as Moll’s autobiography, and published anonymously, the novel, through its self-made protagonist, highlights the intricacies and double standards of Moll’s contemporary society, and offers an irresistible and evocative insight into both the drawing rooms and seedy back alleys of seventeenth-century England.

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"In ‘The Wave’, a young man falls dangerously in love with the tenant downstairs, who is engaged to be married; in ‘The Signorina’, a flirtatious young woman is caught between her feelings and her parents’ desire for a good match; in ‘A Friend to the Wives’, the peerless Pia Tolosani leaves a trail of regret in the life of a former suitor. In this collection of stories – Pirandello’s first published work of fiction – the master of Italian modernism dissects the passions that are either dimly felt or unrequited, ultimately raising doubts about the very nature and existence of love, while simultaneously foreshadowing the themes and the psychologically nuanced characters that he would go on to develop in his later works."

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"Kimball O’Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, spends his childhood on the bustling streets of Lahore, begging and running errands in order to survive. One day he meets an old Tibetan lama, and he decides to accompany him on his travels across the Indian Subcontinent. After falling into the hands of his father’s old regiment, however, Kim is separated from the lama and sent away to school. There, his natural flair for espionage is spotted, and he soon finds himself among the majestic peaks of the Himalayas, playing a crucial part in the secret service’s confrontation with Russia known as the “Great Game”. With its peerless evocation of the teeming cities, breathtaking landscapes and diverse cultures of late-nineteenth-century India, Kim is widely considered to be Kipling’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels written in the English language."

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In the 1940s, Picasso wrote two plays in French: the first, Desire Caught by the Tail, was conceived during the German occupation of Paris and features a cast of grotesque allegorical characters such as the Onion, Silence or Fat Anxiety discussing the crucial wartime themes of hunger, cold and love; the second, The Four Little Girls, came about a few years after the end of the war on the French Riviera, and presents the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of four unnamed girls in a vegetable garden, revealing an unexpectedly evil aspect of childhood. These surreal compositions, which were meant to be read aloud rather than formally staged, are a testament to the great artist’s imaginative powers, and have been considered as forerunners to the theatre of the absurd of the 1950s, as exemplified by Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov.

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Based on lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition. As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women’s literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare’s. A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One’s Own is essential reading for those wishing to understand the progress that has been made in women’s rights and the struggles that still lie ahead.

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When Cyril, Anthea, Robert and Jane find the Psammead, a magical sand fairy, in a pet shop in London, they have no idea that they are about to embark on their greatest adventure yet. The Psammead leads them to an Egyptian amulet that has the power to grant whatever their hearts desire. The problem is that the amulet is broken, and the other half – needed if their wishes are to be granted – is lost. Yet with their half of the amulet able to transport them through time, the children set out on a search for the missing half, and the realization of their wildest dreams… From an encounter with Julius Caesar to a visit of the lost city of Atlantis, The Story of the Amulet – the final instalment in the Psammead Trilogy – is an unforgettable tale of magic and time travel that has been loved by children and parents alike for more than a century.

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Found in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings and drawings, ‘The Prophecies’ are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While the author’s intentions behind these utterances are unclear, they clearly attest to the artist’s fevered and troubled imagination and offer a glimpse into a world very similar to that depicted in his lost painting The Battle of Anghiari. This volume also contains a further selection of Leonardo da Vinci’s fragmentary writings, in the form of fables and aphorisms. Taken together, these pieces provide an invaluable insight into the thought processes of one of the Renaissance’s most productive minds.

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Coming back into town after a hunting expedition, Alexandre Dumas witnesses an incredible scene: a man has come to hand himself in to the mayor after decapitating his wife, terrified by the fact that her severed head spoke to him even after her death. This prompts the guests at a dinner Dumas attends later that evening to exchange stories of death and the supernatural, ranging from accounts of the guillotine during the Terror to tales of vampires and fratricide in the Carpathians. The Thousand and One Ghosts – here presented in its first and only translation into English – is a gloriously macabre work by the celebrated author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, which also touches on the serious political issue of capital punishment.

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Ichabod Crane is a young schoolmaster from Connecticut now living in Sleepy Hollow, a settlement in New York State notorious for rumours of ghostly visitations, especially from the infamous Headless Horseman. Considered an outsider by the local inhabitants, he falls in love with the eighteen-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, but has to contend with the loutish Brom Bones for her affections. Then one night Crane’s mounting problems come to a head when he finally experiences the horrors of the supernatural first-hand… A classic tale of American Gothic, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ has found a central place in the collective imagination and inspired many adaptations. Also included in this volume is a selection of some of Irving’s most celebrated ghostly tales, such as ‘The Phantom Island’ and ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’.

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“Though absent long, These forms of beauty have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns in cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” William Wordsworth’s verse was the embodiment of the Romantic age, with its evocation of a unifying spirit running through all things. This collection brings together a rich and diverse selection of his works, from the epic autobiographical masterpiece The Prelude to much-loved shorter poems such as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and ‘She Was a Phantom of Delight’. Alongside his more personal and introspective compositions, poems such as ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, ‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’ and ‘The Idiot Boy’ demonstrate, in an era of political and social ferment, the manner in which Wordsworth, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, forged a revolutionary new poetic style through the publication of Lyrical Ballads – one that embraced the vernacular and subjects previously deemed unworthy of poetry – and thus changed the literary landscape of England for ever.

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During a conversation about literary forgeries, Erskine tells his young guest that he has received – as a legacy from a friend, the Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham – what is purported to be an Elizabethan portrait. The painting depicts a beautiful young man in late-sixteenth-century costume, whom Graham claimed to be Willie Hughes, a boy-actor serving in Shakespeare’s company. This prompts Erskine’s guest to delve deeper into the mystery surrounding the real identity of the dedicatee and the inspiration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, with unforeseen consequences. Far from being a dry exposition of a literary theory, The Portrait of Mr W.H. – which the author himself described as one of his “early masterpieces” – is an engaging and entertaining narrative exploring the intricate facets of trust and betrayal, historical truth and fiction, written with Wilde’s trademark dialogical sharpness and stylistic perfection.

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When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set up the venue for the festivities. As she learns of the death of one of their working-class neighbours, this burgeoning sense of class consciousness is heightened by a realization of her own mortality. Published in 1922, at the height of literary Modernism, `The Garden Party' is now considered one of the key texts of that movement. This volume, which also includes all of Katherine Mansfi eld's other published short stories, is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover one of the early twentieth century's finest writers.

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Assembling at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, twenty-nine pilgrims begin their journey to Canterbury Cathedral. To entertain themselves on their long road, their host suggests that they regale each other with stories, with the teller of the best tale set to earn a free supper. The pilgrims correspond to all sections of medieval society, from the crusading knight to the drunken cook, and their tales span a range of genres, including the comic ribaldry and deception of `The Miller's Tale' and the story of chivalry and courtly romance told by the Franklin. Unfinished at the time of his death, The Canterbury Tales are here presented in their original Middle-English. This edition contains a wealth of material and over 3,000 notes which will help all students of Chaucer's masterpiece.

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“Though Earth and moon were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every Existence would exist in Thee.” From the transcendent beauty of nature observed on the Yorkshire moors to fierce and forceful confrontations of mortality, Emily Brontë’s poems are powerful and passionate works that eloquently elaborate upon her sister Charlotte’s description of her as ""a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”. While only twenty-one of Emily Brontë’s poems were published in her lifetime, her poetic oeuvre is rich and varied, and not only includes visionary poems such as ‘No Coward Soul Is Mine’ and ‘Remembrance’, but also features the poems that describe the imagined realm of Gondal and its inhabitants, which she created with her sister Anne.

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The pioneer of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin has exerted - through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, his plays, his short stories and his narrative poetry - a lasting influence well beyond the borders of his motherland. A slightly lesser-known, but by no means less important aspect of his writing is his vast production of shorter verse, a genre at which he excelled and arguably still remains unsurpassed. This volume, part of Alma's series of the complete poetic works of Alexander Pushkin, collects the poems Pushkin wrote in his mid-to-late twenties, during his exile in Mikhaylovskoye and his subsequent return to metropolitan life. It includes some of his lyrical masterpieces, such as 'To Anna Kern' and 'I Loved You...' - arguably the two most famous love poems in the Russian language - 'To the Sea', 'Andre Chenier', 'The Prophet', 'Stanzas Addressed to Nicholas I', 'Deep in Siberian Mines', 'Arion', 'An Angel', 'The Talisman', 'Remembrance', 'A Flower' and 'Anchar, Tree of Poison', each presented in a verse translation opposite the original Russian text. Enriched with notes, pictures and an appendix on Pushkin's life and works, this will be essential reading for anyone wishing to explore the Russian bard's genius.

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When Lord Petre had the effrontery of cutting off a lock of Lady Arabella Fermor’s hair, a veritable war erupted between the two noble families. A mutual friend, saddened by their estrangement, asked Alexander Pope, then a young poet, to write a poem about it, in order to make a joke of it and “laugh them together again”. But the result – which in its ingenuity and poetical brilliance reaches peaks of epic sublime – concealed darker and more dangerous undertones that unleashed an even greater storm between the parties involved – and among the whole literary world of the time. As Belinda glides along the Thames admired for her beauty and the crafty Baron schemes to take his prize, a host of supernatural beings – elves, sylphs, gnomes – dance around them to avoid the impending doom, in what is Pope’s crowning poetical achievement and perhaps the greatest satirical poem ever written. Included in this volume are the original two-canto version of The Rape of the Lock and Pope’s hilarious mock-interpretation of the poem as a seditious work, A Key to the Lock.

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The son of a gypsy woman, Sebastien is found as a newborn baby in the Alps and brought up by Cesar and his grandchildren Angelina and Jean. Born on the same day, Belle is a beautiful white Pyrenean Mountain Dog who has been neglected and passed on from owner to owner, until one day she escapes from a kennel. When Sebastien rescues the runaway Belle from the wrath of the villagers, the boy and the dog form a lifelong friendship and embark on exciting adventures in the mountains. First published in 1965 to coincide with the internationally successful television series of the same name, Belle and Sebastien is a heart-warming story of camaraderie, adventure and freedom. Available for the first time into English, this edition Includes extra material for young readers, including a section on the book, information about the author and a test-yourself quiz.

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On his thirtieth birthday, the bank clerk Josef K. is suddenly arrested by mysterious agents for an unspecified crime. He is told that he will be set free, but must make regular appearances at a court in the attic of a tenement building while his trial proceeds. Although he never comes to know the particulars of his case, Josef K. finds his life taken over by the opaque bureaucratic procedures and is tormented by the psychological pressures exerted by his legal nightmare. Published the year after the author's death, but written ten years earlier, The Trial is the most acclaimed of Kafka's three novels, and is both a haunting meditation on freedom and the powerlessness of the individual in the face of state power, and an ominous prefiguration of the totalitarian excesses of the twentieth century.

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When the orphaned William refuses his uncles’ proposal to become a clergyman and angrily leaves his job in the counting-house of his brother’s mill, he decides to accept a position as an English teacher at a boys’ school in Brussels. When his career leads him to take up an additional post at a girls’ school nearby, William becomes emotionally involved with the manipulative headmistress of the establishment, Mademoiselle Reuter. The tensions rise until one of his pupils and fellow teachers – for whom he has tender feelings – is suddenly dismissed and is nowhere to be found. Based on Charlotte Brontë’s own autobiographical experience in Brussels as a teacher and only published posthumously, The Professor was Charlotte Brontë’s first attempt at full-length fiction and bears all the hallmarks of her future work, with touches of genius and an unparalleled sharpness of style.

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The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her own family and so sets out to prove herself by seeking employment as a governess. Soon, however, her idealistic notions regarding the education and care of her wards are dashed as she battles to control the wild Bloomfi eld children in her fi rst situation, and is then held in low regard by the superior Murray household.

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Conflict between father and son is one of the oldest themes in literature, and in this open letter to his father - a letter which was never sent - Kafka tries to come to terms with one of the most deeply rooted obsessions of his troubled soul. Written as a long, tense and dramatic confession in which writer and man are gathered together in front of an ambivalent figure of authority, "Dearest Father" is a desperate attempt to retrace the origins of a turbulent and highly conflicted relationship between an unflinching parent and an extremely sensitive child. Both a merciless indictment of his father and an impassioned appeal to him, Kafka's inspired work is one of the most lucid and touching psychological documents of the twentieth century.

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While Charles Dickens is best known and celebrated for his prolific journalistic output and novelistic creations, he also devoted some of his creative energies to verse. At turns sentimental, melancholy, playful, humorous and satirical, and ranging considerably in tone and format – from songs to narrative prologues for novels and squibs for newspapers – the poems in this collection highlight Dickens’s gift for language and his unfailing power to touch.

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One of the many aspects of Alexander Pushkin’s immense contribution to Russian language and literature, and perhaps the one he is most popular for, is his mastery of the love poem, a genre which he perfected like few others before or after him. This volume contains a selection of his most famous and enduring verse explorations of love, such as ‘I Loved You’, ‘Night’ and ‘I Well Recall a Wondrous Meeting’, pieces which are crowning achievements of the European canon and still have the same timeless emotional resonance today.

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A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his witty and satirical best. Perhaps intended as a companion to his final, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pécuchet, this compilation was the result of a lifetime of collecting the absurd and the clichéd with darkly humorous explanations. A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.

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Never published in its author’s lifetime and intended solely for his own children, to whom he read it every Christmas, The Life of Our Lord is an accessible and gently humorous take on the life of Jesus Christ and his teachings. Far removed from the sharp satire and social dimension of his more famous writings, but showcasing his characteristic humanity and genius for storytelling, this is both an essential work for those wanting to see a different, more intimate side to Dickens and a timeless retelling for children and adults alike.

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Spurred by a lifelong fascination with the great emperor, French novelist Honoré de Balzac set himself the pains­taking task of collecting a selection of Napoleon’s aphorisms from his public speeches and the gazettes of the time. Arranged into four themes (covering social life, the military arts, the exercise of power and the teachings of experience and misfortune), Napoleon’s pithy pills of wisdom – often Machiavellian, cynical, dry and sometimes cruel – offer a unique insight into the mind of a man who prided himself on preferring action over thought and the sword over the pen, and conjure up one of the most eminent and influential historical figures of all time.

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Against the backdrop of growing discontent in Paris, Doctor Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years of unjust imprisonment and begins a new life in England with his devoted daughter Lucie. There, the gifted but dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton and the exiled French nobleman Charles Darnay find their lives increasingly intertwined with those of the Manettes. Yet soon both men are drawn ineluctably from the peaceful English capital to the horror and bloodshed of the Paris Terror and the looming threat of the guillotine. Representing a departure from the social satire of most of his other novels and deemed by Dickens himself to be "the best story I have written", A Tale of Two Cities is a powerful historical novel about the repercussions of epochal events on the personal lives of people on both sides of the Channel.

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A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed, Directions to Servants takes a caustic and irreverent look at master-servant relations. Written towards the end of his writing career and published posthumously, this pamphlet shows Swift – who was himself known to be strict but fair to his own servants, as illustrated in the Appendix to this volume – at his witty and mischievous best.

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Described by Herman Melville as being “as deep as Dante”, ‘Young Goodman Brown’ is set during the Salem witch trials and features the sort of narrative ambiguities and troubling uncertainties over the reality of events that Hawthorne was known for, leading readers to ponder what they have read long after the last page has been turned. Rich in allegory and symbolism, and suffused with darkness, tragedy, satire and the supernatural, the tales in this collection, written by a master of the short-story genre, delve into the conflict between good and evil, explore the concept of Original Sin and bring to life the moralistic and superstitious early days of the New England colonies.

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Anne is an orphan with a penchant for daydreaming and distinctive flaming-red hair that catches the eye of everyone she meets. She is overjoyed to be sent to Green Gables, the Cuthberts' farm, which she imagines to be the home she has always dreamt of. When her new family, who had been expecting the arrival of a boy, display reservations about the newcomer, Anne must win them over with her charm, beauty and intelligence and find a way to fit in. Originally published in 1908, L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables has come to be acclaimed as one of the world's greatest children's tales. Its numerous sequels, adaptations and spin-offs are a testament to the beauty of this simple story, which continues to enchant readers to this day.

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Bathsheba Everdene is a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep farmer, a handsome soldier and an older, wealthy landowner. As the men vie for her affections, she struggles to retain her independence of spirit in the face of their declarations. Introducing readers to the fictional county of Wessex, Thomas Hardy’s fourth work of fiction was one of his greatest triumphs, both commercially and critically. Its tale of passion, jealousy and unrequited love is now regarded as one of the finest novels of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest love stories of all time.

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A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and proceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual and somewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who are still registered on the landowner's estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is not clear what Chichikov's intentions are with the dead serfs he is purchasing, and despite his attempts to ingratiate himself, his strange behaviour arouses the suspicions of everyone in the town.A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls has been revered since its original publication in 1842 as one of the funniest and most brilliant novels of nineteenth-century Russia. Its unflinching and remorseless depiction of venality in Russian society is a lasting tribute to Gogol's comic genius.

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