Wordsworth

Une Vie (1883) and Bel-Ami (1885) seem almost diametrically opposed in tone and temper. The 'Life' of the first is poignantly restricted within a woman's lot, while Bel-Ami is robustly masculine. Jeanne dreams of love. Duroy constructs a career in journalism through a string of sexual conquests, reaching political and economic success by endless...

The books in Volume Two:The Tale of Peter RabbitThe Tale of Squirrel NutkinThe Tailor of GloucesterThe Tale of Benjamin BunnyThe Tale of Two Bad MiceThe Tale of the Pie and the Patty PanThe Tale of Mr Jeremy FisherThe Story of A Fierce Bad RabbitThe Story of Miss MoppetThe Tale of Tom KittenThe Tale of Jemima Puddle-DuckAppley Dapply's Nursery...

The books in Volume One:The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-WinkleThe Tale of Samuel Whiskersor, The Roly-Poly PuddingThe Tale of the Flopsy BunniesThe Tale of Ginger & PicklesThe Tale of Mrs TittlemouseThe Tale of Timmy TiptoesThe Tale of Mr TodThe Tale of Pigling BlandThe Tale of Johnny Town-MouseCecily Parsley's Nursery RhymesThe Tale of Little Pig Robinson...

The beautiful Scheherazade's royal husband threatens to kill her, so each night she diverts him by weaving wonderful tales of fantastic adventure, leaving each story unfinished so that he spares her life to hear the ending the next night.This is the background to the Arabian Nights. In this selection made by that master of folklore and fairy-tale...

A Pair of Blue Eyes, though early in the sequence of Hardy's novels, is lively and gripping. Its dramatic cliff-hanging episode, for example, is at once tense, ironic, feministic and erotic.With settings in Wessex and London, the novel also has some strongly autobiographical features, as the blue-eyed heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is based largely on...

The sixty-four poems in A Child's Garden of Verses are a masterly evocation of childhood from the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped. They are full of delightful irony, wit and the fantasy worlds of childhood imagination, and introduce for the first time the Land of Nod. But they are also touched with a genuine and gentle pathos at times as...