Set in Hardy’s Wessex, it tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d’Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy.368pp Paperback

American, Daisy Miller, visits Europe with her mother and finds that her freshness and innocence are misinterpreted as immodesty and forwardness. This brings her into conflict with the differences in the two cultural traditions, inviting shock and disaster.160pp. Paperback.

King Lear has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedy. Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world’s literature. In the theatre and on screen King Lear continues to challenge and enthral. This Wordsworth edition of King Lear provides a comprehensive, integrated text of the play. 160pp. Paperback.

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. In the hope of saving her brother's life, should a woman submit to rape? Should the law be respected when its administrator is corrupt? How powerful in the state should religion become? Although Measure for Measure ends like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marriages, it has often been regarded as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The drama shows the difficulty of effecting an appropriate balance between judicial severity and mercy, between sexual repression and decadence, and between political vigilance and social manipulation. These problems remain topical, and, in Measure for Measure, they are given immediacy by vivid character conflicts and memorably intense poetry. This is one of Shakespeare's most probing and powerful works. 144 page paperback.

'The Merchant of Venice' is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may well seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. He is a character so intense that he can dominate the play, challenging abrasively its romantic and lyrical affirmations. 128pp. Paperback.

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex. The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boisterously 'tames' a rebellious Kate, has often appeared problematic. In the theatre, it has been treated in a diversity of ways, so that Kate's apparent capitulation varies between the ironic and the sincere. Feminists have been divided in their responses. The provocative vitality of this comedy has been transmitted by numerous adaptations for stage and screen, notably the film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and the Cole Porter musical, Kiss Me, Kate. 144 page paperback.

Gwendolen Harleth, George Eliot's most remarkable heroine, marries for money and power rather than love, but finds marriage a trap and her husband's sadistic use of power constricting. The upper class Victorian society in which she moves is juxtaposed with that of the hero, Daniel Deronda. The warmth and profound moral fervour of his newly discovered community of English Jews casts a harsh light on the superficiality and hypocrisy of Gwendolen's world. Daniel's influence is a redemptive force that breaks new ground for the English novel with the unusual form and content of this extraordinary tale which conveys the full, painful complexity of love and life. 675pp. Paperback.

Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide. 176pp. Paperback.

Complete and unabridged Wordsworth American classic of one of the greatest war novels of all time. The book reports on the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier. It evokes the chaos and the dull clatter of war, the acrid smoke, the incessant rumours of coming battles, the filth and cold, numbing monotony and the unworldly wail of the dying. Crane also captures some strange beauty: brilliant red flags against a blue sky, steel bayonets flashing in the morning sun... 192pp in paperback.

This is a troubling story of crime, sin, guilt, punishment and expiation, set in the rigid moral climate of 17th-century New England. The young mother of an illegitimate child confronts her Puritan judges. However, it is not so much her harsh sentence, but the cruelties of slowly exposed guilt as her lover is revealed, that hold the reader enthralled all the way to the book's poignant climax. Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. 224pp in paperback.