Classics

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever.

The importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and this superb new translation captures their modernist spirit. Among the fourteen stories included are 'The Lady with the Little Dog', 'Gusev', and 'Rothschild's Violin'.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law.

Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties.

The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. This is a story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who refuses to accept her appointed place in society and instead finds love on her own terms has become famous as one of the greatest romances ever written.

Presents Marx and Engels's revolutionary revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated.

A notice in The Times addressed to 'Those Who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine' advertises a 'small medieval Italian Castle to be let for the month of April'. Four very different women take up the offer.

Includes exquisite reflections on life's fleeting pleasures by a thirteenth-century Japanese monk are delicately attuned to nature and the senses.