Books in the Collins Classics series

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'"e;For,"e; said he, "e;there never was nor is there one chaste woman upon the face of earth."e;'A collection of Persian, Arabian and Indian tales dating from the 9th century, Sir Richard Burton's most well-known translation of Arabian Nights brings together ancient folklore and stories passed down from generation to generation.Featuring tales about love, history, tragedy and comedy as well as fables and fairy tales, this edition remains a well-loved collection of exotic and evocative stories. Fantastical and curious customs are bought to life by Burton's translation in stories such as 'The Lovers of Bassorah', 'The Concubine of Al-Maamun' and 'The Hunchback's Tale'.

HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.'Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere.'An amazing adventure set in Africa, against the backdrop of endless deserts and snowy mountains, Kings Solomon's Mines follows Allan Quartermain, in his quest to find his missing brother and unearth the fabled treasure of the biblical King's mines. Along the way, Allan and his companions are caught up in a tribal war and face fearful hardships, culminating in a final confrontation with the evil witch Gagool.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!' (from 'The Ugly Duckling')This collection brings together some of Hans Christian Andersen's most popular fairy tales - including 'The Little Mermaid', 'The Ugly Duckling' and 'Thumbelina' - in a celebration of one of the world's most widely recognised children's authors. With universal themes and dark humour at their heart, these moralistic tales have delighted readers since first publication in the nineteenth century and continued to be well loved today.The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, a storyteller of great importance to Western literature, have inspired many films, ballets and plays, and entertained generations of children and adults alike.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.'Second to the right ... and then straight on till morning!'Desperate to hear bedtime stories, Peter Pan waits outside the nursery window of Wendy, John and Michael Darling. When Peter asks Wendy to fly with him to Neverland, the Darling children are whisked away to a world of adventure - of daring fairies, wondrous mermaids and The Lost Boys.But there is danger in Neverland too: the villainous Captain Hook is out for revenge and will stop at nothing to take it.Poignant and unforgettable, J. M. Barrie's classic tale is one of the greatest works of children's literature of the last century. Its imaginative scope, tender humour and vivid characters will enchant adults and children alike.Published in association with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which gives direction to the character of Man.'Including Poe's most terrifying, grotesque and haunting short stories, Tales of Mystery and Imagination is the ultimate collection of the infamous author's macabre works.Considered to be one of the earliest American writers to encapsulate the genre of detective-fiction, the collection features some of his most popular tales.'The Gold-Bug' is the only tale that was popular in his lifetime, whereas 'The Black Cat', 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' became more widely read after his death.Focussing on the internal conflict of individuals, the power of the dead over the living, and psychological explorations of darker human emotion that appear to anticipate Sigmund Freud's later theories on the psyche, Poe's Gothic terror stories are considered masterpieces the world over.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.'Including some of Oscar Wilde's most well-known and infamous plays, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, this collection of the infamous writer's works displays his brilliant, quick wit to its full glory. Wilde's pithy social comedies dissect the morals and idiosyncrasies of society in the 1890s and offer a view of the sexual politics of the time.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel itAfter a harrowing tour in Afghanistan, Dr. Watson returns to London to convalesce at 221B Baker Street, home to the enigmatic Sherlock Holmes. Their lives are irrevocably thrown together by news that a man has been found dead in a grimy 'ill-omened' house, with the word rache - German for revenge - written in blood on the wall. This grisly discovery is complicated further by the look of utter horror on the victim's face, and the complete absence of any wounds on the body or sign of a struggle.First published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet is the remarkable first-outing of one of literature's most famous partnerships.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.'There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.'Featuring 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Rip Van Winkle', this collection of inspired essays, stories and sketches established Washington Irving's reputation as one of America's foremost authors. Irving's timeless characters, including Ichabod Crane, Rip Van Winkle and the headless Hessian trooper, jostle for space alongside 31 equally atmospheric and lyrical works in this haunting anthology from one of America's most distinctive literary voices.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Welcome to Utopia.When Mr. Barnstaple, an Earthling, is accidentally transported to Utopia with a group of others, he begins an adventure that will change how he views the world forever.Utopia has no government. Utopia has no religion. People are governed only by their own conscience and desires, and Barnstaple is drawn into what he sees as a perfect society. But when a disease brought by the Earthlings threatens the existence of the Utopians, Barnstaple must make a choice: take over Utopia, or betray his own people to save a world he has grown to admire...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'Greedily she engorged without restraint,And knew not eating death;'Milton's Paradise Lost is a poem of epic proportions that tells of Satan's attempts to mislead Eve into disobeying God in the Garden of Eden, by eating from the tree of knowledge. His interpretation of the biblical story of Genesis is vivid and intense in its language, justifying the actions of God to men. In his sequel poem, Paradise Regained, Milton shows Satan trying to seduce Jesus in a similar way to Eve, but ultimately failing as Jesus remains steadfast.

The classic of eternal youth.'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young... If it was only the other way!'Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

The international bestselling classic from the author of Animal Farm.

The classic Victorian tale of the little orphan who dared to ask for `more' retains its heartwarming charm and relevance in our era. Oliver's story is full of pathos and excitement, from abandonment in a workhouse to falling in with Fagin's gang in London's murky underworld and his eventual rescue by the kindly Mr Brownlow, who is able to reveal Oliver's true parentage.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.'Written for her lover Vita Sackville-West, 'Orlando' is Woolf's playfully subversive take on a biography, here tracing the fantastical life of Orlando. As the novel spans centuries and continents, gender and identity, we follow Orlando's adventures in love - from being a lord in the Elizabethan court to a lady in 1920s London.First published in 1928, this tale of unrivalled imagination and wit quickly became the most famous work of women's fiction. Sexuality, destiny, independence and desire - all come to the fore in this highly influential novel that heralded a new era in women's writing.

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.

From Collins Classics and the author of 'The Great Gatsby' a marriage unravels in this autobiographical tale.'Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.'Set on the French Riviera in the 1920s, American Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are the epitome of chic, living a glamorous lifestyle and entertaining friends at their villa. Young film star Rosemary Hoyt arrives in France and becomes entranced by the couple. It is not long before she is attracted to the enigmatic Dick, but he and his wife hold dark secrets and as their marriage becomes more fractured, Fitzgerald laments the failure of idealism and the carefully constructed trappings of high society in the Roaring Twenties.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.'Set in 16th-Century England and following the lives of two young boys, The Prince and the Pauper is a classic and timeless tale. Tom Canty, the lowly pauper is almost identical in appearance to Edward Tudor, a prince. Unbeknownst to those around them, the boys strike up an unlikely friendship and soon realise that with their similar looks they could easily pass for one another.When the Prince's father dies, some of the more underhand court officials persuade the pauper to act as the Prince in order to reap the benefits of the 'mistake' and there follows a tale of friendship and growing up in one of Mark Twain's most infamous works.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.Featuring the last 12 stories ever written about the infamous detective, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes contains some of Conan Doyle's most villainous and unusual characters.The 1920s was a disenchanting era, and the darker mood of many of these stories reflects the environment at the time. Some even felt that the stories showed Conan Doyle exploring Spiritualism as it was an area he was interested in at the time and the mental derangement and physical disfigurements that crop up in many of the stories allude to the horrors of the First World War.The collection includes 'The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire', 'The Adventure of the Creeping Man' and 'The Adventure of the Lion's Mane'.

The Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the only truly complete and authoritative single-volume edition of Oscar Wilde's works, and is available in both paperback and this hardback edition.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.Born into slavery during the early nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom before he was twenty-one years old. From the moment he arrived in New York City, he felt a need to tell his story, one that mirrored so many people still enslaved in the South with no hope of escape.As an orator and preacher, Douglass was an abolitionist, supporter of women's suffrage and staunch defender of equality for all. In his first autobiographical work, published in 1845, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass describes how he went from slave to a free man.