Books published by Sovereign

One morning a little rabbit sat on a bank. He pricked his ears and listened to the trit-trot, trit-trot of a pony. A gig was coming along the road; it was driven by Mr. McGregor, and beside him sat Mrs. McGregor in her best bonnet. As soon as they had passed, little Benjamin Bunny slid down into the road, and set off—with a hop, skip, and a jump—to call upon his relations, who lived in the wood at the back of Mr. McGregor's garden.Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, and natural scientist. Her imaginative children's books feature many natural animals that can be found in the British countryside. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now comprises the Lake District National Park. Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit story is among the most popular children's stories worldwide.

Once upon a time there was a very beautiful doll’s-house; it was red brick with white windows, and it had real muslin curtains and a front door and a chimney. One morning Lucinda and Jane had gone out for a drive in the doll’s perambulator. There was no one in the nursery, and it was very quiet. Presently there was a little scuffling, scratching noise in a corner near the fire-place, where there was a hole under the skirting-board.

It is midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four quarters and strikes eleven. The Man arrives at Whitehall where he meets a Beefeater guard. He persuades the Beefeater to allow him to stay to meet his girlfriend, a lady of the court, who will be arriving soon for a secret tryst. The Man notes down various interesting phrases used by the Beefeater. The Lady arrives, cloaked, but it is not the woman he is expecting. The Man immediately falls for her.

A lady and gentleman are making love to one another in the drawing room of a flat in Ashley Gardens in the Victoria district of London. The lady is a young widow, Grace Tranfield, in love with the man, Leonard Charteris, who is the ‘philanderer’ of the title. Grace is shocked and disconcerted to find that Charteris, on his own lightΓÇÉhearted admission, has been in a similar position with Julia Craven and others. The affair with Julia, in fact, has never been broken off. He maintains that it is not his fault that half the women he speaks to fall in love with him; and he is in full flight of cajolery when Julia Craven herself erupts on to the scene, attacks Grace, and announces her intention of staying until Charteris has given her up.

Androcles, a fugitive Christian tailor, accompanied by his nagging wife, is on the run from his Roman persecutors. While hiding in the forest he comes upon a wild lion who approaches him with a wounded paw. His wife runs off. Androcles sees that the cause of the animal's distress is a large thorn embedded in its paw, which he draws out while soothing the lion in baby language.

After his victory at the Battle of Lodi, Napoleon eats his meal, works on his plans and talks with the innkeeper Giuseppe Grandi. A lieutenant arrives with bad news. The dispatches he was carrying have been stolen by a youth who tricked him out of them.

Set in Colonial America during the Revolutionary era, the play tells the story of Richard Dudgeon, a local outcast and self-proclaimed Devil's disciple. In a twist characteristic of Shaw's love of paradox, Dudgeon sacrifices himself in a Christ-like gesture despite his professed Infernal allegiance.

The Prince is one of the first works of political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. Written by by the Italian diplomat, historian andpolitical theorist Niccolo Machiavelli, the treatise is the most remembered of his works and the one most responsible for bringing the word Machiavellian into wide usage.

The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard about the moral dilemmas created by limited medical resources, and the conflicts between the demands of private medicine as a business and a vocation.

The play is set in the northeast suburbs of London in the month of October. It tells the story of Candida, the wife of a famous clergyman, the Reverend James Mavor Morell. Morell is a Christian Socialist, popular in the Church of England, but Candida is responsible for much of his success. Candida returns home briefly from a trip to London with Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who wants to rescue her from what he presumes to be her dull family life.

Cleopatra sleeping between the paws of a Sphinx. Caesar, wandering lonely in the desert night, comes upon the sphinx and speaks to it profoundly. Cleopatra wakes and, still unseen, replies. At first Caesar imagines the sphinx is speaking in a girlish voice, then, when Cleopatra appears, that he is experiencing a dream or, if he is awake, a touch of madness. She, not recognizing Caesar, thinks him a nice old man and tells him of her childish fear of Caesar and the Romans. Caesar urges bravery when she must face the conquerors, then escorts her to her palace.

Barbara Undershaft is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London. For many years, Barbara and her siblings have been estranged from their father, Andrew Undershaft, who now reappears as a rich and successful munitions maker. Undershaft, the father, gives money to the Salvation Army, which offends Major Barbara , who does not want to be connected to his tainted wealth. However, the father argues that poverty is a worse problem than munitions, and claims that he is doing more to help society by giving his workers jobs and a steady income than Major Barbara is doing to help them by giving them bread and soup.

Ellie Dunn, her father, and her fiancé are invited to one of Hesione Hushabye’s infamous dinner parties, to be held at the house of her father, the eccentric Captain Shotover, an inventor in his late 80s who is trying to create a psychic ray that will destroy dynamite. The house is built in the shape of the stern of a ship. Lady Utterword, Shotover's other daughter, arrives from Australia, but he pretends not to recognise her. Hesione says they are running out of money. Shotover needs to invent a weapon of mass destruction. His last invention, a lifeboat, did not bring in much cash.

Mrs. Warren, a former prostitute and current brothel owner, is described as 'on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman.' Vivie, an intelligent and pragmatic young woman who has just graduated from university, has come home to get acquainted with her mother for the first time in her life. The play focuses on how their relationship changes when Vivie learns what her mother does for a living.

Mr. Whitefield has recently died, and his will indicates that his daughter Ann should be left in the care of two men, Roebuck Ramsden and Jack Tanner. Ramsden, a venerable old man, distrusts Jack Tanner, an eloquent youth with revolutionary ideas, possibly a little mad. In spite of what Ramsden says, Ann accepts Tanner as her guardian, though Tanner doesn't want the position at all. She also challenges Tanner's revolutionary beliefs with her own ideas. Despite Tanner's professed dedication to anarchy, he is unable to disarm Ann's charm, and she ultimately persuades him to marry her, choosing him over her more persistent suitor, a young man named Octavius Robinson.

The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina Petkoff, is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff, one of the heroes of that war, whom she idolizes. On the night after the Battle of Slivnitza, a Swiss mercenary soldier in the Serbian army, Captain Bluntschli, climbs in through her bedroom balcony window and threatens to shoot Raina if she gives the alarm.

Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion play is named after a Greek mythological figure. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and its film version.

Satirical novel about American culture, society, and middle-class pressure toward conformity. An immediate and controversial bestseller, Babbitt was influential in the decision to award Lewis the Nobel Prize in literature. The word 'Babbitt' entered the English language as a person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class dogmas.

The story follows Leopold Bloom on a seemingly ordinary day in Dublin, during which Bloom's wife, Molly, commits adultery. This experimental novel is among the most important works of Modernist literature. It was initially deemed obscene in England and the USA for its scandalously frank, life-changing reading experience.

The Golden Bowl is a complex, intense study of marriage and adultery. It explores interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. We follow prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman, who is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver, only child of the widower Adam Verver, the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector. While there, he re-encounters Charlotte Stant, another young American and a former mistress from his days in Rome.

The Red Badge of Courage follows events of the American Civil War, and life of a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a red badge of courage, to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer.

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in the southern English region of Wessex who yearns to be a scholar. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Greek and Latin in his spare time while working first in his great-aunt's bakery. Before he can try to enter the university, the naïve Jude is manipulated, through a process he later calls erotolepsy, into marrying a rather coarse and superficial local girl, Arabella Donn, who deserts him within two years and relocates to Australia. By this time, he has abandoned the classics altogether.

George, Harris, Jerome and Montmorency, a fox terrier, are spending an evening smoking and discussing illnesses they fancy they suffer from. They conclude they are all overworked and need a holiday. The three decide on a boating holiday up the River Thames. Initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, the humour and witty adventures transformed the story into once of the most admirable comic novels of all times.

Kidnapped is a historical adventure novel set around 18th-century Scottish events, notably the Appin Murder, which occurred near Ballachulish in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising. Many of the characters, and one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart, were real people.

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures. Huck has been placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, is attempting to civilize him. Huck appreciates their efforts, but finds civilized life confining. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the great American novels, universally popular among readers and a continued object of study by serious literary critics.  This new edition features original text noted for its colourful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, and numerous illustrations accompanying the text.

Set during the political upheavals of 19th Century England, Middlemarch is an epic story of love, politics, and passion. The novel follows lives of the ambitious young Doctor Lydgate as he takes up his position at Middlemarch’s new hospital, and Dorothea Brooke who desperately wants to make something of her life; however, as a woman she is forbidden the study of Greek and Latin and no one takes her notions of societal improvement seriously.

Little Women follows the lives of the four March sisters, from oldest to youngest: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. A romance, a quest, a family drama that validates virtue over wealth. The start of the story is set at Christmastime, where Jo, the second eldest of the March sisters, grumbles that Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents. The four girls discuss the upcoming holiday and sigh as they long for pretty things that they can't have because of money constraints.

Vanity Fair is one of the most distinguished works written by William Makepeace Thackeray. The novel satirises whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It also features Thackeray's most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp. The novel is considered a classic of English literature, presenting a panoramic portrait of English society of the time.

The only complete novel written by Edgar Allan Poe which follows life of the young Arthur Gordon Pym aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism befall Pym, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south.

A morose widower, Mr Glowry lives with his only son Scythrop in his semi-dilapidated family mansion Nightmare Abbey, which is situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens in Lincolnshire. Mr Glowry is a melancholy gentleman who likes to surround himself with servants with long faces or dismal names such as Raven, Graves or Deathshead. The few visitors he welcomes to his home are mostly of a similar cast of mind: Mr Flosky, a transcendental philosopher; Mr Toobad, a Manichaean Millenarian; Mr Listless, Scythrop's languid and world-weary college friend; and Mr Cypress, a misanthropic poet.