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Motherless Sara Crewe was sent home from India to school at Miss Minchin's. Her father was immensely rich and she became "show pupil" - a little princess. Then her father dies and his wealth disappears, and Sara has to learn to cope with her changed circumstances.
When Jerry, Jimmy and Cathy discover a tunnel that leads to a castle, they pretend that it is enchanted. But when they discover the Sleeping Princess at the centre of the maze, astonishing things begin to happen.
These fantasies and true-to-life fables were created by Oscar Wilde for his own sons. Here is the tale of the Prince who is not as happy as he seems, of the Selfish Giant who learns how to love children, and of the Star-Child who suffers bitter trials when he rejects his parents.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children.But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and their family, that geniality brings its own reward.This finest of all Christmas stories is beautifully illustrated with Arthur Rackham's superb line drawings.
The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents, and of the friendship between the man-cub and Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the sleepy brown bear, who instructs Mowgli in the Laws of the Jungle.The Second Jungle Book contains some of the most thrilling of the Mowgli stories. It includes Red Dog, in which Mowgli forms an unlikely alliance with the python Kaa, How Fear Came and Letting in the Jungle as well as The Spring Running, which brings Mowgli to manhood and the realisation that he must leave Bagheera, Baloo and his other friends for the world of man.
In this selection of plays by the editor, the reader is taken into the romantic world of the gallant knights of the round table and their courageous and chivalrous deeds, fair maidens, castles steeped in history, the quest for the holy grail, and tragic love for Guinevere.
Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community, Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve.The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Lawrence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever.Good Wives takes up the story of the March sisters, some three years later, when, as young adults, they must face up to the inevitable trials and traumas of everyday life in their search for individual happiness.
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.
Cavalier and Roundhead battle it out in the turbulent setting of the English Civil war. This book tells the tale of four orphans as they face adversity, survival in the forest, reconciliation and eventual forgiveness.
Anna Sewell's Black Beauty was an immediate success on its publication in 1877, and has gone on to sell an estimated 50 million copies.Black Beauty is a horse with a fine black coat, a white foot and a silver star on his forehead. Seen through his eyes, the story tells of his idyllic upbringing and the hardship and cruelty he suffers subsequently, before finding security and happiness in a new home.Black Beauty is one of the most popular children's books ever written.
Describes Tom Brown's time at Rugby School from his first football match, through his troubled adolescence when he is savagely bullied by the unspeakable Flashman, to his departure for a wider world as a confident young man.
'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' Treasure Island is a tale of pirates and villains, maps, treasure and shipwreck, and is perhaps the best adventure story ever written.When young Jim Hawkins finds a packet in Captain Flint's sea chest, he could not know that the map inside it would lead him to unimaginable treasure. Shipping as cabin boy on the Hispaniola, he sails with Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, Dr Livesey, the sinister Long John Silver and a frightening crew to Treasure Island. There, mutiny, murder and mayhem lead to a thrilling climax.
The Brothers Grimm rediscovered a host of fairy tales, telling of princes and princesses in their castles, witches in their towers and forests, of giants and dwarfs, of fabulous animals and dark deeds. This selection of their tales was made and translated by Lucy Crane.
This collection of over forty of Anderson's most popular stories includes "The Ugly Duckling", "The Red Shoes", and "The Little Match Girl."
This novel tells the story of Kimball O'Hara (Kim), who is the orphaned son of a soldier in the Irish regiment stationed in India during the British Raj. It describes Kim's life and adventures from street vagabond, to his adoption by his father's regiment and recruitment into espionage.
Set in the heart of the Wessex, this book charts the rise and downfall of a single 'man of character'. It's moving and contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its force, and features some of the author's episodes and passages of description.
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.
Describes the journey made as a wager by the Victorian gentleman Phileas Fogg, who succeeds - but only just - in circling the globe within eighty days. Fogg's obsession with his timetable is complemented by versatility of his French manservant, Passepartout, whose talent for getting into scrapes brings colour to the race against time.
With an Introduction and Notes by Roger Clark, University of Kent at Canterbury. Translation by Charles E. Wilbour (1862).One of the great classics of western literature, Les Misrables is a magisterial work which is rich in both character portrayal and meticulous historical description.Characters such as the absurdly criminalised Valjean, the street urchin Gavroche, the rascal Thenardier, the implacable detective Javert, and the pitiful figure of the prostitute Fantine and her daughter Cosette, have entered the pantheon of literary dramatis personae.The reader is also treated to the unforgettable descriptions of the Battle of Waterloo and Valjean's flight through the Paris sewers.Volume 1 of 2
Represents a city's underworld, and the laws of corruption and delay. This novel projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin.
Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators.
Flaubert's meticulous approach to the craft of fiction, his portrayal of contemporary reality, his representation of an unforgettable cast of characters make Madame Bovary one of the major landmarks of modern fiction.
An historical novel of high adventure set in the South West of England during the turbulent time of Monmouth's rebellion (1685). It is also a love story told through the life of the young farmer John Ridd, as he grows to manhood determined to right the wrongs in his land, and to win the heart and hand of the beautiful Lorna Doone.
As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. This story shows the ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.
Follows the life of the heroine through her many vicissitudes, which include her early seduction, careers in crime and prostitution, conviction for theft and transportation to the plantations of Virginia, and her ultimate redemption and prosperity in the new World.
The extraordinary stories of 'Saki' are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried.
These two fascinating sets of stories, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and His Last Bow, make a glorious farewell to the greatest detective of them all and his erstwhile companion, Dr Watson.
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