Books published by Wordsworth Editions Ltd

Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short story. This collection displays his lively diversity, with tales that vary in theme and tone, ranging from tragedy and satire to comedy and farce.

The diverse tales selected for this volume display the astonishing virtuosity of Rudyard Kipling's early writings

William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary poets. This volume contains many of his writings, including: "Songs of Innocence", "Songs of Experience", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", and a selection from the Prophetic Books.

Tolstoy wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time.

Features one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. Here, 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

A novel that follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. It focuses on family relationships - father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter. It portrays the world of the late 1820s and the forces of change within it.

The Prophet represents the acme of Kahlil Gibran's achievement. Writing in English, Gibran adopted the tone and cadence of King James I's Bible, fusing his personalised Christian philosophy with a spirit and oriental wisdom that derives from the richly mixed influences of his native Lebanon.His language has a breath-taking beauty. Before returning to his birthplace, Almustafa, the 'prophet', is asked for guidance by the people of Orphalese. His words, redolent with love and understanding, call for universal unity, and affirm Gibran's certainty of the correlated nature of all existence, and of reincarnation. The Prophet has never lost its immediate appeal and has become a ubiquitous touchstone of spiritual literature.

Translated by A.A. Brill With an Introduction by Stephen Wilson.Sigmund Freud's audacious masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has never ceased to stimulate controversy since its publication in 1900.Freud is acknowledged as the founder of psychoanalysis, the key to unlocking the human mind, a task which has become essential to man's survival in the twentieth century, as science and technology have rushed ahead of our ability to cope with their consequences.Freud saw that man is at war with himself and often unable to tolerate too much reality. He propounded the theory that dreams are the contraband representations of the beast within man, smuggled into awareness during sleep. In Freudian interpretation, the analysis of dreams is the key to unlocking the secrets of the unconscious mind.

This journal takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to the South Sea Islands. It displays Darwin's speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relations between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself.

Hailed by T.S. Eliot as 'the classic of all Europe', Virgil's Aeneid has enjoyed a unique and enduring influence on European literature, art and politics for the past two thousand years.

Based on the fable of a man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, this text became the life work of Germany's greatest poet, Goethe. It is the dramatic poem that charts the life of a deeply flawed individual and his fight against despair and the nihilism of the Mephistopheles.

Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulfilment seems to lie in his relationship with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead.

The author paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte.

This book has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare's popular comedies. It describes the central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, which is combative until love prevails.

Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the eighteenth century, this book relates a story of seduction issuing in 'the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis'.

A romantic comedy which offers a challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions.

Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved merciful, he divests himself of that magic, his 'art', and prepares to return to the mainland.

The Forsyte Saga comprises of The Man of Property, In Chancery and To Let, produced in a single volume.

Oscar Wilde took London by storm with his first comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan. His other plays include: A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest. This work features Wilde's plays ranging from his early tragedy era to the controversial Salome and little known fragments, La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy.

This edition of Wilde's verse presents the full range of his achievement as a poet: the haunting elegy to his young sister; the religious drama of his romance with Rome; forbidden sexual desires; and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".

Dickens' natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated "A Christmas Carol", the full range of his gothic talents can be seen

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths.This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

Published between 1776 and 1788, this text is acknowledged as a masterpiece of English historical writing. Covering the history of Europe from the 2nd-century AD, to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, this edition includes footnotes, explanatory comments, and a precis of the chapters not included.

With an Introduction by Derek Matravers.In The Social Contract Rousseau (1712-1778) argues for the preservation of individual freedom in political society. An individual can only be free under the law, he says, by voluntarily embracing that law as his own. Hence, being free in society requires each of us to subjugate our desires to the interests of all, the general will.Some have seen in this the promise of a free and equal relationship between society and the individual, while others have seen it as nothing less than a blueprint for totalitarianism. The Social Contract is not only one of the great defences of civil society, it is also unflinching in its study of the darker side of political systems.

With an Introduction by Jeff Wallace.'A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die...'.Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task.Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and - by implication - within the human world.Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.

Set in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted environment, which is the the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby.

A portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and irony, it is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel.

Tells the story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie.