1898 C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 NovelsUnpublished

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Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'The best-loved book by our best-loved novelist' Independent With its 'light and bright and sparkling' dialogue, its romantic denouement and its lively heroine, Pride and Prejudice is Jane...

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his 'favourite child' and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of...

Few novels ever swept across the world with such overpowering impact as Les Misérables. Within 24 hours, the first Paris edition was sold out. In other great cities of the world it was devoured with equal relish. Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and...

Candide is a French satirical novella first published in 1759 by Voltaire. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life and being indoctrinated in optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt finish of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow,...

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.

Colonel Pyncheon does well in denouncing Old Matthew: he founds a New England dynasty and builds a remarkable mansion; but on its opening day he is found dead, slaked in his own blood. By 1840, that dynasty is almost spent; amid the dust and decay of the Seven Gables, Clifford and Hepzibah believed...

In this heartwarming classic, a gentle linen weaver named Silas Marner is wrongly accused of theft actually committed by his best friend. Silas exiles himself to a rustic village, where he finds spiritual rebirth through his unselfish love of an abandoned child. Includes a new Afterword. Revised...

The 'Voice of the Year' competition introduced and sponsored by Naxos AudioBooks and The Times books pages, edited by Erica Wagner, took place in Spring 2004. Readers without any formal drama training or professional acting experience were invited to send in recordings of a short extract of either...

"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth...

Cooper's most enduringly popular novel combines heroism and romance with powerful criticism of the destruction of nature and tradition. Set against the French and Indian siege of Fort William Henry in 1757,The Last of the Mohicansrecounts the story of two sisters, Cora and...

A kindhearted and idealistic youth enters the grasping Parisian society of the 1820s, starting at a shabby but respectable boardinghouse, the Pension Vauquer. Eugène de Rastignac has arrived in the glittering capital to make his fortune, and his friendships with the pension's other...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.   The Mysteries of Udolpho has been thrilling readers for over two hundred years and holds a critically important place in the history of gothic literature, the...

Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolai, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Marino, but Nikolai's brother, Pavel, soon becomes...

This 1857 sequel to "The Warden" wryly chronicles the struggle for control of the English diocese of Barchester. The evangelical but not particularly competent new bishop is Dr. Proudie, who with his awful wife and oily curate, Slope, maneuver for power. "The Warden" and "Barchester Towers" are part...

When Dr Primrose loses his fortune in a disastrous investment, his idyllic life in the country is shattered and he is forced to move with his wife and six children to an impoverished living on the estate of Squire Thornhill. Taking to the road in pursuit of his daughter, who has been seduced by the...

"In London, Evelina's beauty and ambiguous social status attract unwanted attention and unkind speculation. Ignorant of the conventions and behaviors of 18th-century London society, she makes a series of humiliating and humorous faux pas that further expose her to social ridicule. She soon earns the...

Wilhelm goes through deep self-realisation and decides to escape his empty life of a bourgeois businessman. After a failed romance with the theatre, Wilhelm commits himself to the mysterious Tower Society. A coming-of-age tale, a story of education and disillusionment, a novel of ideas ranging...

A fantastic classic novel set during the events of the Great Plague and Great Fire of London in 1665-1666.

Sybil traces the plight of the working classes of England. Disraeli was interested in dealing with the horrific conditions in which the majority of England's working classes lived, the Condition of England question. The book is a novel with a thesis -- which was meant to create a furor over the...