The proverbial phrase ‘life’s little ironies’ was coined by Hardy for his third volume of short stories. These tales and sketches possess all the power of his novels: the wealth of description, the realistic portrayal of the quaint lore of Wessex, the ‘Chaucerian’ humour and characterisation, the shrewd and critical psychology, the poignant estimate of human nature and the brooding sense of wonder at the essential mystery of life. Ranging widely in length and complexity, they are unified by Hardy's quintessential irony, which embraces both the farcical and the tragic aspects of human existence. 192pp. Paperback.

The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque and the socially concerned, and its story of pursuit and courage, which sets the downtrodden and the plucky against the malevolent and the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens' most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to him about her fate. With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank. 570pp. Paperback.

Dickens' last complete novel of Victorian society is a vision of a culture stifled by materialistic values. The chief of its several plots centres on John Harmon who returns to England as his father's heir. He is believed drowned under suspicious circumstances - a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity until he can evaluate Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. Colourful characters and incidents the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas Wegg. Includes illus, 794pp. Paperback.

Living overseas but writing, always, about his native city, Joyce made Dublin unforgettable. The stories in Dubliners show us truants, seducers, gossips, rally-drivers, generous hostesses, corrupt politicians, failing priests, amateur theologians, struggling musicians, moony adolescents, victims of domestic brutishness, sentimental aunts and poets, patriots earnest or cynical, and people striving to get by. In every sense an international figure, Joyce was faithful to his own country by seeing it unflinchingly and challenging every precedent and piety in Irish literature. Introduction and notes. 176pp. Paperback.

Jules Verne's third great science fiction novel describes the discovery and exploration of a secret tunnel which leads through a volcano to the centre of the Earth. The leader of the expedition is an archetypal comic and eccentric boffin, and together with his ward, his nephew Axel (who is in love with the ward), and an estimable Icelandic guide, the journey is made. 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' achieved instant and enduring popularity on publication in 1874. Together with 'Around the World in Eighty Days', 'Five Weeks in a Balloon' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', it established Verne as an author of high adventure who filled his stories with a wealth of technical detail, and the energy and freshness of an extraordinary inventive imagination. 192pp. Paperback.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first introduced Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant detective the readers of The Strand Magazine. In these twenty three tales, collected here in one volume, you have some of the best detective yarns ever penned. In his consulting room at 221B Baker Street, the master sleuth receives a stream of clients all presenting him with baffling and bizarre mysteries to unravel. There is, for example, the man who is frightened for his life because of the arrival of an envelope containing five orange pips; there is the terrified woman who is aware that her life is in danger and cannot explain the whistling sounds she hears in the night; and there is the riddle of the missing butler and the theft of an ancient treasure. In the last story, there is the climatic battle between Holmes and his arch enemy, ?the Napoleon of Crime? Professor Moriarty. Holmes, with trusty Watson by his side, is equal to these and the other challenges in this splendid collection.This edition contains the original illustrations from Strand Magazine drawn by Sidney Paget. Introduction by Dr. Julian Wolfreys. 503pp. Paperback.

The central figure of this novel is the returning "native", Clym Yeobright, and his love for the beautiful but capricious Eustacia Vye. As character after character is driven to self-destruction, the presence of Egdon Heath becomes all-embracing, while Clym becomes a preacher. 352pp. Paperback.

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy. Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. 196pp. Paperback

Published when Charles Dickens was just 25, it established him at a single stroke as a major creative artist. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the sportsman Winkle and, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, characters and incidents sprang to life from Dickens's pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour and literary invention. 720pp. Paperback.

'Middlemarch' is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke an energetic, intelligent, wealthy young woman and Dr Tertius Lydgate an idealistic, talented, yet naïve young doctor and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-19th century. 736pp. Paperback.