From its first publication in 1719, 'Robinson Crusoe' has been printed in over 700 editions. It has inspired almost every conceivable kind of imitation and variation, and been the subject of plays, opera, cartoons, and computer games. The character of Crusoe has entered the consciousness of each suceeding generation as readers add their own interpretation to the adventures so thrillingly 'recorded' by Defoe. Praised by iminent figures such as Coleridge, Rousseau and Wordsworth, this perennially popular book was cited by Karl Marx in 'Das Kapital' to illustrate economic theory. However, it is readers of all ages over the last 280 years who have given 'Robinson Crusoe' its abiding position as a classic tale of adventure. 272pp. Paperback.

Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at the novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels, of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief. 832pp. Paperback.

Uncle Tom's Cabin has earned the title of not only the first bestseller, but also the first protest novel to have a direct impact on political events. The story follows the life and vicissitudes of Uncle Tom, a noble, high-minded African American, and portrays the humanity of an enslaved black people and the moral evil of their enslavement. Uncle Tom remains a loveable almost saintly figure from the opening chapters when he is 'sold down the river' to pay off gambling debts until the climactic ending when the brutal Simon Legree has Uncle Tom flogged to the point of death. The inspirational quality of the writing has moved succeeding generations of readers to agree with Frederick Douglass, who called it a flash to "light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery". 432pp. Paperback.

"I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot", Virginia Woolf stated of her eighth novel, The Waves. Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature. 304pp.Paperback.

Edited and introduced by Linden Peach, Professor and Dean of Arts and Humanities, University of Wales, Cardiff. This volume brings together Virginia Woolf's last two novels, The Years (1937) which traces the lives of members of a dispersed middle-class family between 1880 and 1937, and Between the Acts (1941), an account of a village pageant in the summer preceding the Second World War which successfully interweaves comedy, satire and disturbing observation. Rewriting the traditional family saga and the pageant, these unsettling novels provide extraordinary critiques of Englishness and English identity while pursuing themes such as the nature of time, memory, personal relationships and sexual desire. Their tightly constructed narratives enable the reader to experience the fragmented lives of their characters and the difficulties that they have in communicating with each other and even understanding themselves. Complete and unabridged, these novels of 1937 and 1941 have not received the same degree of critical attention as her Orlando or The Waves. Between the Acts reflects the shifting mood of the late 1930s and early 40s and the nature of Englishness and British identity given mass unemployment and the rise of Fascism and prospect of war. New Wordsworth paperback, 413pp.

Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-19th century. But these clashes are dramatised through personal struggles. John Barton has to reconcile his personal conscience with his socialist duty, risking his life and liberty in the process. His daughter Mary is caught between two lovers, from opposing classes - worker and manufacturer. And at the heart of the narrative lies a murder which implicates them all. Mary Barton was published in 1848, at a time of great social ferment in Europe, and it reflects its revolutionary moment through an English lens. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her first novel about the world in which she lived - Manchester at the height of the industrial revolution. As the wife of a Unitarian minister she was solidly middle-class; but she also had close contact with the working classes around her, sympathised with them, and represented their extreme distresses in her fiction. She is radical in taking on their dialect, imagining the realities of their lives, and placing a working woman at the centre of her fiction. If to our eyes her vision remains limited, it was an honest vision, for which she was much criticised in her own time, by her own class. Paperback, 414pp. New from Wordsworth.

The diary is that of a man who acknowledges that he is not a "Somebody" - Charles Pooter of 'The Laurels', Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, a clerk in the city of London - and it chronicles in hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle class during the Great Victorian age. 175pp. Paperback.

The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her 18th birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, an Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself. The phlegmatic Sergeant Cuff is called in, and with the help of Betteredge, the Robinson Crusoe-reading loquacious steward, the mystery of the missing stone is ingeniously solved. 448pp. Paperback.

David Copperfield was first published in episodes during 1849 and 1850. In 1850, the novel was issued in book format. David's childhood world changes when his mother marries Mr Murdstone. Until this point he has lived peacefully in Yarmouth with his young mother and Peggotty, his nurse. His mother dies shortly after marrying Mr. Murdstone and David has to leave school. He goes to work in a factory. His Great Aunt Betsy Trotwood eventually adopts him. The novel follows the twists and turns of his adult life. He meets Wilkins Micawber, Uriah Heep and other legendary, but fictional, characters. 752pp. Paperback.

'Far from the Madding Crowd' is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was '...the past was yesterday; never, the day after'. And lastly, of the introverted and reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr Boldwood, whose love fills him with '...a fearful sense of exposure', when he first sets eyes on Bathsheba. The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods. 362pp. Paperback.