'All over Italy men were conscripted, and weapons requisitioned; money was exacted from towns, and taken from shrines; and all the laws of god and man were overturned.' The Civil War is Caesar's masterly account of the celebrated war between himself and his great rival Pompey, from the crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 B.C. to Pompey's death and the start of the Alexandrian War in the autumn of the following year. His unfinished account of the...

To be oneself was a supreme, gleaming triumph of infinity This is the insight that flashes upon Ursula as she struggles to assert her individuality and to stand separate from her family and her surroundings on the brink of womanhood and the modern world. In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenged the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structure of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterize...

The adventures of a sixteen-year-old orphan who was kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escaped and became involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.

"Sense and Sensibility," by Jane Austen, is a classic novel that contrasts the lives and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Through their experiences, Austen explores themes of love, heartbreak, and the societal pressures of Regency England. The novel beautifully balances wit and wisdom, providing a keen insight into human nature and the complexities of relationships. This timeless tale remains a beloved piece of literature, celebrated...

Helen Huntingdon, having left her unhappy marriage to save her son from the influence of his alcoholic father, struggles to make her way in the restrictive society of Victorian England.

A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters.

Is he in heaven?-Is he in hell? That demmed, elusive Pimpernel? Sir Percy Blakeney lives a double life in the England of 1792: at home he is an idle fop and a leader of fashion, but in abroad he is the Scarlet Pimpernel, a master of disguise who saves aristocrats from the guillotine. When the revolutionary French state seeks to unmask him, Percy's estranged, independent wife, Marguerite, unwittingly sets their agent on her husband's track. Percy's...

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs - Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the litigating fiend; Sir Kit, the brutal husband and gambling...