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First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice is the most polished of Jane Austen’s novels, with a humorous and upbeat mood. It was written at a time when the author’s narrative powers were fully developed and the story flows with an ease that conceals the skill of its construction. The plot line follows the sequence of a love relationship apprehended, misunderstood, and finally realized, which has since become a standard format of the romcom genre. However, Austen complicates the action by involving not one but four romantic relationships in the plot.

This collection of Japanese poetry was compiled and translated into English from an anthology known as The Collection of Myriad Leaves, and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. This period has come to be considered the golden age of Japanese literature. These examples of Japanese poetry exhibit the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme; they combine the enduring luster of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf.

This enigmatic scripture is attributed to the mysterious sage Lao Tze, who is believed to have lived in the sixth century BCE. In the present translation by religious scholar Paul Carus, the title is presented as The Canon of Reason and Virtue, and in the body of the text Carus renders the word usually translated as “Tao” as “reason.” This book is an extract from the author’s larger work, Lao-Tze’s Tao Teh King. The latter contained an historical introduction, the Chinese text, a transliteration, explanatory notes and an index, including the Chinese terms.

The four canonical gospels contain little information about the childhood of Jesus. To provide details of this period, a number of infancy gospels were composed in the second century, the text of this recording being one of the most notable. In this book, the sketchy infancy narrative of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke is embellished in great detail. The events of Jesus’ boyhood days, richly garnished with tales of miraculous feats and the occasional visitation of punishment on unfortunate delinquents, are also described.

The Martians, finding the resources on their own planet dwindling dramatically, decided to invade and colonize Earth. They land in England and quickly establish control through their vastly superior military technology. The narrative focuses on the wanderings and deliberations of the narrator as he wanders around the country seeking refuge from the remorseless invaders. Two of the most significant characters he encounters are a curate and an artilleryman, neither of whom has an effective approach to dealing with the crisis.

The Invisible Man was the fourth sci-fi novel written by Wells in the 1890s. The main character, Griffin, is one of the intimidating villains in all popular literature. The archetypal "mad scientist," Griffin devotes himself to an obsessive study of optics and realizes his ambition to render livings things permanently invisible. After making a cat invisible, he successfully applies the procedure to himself. After causing chaos in London, he travels to the village of Iping in Sussex and takes up residence in a local hotel.

Christmases everywhere should be filled with gifts and good cheer. But in Australia, Christmas may also feature fires, snakes, droughts, injuries, epic journeys, and all kinds of challenges for children and adults alike. This is a collection of short stories by well-known Australian author, Mary...

This collection was published posthumously in 1869 under the title of Petits Poèmes En Prose, but is also known as Le Spleen de Paris. A prime influence was Gaspard de la Nuit, the prose poem collection by Aloysius Bertrand. Baudelaire described these short pieces as experiments, and also "confessions." The poet was seeking to create "the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience."

Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French naval officer, traveler, and novelist. Many of his novels deal with exotic themes, drawn from the author's experiences in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. Lives of Two Cats, first published in 1900, is an affectionate memoir about two cats who were cared for by the author's mother and aunt during his extended periods of travel.

Despite living a short life, and having a relatively small output, John Keats (1795-1821) has become one of the most celebrated English poets. This brief biography covers the important events of his life and provides a charming portrait of one of the most appealing and tragic figures of English literature.

In 1896, H.G Wells was stimulated to compose this dystopian fantasy about an obsessed scientist and his efforts to artificially accelerate the intellectual development of animals using bizarre medical procedures involving vivisection. Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."

Lamia is a narrative poem that reflects Keat's intensive exploration of Greek mythology. It first appeared in 1820 in a collection entitled Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems. The poem describes the search of the god Hermes for a beautiful nymph, during which he encounters Lamia, who is trapped in the form of a serpent. At her fervent request, Hermes transforms Lamia into a human form and she departs to pursue a liaison with her lover, the glamorous Corinthian youth, Lycias.

The focus in Melincourt is the operation of the "rotten borough" which corrupted the English electoral system until the reform bill of 1832. A rotten borough was a constituency that had been established by royal prerogative but had subsequently lost most of its population. Nevertheless, it still retained the right to have two representatives in the House of Commons. On the other hand, many population centers which had expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution were not entitled to any electoral representation.

The selection of eighteen poems is taken from Tennyson's first collection, published in 1830. The most famous poem in the collection is Mariana, a dramatic narrative, which, like The Lady of Shalott, describes the tragic fate of an abandoned woman. All the poems feature the elegant euphony for which Tennyson's verse has become famous.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), known in the English-speaking world simply as Petrarch, was a 14th-century Italian scholar and poet who was one of the first to use Italian as a literary language. One of his close friends was Boccaccio, who was also a pioneer in literary composition in Italian. Although Petrarch was a notable Latin scholar, and most of his works were written in that language, today he is most famous for his many sonnets in Italian, which frequently feature the superior charms of his innamorata, Laura.

Asoka, who reigned from 268 to 232 BC, was the most famous emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, which was the ruling clan of the Indian subcontinent from 321 BC to 185 BC. He was one of the most famous early converts to Buddhism and became one of its greatest evangelists. Today Asoka has a twofold interest for us: political and religious. The illustrious member of the great dynasty, of which he was the most celebrated representative, has left indelible traces of its achievements in Indian history. Moreover, he was the leader of a spiritual movement that spread rapidly throughout the East.

Calidore is a fragment of an unfinished romance and may be considered unique among Peacock's work. Composition probably commenced after the publication of Peacock's largest novel, Melincourt, in 1817. The action concerns the adventures of a young man, Calidore, who finds himself in Wales, en route to London in search of "a wife and a philosopher".

The Witch of Atlas is a poetic narrative, written in 1820 and published posthumously in 1824. The witch is the daughter of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The plot is built around her adventures, during which she creates an androgynous creature, Hermaphroditus, who is both the companion of and the servant to the witch. She plays a series of pranks upon mankind, with the ultimate aim of revealing the essential foolishness of oppression and conflict and enabling the realization of a final Utopia.

Thomas Love Peacock is today remembered as the author of seven satirical novels which many regard merely as literary curiosities. However, he was also a man of considerable learning, a skilled poet, and an astute literary critic. This collection includes Recollections of Thomas Love Peacock, an affectionate reminiscence by Sir Edward Strachey; Some Recollections of Childhood, a window into Peacock's early youth; "Four Ages of Poetry", in which he pokes fun at his contemporaries; and "The Last Day of Windsor Forest", an old man's recollection of a memorable episode.

Between 1915 and 1921, C. J. Dennis published seven verse novels and two collections of poetry. The first of these was The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, which features Dennis' characteristic use of a distinctive Australian argot and which became an immediate bestseller.