Among the most durable and engaging texts in world literature, Julius Caesars Conquest of Gaul tells how he and his legions conquered much of modern France in less than a decade (58-51 BCE), despite determined resistance. Perhaps the most famous Roman ever, Gaius Julius Caesar created a legacy which has resonated, for good or ill, throughout Western culture. Architect of an imperial system, eponymous sponsor of a reformed calendar system, orator second...

Due to a lack of biographical evidence regarding the identity of Homer it has been suggested that the two great works attributed to him, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" may in fact be the work of multiple authors passed down through a long oral tradition. While scholarship on the subject will likely never definitely prove one way or the other, it is now generally accepted that these two great epic poems are the work of a single Greek author, Homer,...

A beautiful new clothbound edition of Alexandre Dumas's classic novel of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of the Château d'If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible...

A retelling of the biblical story of mankind's fall from grace. Milton's epic opens shortly after the dramatic expulsion of Satan and his army of angels from Heaven. What follows is a cosmic battle between good and evil that ranges across vast, splendid tracts of time and space, from the wild abyss of Chaos and the fiery lake of Hell to the Gate of Heaven and God's newly created paradise, the Garden of Eden. Controversy still swirls around Milton's...

"In the whole of European literature there is no poet who can furnish the texts for a more significant variety of discourse than Virgil. [He] symbolizes so much in the history of Europe, and represents such central European values..." —T.S. Eliot The Eclogues (38 BC), also known as the Bucolics, is a work by Roman poet Virgil. Although less prominent than The Aeneid, Virgil's legendary epic of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his discovery of what would...

"The Aeneid" is considered by some to be one of the most important epic poems of all time. The story is as much one of the great epic hero, Aeneas, as it is of the foundation of the Roman Empire. Aeneas, a Trojan Prince who escapes after the fall of troy, travels to Italy to lay the foundations for what would become the great Roman Empire. Virgils "Aeneid" is a story of great adventure, war, love, and of the exploits of an epic hero. In the work Virgil...

"Jane Eyre recounts the story of a governess who, having suffered during childhood both at her aunt's house and then at school, finds herself falling for her new employer, Mr Rochester. But Mr Rochester and his home are not all they seem and when secrets come to light, Jane is forced to abandon all her hopes and dreams."--Amazon.

War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleons war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoys view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoys philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery.

"D.H. Lawrence's most widely read novel and one of the great works of twentieth-century literature, Sons and Lovers is now printed in full for the first time. In 1913, at the time of its first publication, Lawrence reluctantly agreed to the removal of no fewer than eighty passages which until now have never been restored. Here at last is the novel in the form that Lawrence himself wanted - a tenth longer than the incomplete and expurgated version...

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Steinbeck's brilliant short novels
Collected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels. From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of...