British Literature Editions

  • The Way We Live Now

    The Way We Live Now

    The Way We Live Now—regarded by many as Anthony Trollope’s greatest novel—encompasses in its broad scope much of the business, political, social, and literary life…

  • Memoirs of a Coxcomb

    Memoirs of a Coxcomb

    Published in 1751, John Cleland’s second novel (after the notorious Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) is a witty and complex portrait of aristocratic British…

  • Romola

    Romola

    The most exotic of George Eliot’s works, Romola recounts the story of the famous religious leader Savonarola in Florence at the time of Machiavelli and…

  • The Man of Feeling

    The Man of Feeling

    The Man of Feeling is unquestionably among the most important and influential works of eighteenth-century sentimental fiction. The novel follows Harley, the eponymous “man of…

  • Moll Flanders

    Moll Flanders

    Born to a petty thief in London’s notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and materialistic society, Moll Flanders recounts…

  • Nature and Art

    Nature and Art

    Nature and Art commands a central place in the history of the English Jacobin novel. Published in 1796, the story explores the opposition between the…

  • Celestina

    Celestina

    Published here for the first time in a modern edition, Charlotte Smith’s third novel is both rivetingly plotted and unique for its time in its…

  • Illustrations of Political Economy

    Illustrations of Political Economy

    Published in 1832, Illustrations of Political Economy established Harriet Martineau as both a successful and controversial author and a pioneer of nineteenth-century “social problem” writing.…

  • The Vagabond

    The Vagabond

    First published in 1799, George Walker’s The Vagabond was an immediate popular success. Offering a vitriolic critique of post-Bastille Jacobinism and sansculotte-style mob rule, its…

  • Middlemarch

    Middlemarch

    George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72) is one of the classic novels of English literature and was admired by Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English…

  • The Infernal Quixote

    The Infernal Quixote

    The Infernal Quixote (1801) is an enjoyable comic romp in which Charles Lucas engages directly with the most pressing political issues of his day and…

  • The Communist Manifesto

    The Communist Manifesto

    L.M. Findlay’s elegant new translation is a work of textual and historical scholarship. Few books have had as much of an impact on modern history…

  • Sociable Letters

    Sociable Letters

    The writings of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, are remarkable for their vivid depiction of the mores and mentality of seventeenth-century England. This edition includes…

  • Harrington

    Harrington

    Harrington (1817) is the personal narrative of a recovering anti-Semite, a young man whose phobia of Jews is instilled in early childhood and who must…

  • The Woman Who Did

    The Woman Who Did

    The controversial subject matter of Grant Allen’s novel, The Woman Who Did, made it a major bestseller in 1895. It tells the story of Herminia…

  • Selections from The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880-1907

    Selections from The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880-1907

    The Girl’s Own Paper, founded in 1880, both shaped and reflected tensions between traditional domestic ideologies of the period and New Woman values in the…

  • Emma

    Emma

    Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) tells the story of the coming of age of Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich,” who “had lived nearly twenty-one years…

  • The Beetle

    The Beetle

    The Beetle (1897) tells the story of a fantastical creature, “born of neither god nor man,” with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician…

  • Wormwood

    Wormwood

    Though disparaged by literary critics of her day, Marie Corelli was one of the most popular novelists of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Wormwood…

  • The History of Ophelia

    The History of Ophelia

    In the mid-eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding (1710-68) was the second most popular English woman novelist, rivaled only by Eliza Haywood. The History of Ophelia, the…

  • Fantomina and Other Works

    Fantomina and Other Works

    This collection of early works by Eliza Haywood includes the well-known novella Fantomina (1725) along with three other short, highly engaging Haywood works: The Tea-Table…

  • Anti-Pamela and Shamela

    Anti-Pamela and Shamela

    Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most…

  • The Story of a Modern Woman

    The Story of a Modern Woman

    Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman originally appeared in serial form in the women’s weekly The Lady’s Pictorial. Like Hepworth Dixon herself,…

  • The Type-Writer Girl

    The Type-Writer Girl

    Juliet Appleton is an officer’s daughter who is forced to make her own way in the world after her father’s death. Having been trained in…