British Literature

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  The Idea of Being Free

  Mary Hays (1759-1843) is often best remembered for her early revolutionary novels The Memoirs of Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice. In this collection,…

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  Eikon Basilike

  Published just after the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Eikon Basilike is a defence of the king’s motivations and actions prior to and…

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  John Halifax, Gentleman

  This 1856 novel, one of the most beloved of the Victorian period, follows the life, from childhood to death, of an orphaned boy who grows…

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  Shakespeare’s Heroines

  First published in 1832, Shakespeare’s Heroines is a unique hybrid of Shakespeare criticism, women’s rights activism, and conduct literature. Jameson’s collection of readings of female…

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  The Governess

  Published in 1749, the story of Mrs. Teachum and the nine pupils who make up her “little female academy” is widely recognized as the first…

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  Mrs Warren’s Profession

  One of Bernard Shaw’s early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren’s Profession places the protagonist’s decision to become a prostitute in the context of the…

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  Adam Bede

  The seemingly peaceful country village of Hayslope is the setting for this ambitious first novel by one of the nineteenth century’s great novelists. With sympathy,…

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  Obi

  “Three-Fingered Jack,” the protagonist of this 1800 novel, is based on the escaped slave and Jamaican folk hero Jack Mansong, who was believed to have…

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  Moths

  First published in 1880, Moths addresses such Victorian taboos as adultery, domestic violence, and divorce in vivid and flamboyant prose. The beautiful young heroine, Vere…

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  Kim

  Kim tells the story of Kimball O’Hara, an orphaned Irish boy growing up in late nineteenth-century India, and his quest for identity as he strives…

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  Oliver Twist

  Charles Dickens’s famous second novel recounts the story of a boy born in the workhouse and raised in an infant farm as he tries to…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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.…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  Criminals, Idiots, Women, & Minors – Second Edition

  “Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman…

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  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…

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  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…