Серия книг «Wordsworth Classics» — 59 книг — стр. 2

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Roger Cardinal. University of Kent at Canterbury.

Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) relates the hair-raising journey made as a wager by the Victorian gentleman Phileas Fogg, who succeeds - but only just! - in circling the globe within eighty days. The dour Fogg's obsession with his timetable is complemented by the dynamism and versatility of his French manservant, Passepartout, whose talent for getting into scrapes brings colour and suspense to the race against time.

Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) was Verne's first novel. It documents an apocryphal jaunt across the continent of Africa in a hydrogen balloon designed by the omniscient, imperturbable and ever capable Dr Fergusson, the prototype of the Vernian adventurer.

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Roger Cardinal. University of Kent at Canterbury.

Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) relates the hair-raising journey made as a…

Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the "monster" turns out to be a giant submarine, commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, by whom they are soon held captive.

So begins not only one of the great adventure classics by Jules Verne, the 'Father of Science Fiction', but also a truly fantastic voyage from the lost city of Atlantis to the South Pole.

Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea…

This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson.

Following on from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884-5) Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) became one of Mark Twain's most popular books. Again we meet his world famous characters: Tom Sawyer, 'Nigger Jim', and Huck Finn - together now on a fantastical balloon journey across the Atlantic to meet lions and Bedouins in the Sahara and retrace something of Twain's own expedition to the Holy Land in his best-selling The Innocents Abroad (1869). Later, in Tom Sawyer Detective (1896), Twain returns us the banks of the Mississippi and a murder mystery involving identical twins and stolen diamonds. The author is back in his formative territory, the region his imagination could never leave behind. It provides him with another comedy of human foibles starring the irrepressible Tom Sawyer.

This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson.

Following on from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry…

With an Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Tom Sawyer, a shrewd and adventurous boy, is as much at home in the respectable world of his Aunt Polly as in the self-reliant and parentless world of his friend Huck Finn. The two enjoy a series of adventures, accidentally witnessing a murder, establishing the innocence of the man wrongly accused, as well as being hunted by Injun Joe, the true murderer, eventually escaping and finding the treasure that Joe had buried.
Huckleberry Finn recounts the further adventures of Huck, who runs away from a drunken and brutal father, and meets up with the escaped slave Jim. They float down the Mississippi on a raft, participating in the lives of the characters they meet, witnessing corruption, moral decay and intellectual impoverishment.
Sharing so much in background and character, these two stories, the best of Twain, indisputably belong together in one volume. Though originally written as adventure stories for young people, the vivid writing provides a profound commentary on provincial American life in the mid-nineteenth century and the institution of slavery.

With an Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Tom Sawyer, a shrewd and adventurous boy, is as much at home in the respectable world of…

With an Introduction by Petr Barta, University of Kent

An invaluable companion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s inimitable portrait of ‘the great Father of Waters’. Part memoir, part travelogue, it expresses the full range of Twain’s literary personality, and remains the most vivid, boisterous and provocative account of the cultural and societal history of the Mississippi Valley, from ‘the golden age’ of steamboating to the violence wrought by the Civil War.

This new edition of Life on the Mississippi contains a comprehensive introduction, extensive annotations and a guide to further reading designed to appeal to both the student and the general reader.

With an Introduction by Petr Barta, University of Kent

An invaluable companion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi…

With an Introduction by Stuart Hutchinson, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of the party?'

So Mark Twain acclaims his voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy Land in June 1867. His adventures produced The Innocents Abroad, a book so funny and provocative it made him an international star for the rest of his life. He was making his first responses to the Old World - to Paris, Milan, Florence, Venice, Pompeii, Constantinople, Sebastopol, Balaklava, Damascus, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem.

For the first time he was seeing the great paintings and sculptures of the 'Old Masters'. He responded with wonder and amazement, but also with exasperation, irritation, disbelief. Above all he displayed the great energy of his humour, more explosive for us now than for his beguiled contemporaries.

With an Introduction by Stuart Hutchinson, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of…

With an Introduction by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading.

Translated by C.J. Hogarth

Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has long been acclaimed as Turgenev's finest work. It is a political novel set in a domestic context, with a universal theme, the generational divide between fathers and sons. Set in 1859 at the moment when the Russian autocratic state began to move hesitantly towards social and political reform, the novel explores the conflict between the liberal-minded fathers of Russian reformist sympathies and their free-thinking intellectual sons whose revolutionary ideology threatened the stability of the state.

At its centre is Evgeny Bazorov, a strong-willed antagonist of all forms of social orthodoxy who proclaims himself a nihilist and believes in the need to overthrow all the institutions of the state. As the novel develops Bazarov's political ambitions become fatally meshed with emotional and private concerns, and his end is a tragic failure. The novel caused a bitter furore on its publication in 1862, and this, a year later, drove Turgenev from Russia.

With an Introduction by Lionel Kelly, University of Reading.

Translated by C.J. Hogarth

Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has…

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College.

The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is one of the Victorian novel's greatest and strangest creations, and is an achievement undimmed by the passage of time.

Trollope's 'Now' might, in the twenty-first century, look like some distant disenchanted 'Then', but this is still the yesterday which we must understand in order to make proper sense of our today.

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College.

The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities. Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politics as the only hope for a civilized and humane life for all. This Wordsworth edition includes an exclusive foreword by the late Tony Benn.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly…

Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury.

War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy's 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 Tolstoy's philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy's approval.

Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. With an Introduction by Henry and Olga Claridge, University of Kent at Canterbury.

War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war…

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time.

In the early story Family Happiness, Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In The Kreutzer Sonata he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in The Devil a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest…

With An Introduction and Notes by Anthony Briggs



Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the greatest novels ever written, did not emerge from a vacuum. They were preceded by at least twenty prose works of different kinds, some of them masterpieces in their own right. These stories may be viewed as a fascinating encounter with literary predecessors such as Rousseau and Pushkin, and they are never far removed from autobiography, but in them Tolstoy can be seen forging a strong, new cultural personality. Their virtues lie in local colour, brilliant characterization and dialogue, along with strong narrative interest linked to important ideas and meanings, most of which will re-emerge in the later works.

This undervalued area of a great man’s writing deserves closer attention, and will reward the reader with unforgettable individuals, issues and situations. In The Cossacks, for example, Tolstoy succeeds in combining a realistic description of the Caucasus with his hero’s personal vision of the locality. Nor is this success the only one in this remarkable period. Reading these early stories gives a penetrating insight into the workshop of a towering literary genius.

With An Introduction and Notes by Anthony Briggs



Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the greatest novels ever written, did not emerge from a vacuum. They were…

Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels, - of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this…

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull.

Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer.

Although subtitled A Novel without a Hero, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.

When Vanity Fair was published in 1848, Charlotte Brontë commented: ‘The more I read Thackeray’sworks the more certain I am that he stands alone – alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling… Thackeray is a Titan.’

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull.

Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven…

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (one of its few rivals in fame and breadth of appeal).

As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language: notably the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland, where talking horses are the dominant species. It spares no vested interest from its irreverent wit, and its attack on political and financial corruption, as well as abuses in science, continue to resonate in our own times.

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in…

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine. University of Kent at Canterbury.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe's rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes that only ‘repentance, justice and mercy’ will prevent the onset of ‘the wrath of Almighty God!’.
The novel gave such a terrific impetus to the crusade for the abolition of slavery that President Lincoln half-jokingly greeted Stowe as‘the little lady’ who started the great Civil War. As Keith Carabine argues in his lively and provocative Introduction, the novel immediately provoked a storm of competing and contradictory responses among Northern and Southern readers, moderate and radical abolitionist groups, blacks and women, with regard to issues of form, genre, politics, religion, race and gender, that are still of great interest because they anticipate the concerns that vex and divide modern readers and critical constituencies.

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine. University of Kent at Canterbury.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book…

Introduction and Notes by Dr David Rogers, Kingston University.

'There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey, the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst the swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.'
Thus Bram Stoker, one of the greatest exponents of the supernatural narrative, describes the demonic subject of his chilling masterpiece Dracula, a truly iconic and unsettling tale of vampirism.

Introduction and Notes by Dr David Rogers, Kingston University.

'There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark…

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Roger Cardinal.

The author of dozens of adventure novels and fantastical tales, Robert Louis Stevenson was also an enthusiast of travel, whether wandering on foot through France in the company of a donkey, crossing the plains of North America in a train crammed with emigrants, or cruising under sail with his wife in the waters of the Pacific. A lively curiosity stimulated his observations of distant places and unknown people: and this selection from his travel writings bears the imprint of a generous and plucky spirit, always eager to embrace the unfamiliar and the exotic.

'There are no foreign lands', Stevenson once wrote, 'it is the traveller only who is foreign'. This volume includes the well-known Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), along with The Amateur Emigrant (1895), Across the Plains (1892) and The Silverado Squatters (1883), and other material from Stevenson's American journeys.

Roger Cardinal is Emeritus Professor of Literary & Visual Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. He is the author of Figures of Reality (1981) and The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash (1989). He has also written extensively on German Romanticism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Outsider Art.

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Roger Cardinal.

The author of dozens of adventure novels and fantastical tales, Robert Louis Stevenson was also an enthusiast of…

Introduction and Notes by Dr Tim Middleton, Head of English Studies, University of Ripon and York.

In seeking to discover his inner self, the brilliant Dr Jekyll discovers a monster. First published to critical acclaim in 1886, this mesmerising thriller is a terrifying study of the duality of man's nature.

Also included in this volume is Stevenson's 1887 collection of short stories, The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables. The Merry Men is a gripping Highland tale of shipwrecks and madness; Markheim, the sinister study of the mind of a murderer; Thrawn Janet, a spine-chilling tale of demonic possession; Olalla, a study of degeneration and incipient vampirism in the Spanish mountains; Will O' the Mill, a thought-provoking fable about a mountain inn-keeper; and The Treasure of Franchard, a study of French bourgeois life.

Introduction and Notes by Dr Tim Middleton, Head of English Studies, University of Ripon and York.

In seeking to discover his inner self, the brilliant Dr Jekyll discovers a…

of English, University of Sussex.

Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography.

This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne 'the most liberated spirit of all time'.

of English, University of Sussex.

Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel.…