Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

Evelyn Waugh

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Samuel Butler

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) made one reputation during his lifetime with his Utopian satire Erewhon, and a second reputation after his death with The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously. This novel, the story of Ernest Pontifex, is a thinly disguised autobiography in which Butler brutally but hilariously savages the financial, sexual, familial and spiritual hypocrisies of late Victorian England.

The Way Of All Flesh

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's novel reworks the eternal triangle of two women and a man in a strikingly original manner. When about to marry the beautiful and conventional May Welland, Newland Archer falls in love with her very unconventional cousin, the Countess Olenska. The consequent drama, set in New York during the 1870s, reveals terrifying chasms under the polished surface of upper-class society as the increasingly fraught Archer struggles with conflicting obligations and desires. The first woman to do so, Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for this dark comedy of manners which was immediately recognized as one of her greatest achievements.

The Age Of Innocence

Alexandre Dumas

THE THREE MUSKETEERS has proved enduringly popular for more than a century and a half. Inspiration for many a movie and TV adaptation, this swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honour and derring-do, set in France during the 1620s, is satisfyingly peopled with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers and criminals, and contains in abundance adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal and suspense. Taking as its starting point the memoirs of the historical Comte d'Artagnan, Dumas's imagination transforms the bit-players of history into larger-than-life characters: d'Artagnan himself, the impetuous young man in pursuit of glory but ever ready to respond to an insult; the beguilingly evil seductress 'Milady' (entirely his own creation) and of course the Three Musketeers of the title, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, whose motto 'all for one, one for all' has come to epitomize devoted friendship. Interwoven amongst them are vivid fictionalized portraits of major historical figures, amongst them the powerful and devious Cardinal Richelieu, the weak and ineffectual Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, his unhappy Spanish queen. Throw in some stolen diamonds, masked balls, purloined letters, a crumbling medieval prison and a great deal of sword-fighting together with a gripping plot, tremendous narrative drive and a hint of discreet humour, and you have a book totally impossible to put down.

The Three Musketeers

Walter Scott

A Superb historical novel set in the late seventeenth century, Rob Roy is also an adventure story. Using his favourite device of contrasting characters and places, Scott sets romantic rural Scotland against the prosaic cities of Glasgow and London. In his tragic portrait of Rob Roy MacGregor, he shows the feudal world of the Highlands withering away under the onslaught of new commercial and political realities. With his own sympathies equally balanced, he is perfectly quipped to portray the struggle between them. Rob Roy has been made into a film, starring Liam Neeson, John Hurt, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth and Eric Stolpz.

Rob Roy

Charlotte Brontë

Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his financial woes, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline, who, bored and desperate, lives as a dependent in her uncle's home with no prospect of a career. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert's brother, an impoverished tutor - a match opposed by her family. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled? Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economic struggles, "Shirley" (1849) is an unsentimental, yet passionate depiction of conflict between classes, sexes and generations.

Shirley, The Professor

On the day of his wedding, Edmond Dantes, master mariner, is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges and spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d'If, an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely. Escaping from the chateau by a series of daring manoeuvres, he unearths a great treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, buried there by a former fellow prisoner who bequeaths to him the secret of its whereabouts. Thus armed with unimaginable wealth and embittered by his long imprisonment, he resolves to devote his life to tracking down and punishing those responsible. 
This classic nineteenth-century translation has been revised and updated by Peter Washington, with an introduction by award-winning novelist Umberto Eco.

The Count of Monte Cristo

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