Classics

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran, the author was renowned as America's first 'girl stunt reporter'. She was a pioneer of investigative journalism, including an expose of patient treatment at a mental asylum and a travelogue from her record-breaking race around the world in emulation of Phileas Fogg. This title deals with her works.

A brilliant and much admired novelist, Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) surpassed herself as a writer of short fiction: 'the supreme genius of her time', writes John Banville in his introduction;

Includes tales such as 'Sound of Thunder', 'The Veldt', and 'The Fog Horn'. This title also contains the Irish stories, the Martian stories and the Mexican stories.

In Agnes Grey Anne Bronte drew on her own experiences as a governess, trying to cope with unmanageable children with little respect from her employer. It combines a wonderful study of Victorian responses to children with a story of romantic love, and this new edition does full justice to its fictional as well as its autobiographical qualities.

Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced.

A mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son.

Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity.

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There, she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, the hostility of headmistress Madame Beck, and her own complex feelings first for the school's English doctor and...

The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. This is a story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who refuses to accept her appointed place in society and instead finds love on her own terms has become famous as one of the greatest romances ever written.

A beautiful collection of poems from the powerfully talented and much-loved Bronte sisters. 'Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel' Charlotte Bronte