Everyman

In this account of a disillusioned soul failing to come to terms with reality, the novelist recreates the Byronic anti-hero in the context of post-revolutionary France where the church, politics and society itself are in upheaval.

In this classic of American literature, Thoreau gives an account of his two years' experience of the 'simple life' in the woods, telling how he sought and found material and spiritual sustenance in the solitude of the cabin which he built for himself on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts.

Set in mid-19th-century Russia, this book tells the story of a married woman's passion for a young officer and of her tragic fate.

Roald Dahl is well known as a master of the macabre and the unexpected in the tradition of Saki. This volume includes the stories in chronological order as established by Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, in consultation with the Dahl estate.

Mark Twain's famous novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (available in Everyman) have long been hailed as major masterpieces, but it is less well known that the father of American literature also made his mark as a master of the short story.

Newly revised by the author for this edition, and printed together in one volume for the first time, Updike's four Rabbit novels chronicle the history of a man and a nation from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The spirit of satire flourished during the Enlightenment, and its crowning achievement was Voltaire's "Candide". It follows the worldwide encounters - with shipwrecks, earthquakes, pestilence and human insanity - of its hero and his absurd tutor, Dr Pangloss.

It is often said that Rumi (aka Jalal al-Din, 1207-73) is now the most popular poet in the United States. In order to give the greatest possible access to a wonderful poet this selection draws on avariety of translations from the early 20th century to the present, ranging from scholarly renderings to free interpretations.

It has often been said that love, both sacred and profane, is the only true subject of the lyric poem. Nothing better justifies this claim than the splendid poems in this volume, which range from the writings of ancient China to those of modern-day America and represent, at its most piercing, a universal experience of the human soul.

The alluring power of Paris has never dimmed. This title features a selection of compelling and seductive tales that capture all its facets.