Classics of Literature

Phaedo

Plato

Plato’s Phaedo is a philosophical dialogue that opens with a lively exchange among Socrates and his friends…

Black Beauty: The autobiography of a horse

Anna Sewell

The work is presented as the memoir of a horse, narrated in the first person by a black stallion who recounts…

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

the Elder Pliny

The third volume of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History is a pre‑Linnaean survey of the insect world, beginning…

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway is a psychological portrait of a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle‑aged,…

From Chaucer to Tennyson With Twenty-Nine Portraits and Selections from Thirty Authors

Henry A. Beers

From its title and subject heading, this volume is a historical‑critical survey of English literature,…

Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

This work is a collection of the philosophical reflections of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman emperor…

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

The play opens on a cold night at the ramparts of Elsinore, where sentinels Francisco and Barnardo exchange…

Notre-Dame de Paris

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s Notre‑Dame de Paris is a sprawling historical novel that intertwines the fate of a medieval…

Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, together with his treatises On the Nature of the Gods and On the…

Paradise Lost

John Milton

Paradise Lost is an epic poem that sets out to recount the first disobedience of humanity and the ensuing…

Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon’s Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients gathers a series of early‑modern English essays that blend…

The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War

Stephen Crane

The work is a historical‑fiction narrative set amid the American Civil War, focusing on a young Virginian…

The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems

Geoffrey Chaucer

This volume brings together Geoffrey Chaucer’s celebrated Canterbury Tales and a selection of his…

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

The work is a five‑act tragedy that begins not with a narrative exposition but with a full theatrical…

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus is a work that straddles science‑fiction, horror, and…

Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 07

The volume opens with a lively, mock‑heroic poem about the medieval town of Weinsberg, where a king’s wrath…

In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts

Desiderius Erasmus

In Praise of Folly is a satirical essay by the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, first published in the…

The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c.

Gaius; Persius; Sulpicia Juvenal; Lucilius

The volume presents a literal English prose rendering of the Roman satirists Juvenian, Persius, Sulpicia, and…

Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair is a satirical novel that opens amid the bustling, self‑conscious world of Sir Pitt Crawley, a…

The Castle of Otranto

Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto is the first full‑blown gothic novel, a horror tale that intertwines the anxieties of…

The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4

George Gordon Byron

The volume gathers a series of Byron’s later poems and fragments, each opening with a solemn meditation on…

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

This work is a dramatic tragedy set in Verona, foregrounding a bitter vendetta between the Montague and…

Gargantua and Pantagruel

François Rabelais

François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel is a five‑volume French work rendered here in English, beginning…

A History of Elizabethan Literature

George Saintsbury

George Saint‑sbury’s A History of Elizabethan Literature is a scholarly survey that maps the literary…