Penguin Modern Box Set

"I’m an outsider to the end of my days!"

Jude Fawley’s hopes of a university education are lost when he is trapped into marrying the earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. Moving to the town of Christminster where he finds work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking "New Woman." Refusing to marry merely for the sake of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide instead to live together, but they are shunned by society and poverty soon threatens to ruin them. Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s last novel, caused a public furor when it was first published, with its fearless and challenging exploration of class and sexual relationships.

This edition uses the unbowdlerized text of the first volume edition of 1895, and also includes a list for further reading, appendices and a glossary. In his introduction, Dennis Taylor examines biblical allusions and the critique of religion in Jude the Obscure, and its critical reception that led Hardy to abandon novel writing.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Paperback. Pub Date :2010-07-08 Pages: 480 Language: English Publisher: Collins Classics HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved. essential classics.Set in Hardys evocative Wessex countryside. Bathsheba is pursued by three very different suitors.The reliable and humble Gabriel Oak. the vain and impetuous Troy and the reserved yet determined Boldwood.With the morals of rural society weighing heavily upon her. it is through these relationships that Bathsheba experiences the torture of unrequited love and betrayal and discovers how random acts of chance and tragedy can alter the pathway of a life dramatically.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.
There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories…
This heart-warming collection of festive short stories and novellas perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas. Focused on the journeys taken through life and the inherent goodness of mankind, these tales explore the true meaning of Christmas and revel in the joyful season of goodwill. Imbued with a moral message, Dickens’s writing gives a voice to the plight of working-class families during a period of social and political change in Victorian England.
With such tales as ‘The Chimes’, ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’ and ‘What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older’, this is a beautiful collection for Dickens fans, and a wonderful companion for all those who cherish ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Including some of Oscar Wilde's most well-known and infamous plays, 'Lady Windermere's Fan', 'A Woman of No Importance', 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest', this collection of the writer's works displays his brilliant, quick wit to its full glory.