Classics

Johanna Spyri's Heidi, a beloved classic of children's literature, unfolds in the breathtaking Swiss Alps, where a young orphan named Heidi is sent to live with her gruff grandfather in a remote mountain cabin. Through heartfelt and often life-cha...

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” This tremendously famous novella, written in 1952, underlined Hemingway's influence and presence in the literary world. The Old Man and the Sea is a story of fr...

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.” The life of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, takes a horrifying turn when he wakes up one day to find that he has tran...

Rated among the most excellent works of American fiction, Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer paints an unforgettable picture of Mississippi frontier life, combining picaresque adventure with challenging satire and great innovative p...

Gulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, was an immediate success and was read 'from the Cabinet - council to the Nursery' (Gay). It continues to appeal to readers of all ages, both as a travel book and as a powerful satire. George Orwell rate...

Annihilation of Caste is a powerful and uncompromising critique of India's caste system, written by one of the most influential social reformers in Indian history, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Originally published in 1936, this groundbreaking work challenge...

First published in 1812 as Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Grimm’s Fairy Tales—inspired by German folklore—remain among the most cherished and influential stories in literary history. This complete collection of over 200 tales features timeless character...

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.” Siddhartha is a profound exploration of one man's quest for enlightenment in ancient India. Discontent with traditional religious teach...

Rudyard Kipling’s works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”; “Three and An Extra”; “On Greenhow Hill”; “The Limitations of Pambé Serang”; “The Disturber of Traffic”; “The...

Kipling's allegory, The Jungle Books, set in India and filled with high adventure and extraordinary characters that touch both our intellect and our emotions, is an unforgettable mythic tale of a boy Mowgli, the fearless man-cub, looking for where...

Animal Farm is a dystopian allegorical novella. It reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, being a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and was against Moscow-directed Stalinism. The nove...

Swami Paramananda's The Upanishads explores ancient Indian spiritual texts, revealing wisdom that has influenced philosophical thought for centuries. Based on Vedic teachings, these sacred writings probe the nature of reality, the self and the uni...

Rated among the most excellent works of American fiction, Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn paints an unforgettable picture of Mississippi frontier life, combining picaresque adventure with challenging satire and great innova...

The Time Machine is a social allegory set in the year 802701 A.D., describing a society divided into two classes, the subterranean workers, called Morlocks, and the decadent Eloi. The central character, referred to throughout as the Time Traveller...

Politics by Aristotle is a cornerstone of political philosophy, unfolding in dialogues and reflections on the nature of the state, citizenship and governance. Through a conscientious analysis of different political systems-monarchy, aristocracy an...

Treasure Island, a wonderfully crafted edition of Stevenson’s classic adventure story, is known for its great plot, immortal characters and vivid images. Its captivating story, that holds the readers’ interest throughout, relates of a great treasu...

Virginia Woolf’s fifth novel, To the Lighthouse, was widely praised and has remained the most popular of all her novels. It is considered among the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century. There is minimal action. The novel works t...

Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by Jules Verne. It is the story of a rich English gentleman living a life of modesty and solitude. Phileas Fogg accepts a challenge from his fellow members at the Reform Club and sets of...

In the delightful social comedy of Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen delicately handles the problem of love and money in marriage where, in spite of many hurdles, eventually love triumphs over 'pride' and 'prejudice'. With a mild satiric tone...

“I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don't want to be un-friends.” Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children, a beloved classic of children's literature, unfolds the lives of three siblings—Roberta, Peter and Ph...

Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, is a humorous account of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of loca...

The Tragedy of Macbeth, or Macbeth, is one of his Shakespeare's shorter tragedies, and was probably written between 1599–1606, and is thought to have been first performed in 1606. This play was penned the play during the region of James V1, who wa...

“Let us strike the keynote, Coketown, before pursuing our tune... It was a town of machines and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever, and never got uncoiled...” — Hard Times The novel is set in the...

When the starving French masses rise in hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause - L...

A great dramatist, literary critic, an eminent showman, intellectual and a satirist, George Bernard Shaw was a leading theatre personality of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Pygmalion is one of his masterpi...

Dante Alighieri's The Inferno is the first part of his epic Divine Comedy, which takes readers on a journey through Hell. Guided by the Roman poet Virgil, Dante traverses the nine circles of the damned, reflecting on humanity's moral and spiritual...

The Prophecies of Nostradamus, first published in 1555, is a captivating collection of cryptic predictions that has fascinated readers for centuries. Comprising quatrains that intertwine poetic imagery with prophetic insight, the work addresses a ...

Before Jane Eyre, The Professor was the first novel written by Charlotte Bronte. It was published posthumously in 1857 and remains a classic among her other novels Jane Eyre and Villette. The novel is a trajectory of the protagonist William Crims...

Published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments provides a philosophical framework for Adam Smith's later works, including The Wealth of Nations (1776). The book showcases his interest in the human virtue of benevolence, contrary to his image of...

The book contains the best short stories written by Hector Hugh Munro under his pen name, Saki. "Reginald" was written after he had given up foreign reporting and settled in London. It features three short stories "Reginald at the Theater"; "Regin...

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a groundbreaking science fiction novel that depicts humanity's struggle against a devastating alien invasion. Set in late 19th-century England, it narrates the catastrophic arrival of Martians, showcasing the e...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic and moral fantasy novel by Oscar Wilde. This is the only novel he wrote and published in 1891 after heavy editing because critics and editors deemed it immoral and indecent. However, it flourished to be a mas...

Kim, a picaresque novel by Rudyard Kipling, was published serially in McClure’s Magazine, before being published in book form in 1901. The story is set in India in the backdrop of the political conflict between Russia and Britain, after the end of...

In Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last completed novel, unpublished until her death, satire and ridicule become milder and the tone is more grave and tender. This novel depicts her most memorable heroine – Anne Elliot, a young woman of perfect breeding...

Journey to the Centre of the Earth published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre is the second book in Verne's popular science-fiction series Voyages Extraordinaires (1863-1910). The story involves German professor Otto Lidenbrock wh...

Man and Superman, a four-Act drama, was written in 1903 as a response to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan theme. It deserves the position of Bernard Shaw’s masterpiece. The plot revolves aro...

Set against the backdrop of Napoleon's conquest and the French invasion of Russia, War and Peace is one of the best-known historical works, written over the course of six years and translated into numerous languages. It delves into the complexitie...

This nightmarish tale by H.G. Wells contains all the suspense and adventure of science fiction at its best. It begins with a quiet country inn and a mysterious stranger, his features masked by gloves, dark glasses, and bandages that completely cov...

Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, Mrs Dalloway, marks an important stage in her development as a writer. In this novel she finally departs from the form of the traditional English novel, establishing herself as a writer of genius. Her stream of consc...

The story revolves around young and amorous but capricious Bathsheba Everdene and her enviable problem of coping with her three suitors simultaneously. The first is shepherd Gabriel Oak, financially ruined by his sheepdog driving his flock over a ...

Women in Love, the book Lawrence considered his best, was written during World War I, and while that conflict is never mentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurking catastrophe, continually informs its drama of two couples dynam...

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of thirteen very interesting Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in 1903-04 in the Strand Magazine in UK and Collier’s in the United States. The first story, “The Adventure of the Empty House”,...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his most famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The individual stories had been serialized in The Strand Magazine between June 1891 and...

“But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.” Composed in the 8th century BCE, Homer's The Odyssey narrates the arduous journey of Odysseus, the ...

Oliver Twist, Dickens's critique of the harsh Poor Law of 1834, and a grim picture of the sordid reality the London underworld of Dickens's times, shows Dickens's deep concern for the underprivileged. The only token of identity left by his dying m...

The Importance of Being Earnest is a farcical comedy in three Acts. The protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligation. John Worthing, a carefree young gentleman, invents a fictitious brother, Ernest, whose wicked...

Jacob Flanders is flawed, but also quite a brilliant man. An embodiment of solitude, Jacob is unable to concoct his affinity in life for traditions, contemporary society, intimacy with women, and philosophical contemplations. His life from childho...

James Joyce was and remains unique among novelists for whatever he published was a masterpiece. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a key work of twentieth century literature that remains as fresh, challenging and relevant as the day it was...

When Frankenstein, a young idealist Genevan student of natural philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, stumbled into the secret of infusing life into matter, and created a living thing out of an assemblage of bones from charnel houses, little ...

King Solomon’s Mines, the first English adventure novel set in Africa describes a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. The novel is Allan Quatermai...

It is a fantasy novel published in 1928. It traces the career of the androgynous Orlando through four centuries from the late sixteenth century. It contains a great many well-observed literary and historical insights into the ages through which it...

Dubliners is one of the most magnificent short story collections in the English language. The manuscript was sent to the English publisher, Grant Richards in late 1905. After initial enthusiasm for the book, Richards became uncomfortable about sex...

Jane Eyre remains one of the most widely read of English Classics. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte invented a romantic tale of passion and thrill and created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all the times. When her first novel, The Profes...

Sense and Sensibility, the first of Austen’s novels to be published, remains as fresh as ever it was. The basic theme of the novel is concerned with the personalities of the two sisters of contrasting temperaments who share comparable experiences ...

Mr. Utterson goes for a walk with his friend and relative Mr. Enfield, who tells a sad story in which a brute of a man knocks down a little girl, everyone yells at him, and he provides to pay a lot of money and brings a large cheque drawn from Dr....

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1894 by Arthur Conan Doyle. In the American edition there are eleven stories, while in others there are twelve. All these stories appeared in the St...

“You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.” Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House is a groundbreaking play that explores marriage, identity and societal norms within a seemingly perfect home. Centred...

The Prophet (1923) is a book of 26 prose poems by the Lebanese American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. A collection of philosophical, spiritual and motivational poetic essays, it reflects Gibran's experience as an immigrant. The tex...

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian fiction portraying a society ruled by an oligarchical dictatorship. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, through government surveillance and continuous public mind control. Oceania ...

Louisa M. Alcoa, (29th November, 1832, Germantown, 6th March, 1888, Pennsylvania Boston, Massachusetts), Was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, best known for the children's books, especially the classic Little Women (1868) and it...