English Literature

“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...

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs, their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception and neuro...

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...

A lucid, comprehensive yet compact text focusing on core language skills in English, including vocabulary building, lexis, syntax, and communicative grammar. Functional English for Communication will help readers enrich their listening, speaking,...

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...

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...

PLATO, born around 428 BC in Athens, was a philosopher and mathematician in Classical Greece. He was the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world, and is arguably one of the greatest writers i...

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...

The task of the economist is not to predict the future but to explain the present. Ten Great Economists, originally published in 1914, offers an insightful exploration of the influential minds who shaped the field of economics. Through a blend of ...

The book Higher English Grammar and Composition is based on Modern English Grammar which has its base in descriptive linguistics and describes the structure/system of English language under Sound System, Word System, Syntax, and Punctuation; diffe...

About the Book This volume includes two long essays—the first explores the poetry of Negritude by analysing the work of several Black poets of the time; thesecond, a meditation on the poetry of renowned French author FrancisPonge (1899–1988), ...

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...

“Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.” In the words of a poet and in the shape of a prose, Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism is the culmination of his l...

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...

A classic that took the world by storm, raising havoc among scientists and religious people as its exposition apparently contradicted the account of the creation of the world of Genesis in the Bible, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species remains ...

Is Marx relevant any more? Why should we care what he wrote? What difference could it make to our reading of literature? Terry Eagleton, one of the foremost critics of our generation, has some answers in this wonderfully clear and readable analysi...

Marco Polo is one of the most adventurous travellers in human history. His travels are recorded in Livres des Merveilles du Monde, a book which is said to have introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. It is one of the first great travel boo...

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...

There has been much debate and discussion on the origin of language in human species. The exact time of origin of human language is still unknown due to lack of direct evidence. Experts have drawn inferences from secondary sources like fossils and...

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Relativity as a concept was not new to physics when Albert Einstein developed an interest in the field. Dissecting Relativity into the General Theory and ...

“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...

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, usually shortened to just Hamlet, was written by Shakespeare sometime between 1599–1602. It is arguably one of his most famous tragedies. The lines from Hamlet's monologue in act three that begin "To be, o...

English has emerged as the leading language for write-ups, conversations, media and communication. English skills are generally considered a passport to success as they open floodgates of opportunities for the person who acquires them. Grammar is ...

The book combines general rules of English language for common users as well as complex issues for expert philologists. It contains the chief peculiarities of English language and delineates the growth and significance of those features in its str...

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 Merchant of Venice is a 16th century play written by Shakespeare between 1596-1598 in which a merchant in Venice must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is usually classified as a romantic comedy though its d...

Lewis Carroll's masterpieces, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass, mark an epoch in the history of dream literature, having as much appeal for adults as for children. The story is of a girl Alice, who chasing ...

“I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics.” A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett follows the heartwarming story of Sara Crewe, a young girl with a vivid imagination, who attends Miss Minchin’s school in London....

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...

What is Literature? (Routledge Classics) [Paperback] Jean-Paul Sartre

Phonetics as a subject continues to be a puzzle for majority of learners of English in India. At the same time, the growing relevance of communication skills in different walks of life has turned it into an indispensable subject that has the poten...

“A bee may be born in a hole in a tree, but she likes the honey of the lotus.” Shakuntala, a timeless masterpiece by the ancient Indian poet Kalidasa, weaves a poignant tale of love, longing and destiny. Centred around the enchanting Shakuntala, t...

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, or Julius Caesar, is believed to have been written in 1599 and is one of Shakespeare's works based on the true historical events. Though Caesar is the title character, his role is not as large as that of Marcus Brutus...

The Prince contains a number of maxims concerning politics. It states that in order to retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully maintain the socio-political institutions which the people are accustomed to, whereas a new prince must first...

A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays contains Shelley's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". Shelley's argument for poetry is written within the context of Romanticism. The book showcases Shelley's aesthetic p...

The Waves by Virginia Woolf The Waves is Virginia Woolf’s most audacious exploration of the possibilities of the novel form. Instead of narrating her characters’ outward actions, Woolf enters their minds and reports their thoughts and perceptions ...

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 Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, or simply Othello, is a tragedy written in approximately 1603. One of Shakespeare's most tightly woven works, it explores themes of racism, betrayal, love, revenge, and forgiveness, and has spawned multi...

This impressive volume provides over 1,500 thoroughly revised and updated entries on modern poets active from 1910 to the present day. An extensive guide to the lives of influential poets writing in English, in Britain and around the world, this c...

Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) is considered one of the great rationalist thinkers of the seventeenth century. His magnum opus, Ethics, in which he criticized the dualism of Descartes, solidified his reputation and greatly influenced the Enlightenment t...

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...

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even ...

The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels pub-lished in 1848. When the revolutions began to erupt, the Manifesto came to be recognized as one of the world’s most influential political man...

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...

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...