Everyman's Library CLASSICS

The King James Bible of 1611 has been one of the richest sources for English language and literature for nearly four centuries and is itself a work of the greatest poetic beauty. This beautifully designed edition is for the general reader, uncluttered by footnotes and set in full pages rather than the usual narrow columns. George Steiner's introduction illuminates the Bible's profound effect on the history of English literature and includes a moving personal reading of the greatest of texts. It also places the Bible within the history and development of Judaeo-Christian thought.

Completing the 8 volume Everyman Signet Shakespeare contains Shakespeare series, this final volume contains Shakespeare's four Last Plays - THE TEMPEST, PERICLES, THE WINTER'S TALE AND CYMBELINE. The beautifully produced, single-column text of the plays, with the Signet footnotes, is supplemented with bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespear's life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Professor Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.

Edith Wharton's subtle variation on the theme of the eternal triangle features Anna Leath, a rich American widow living in France; her daughter's delightful governess, Sophy Viner; and the first love of Anna's youth, George Darrow, who has come back into her life. Hoping to be reunited with George, Anna finds the path of love does not run smooth. THE REEF first appeared in 1912 when Edith Wharton was just fifty and at the height of her powers as a writer. It is a beautifully written, highly characteristic and eminently readable novel by a writer whose popularity is increasing by the year.

The penultimate volume in the 8-volume Everyman Signet Shakespeare contains Shakespeare's later Comedies - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, AS YOU LIKE IT, TWELFTH NIGHT, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL and MEASURE FOR MEASURE. The beautifully produced, single-column text of the plays, with the Signet footnotes, is supplemented with bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare's life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Professor Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in content. The seven plays bought in Penguin would cost 23. 20, while the Cambridge and Oxford Classics editions cost 33. 25 and 27. 50 respectively.

A dazzling collection of early stories and later fragments which throw an entirely new light on Jane Austen. In particular, they reveal a precociously brilliant genius with a talent for broad comedy and even farce. Most of the pieces in this collection are very funny indeed, and several - including the novella LADY SUSAN and the unfinished novel SANDITION are also neglected masterpieces. Other material includes the celebrated HISTORY OF ENGLAND, poems, prayers, the Plan of a Novel, etc. The volume is arranged in two parts, with the mature stories in Part 1 edited for easy reading, and the juvenilia collected by Austen herself presented exactly as she wrote them in Part 2. It includes everything she wrote apart from letters and the six famous novels, and is the final volume in the complete Everyman edition of her works now available in seven uniform volumes.

An entirely new edition of Herbert's collected poems with nots, chronology and introduction by the distinguised scholar Anne Pasternak Slater, this volume is designed to complement the editions of Marvell, Donne and Milton already published by the Everyman's Library. This volume is ideal for students and offers the best text available.

The concluding episode in Trollope's magnificent sequence of six Barsetshire novels narrates the trials of Joseph Crawley, the obsessive rector of Hogglestovk, as he struggles to clear his name from accusations of theft. But Crawley's story is only one thread in a complex tapesty which includes favourite characters from earlier novels in this delicately planned finale to the sequence. Four of the Barset novels - THE WARDEN, BARCHESTER TOWERS, DOCTOR THORNE AND FRAMLEY PARSONAGE already appear in Everyman. THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON will be published in 1996

This edition prints all three parts of Dante's great poem about the journey of the soul - INFERNO, PURGATORIO and PARADISO - in the recent English translation by Allen Mandelbaum, with an introduction and explanatory notes on each canto by the noted Dante scholar, Peter Armour. This is the only reasonably priced hardback edition of one of the world's greatest masterworks and should prove to be the most accessible for students and general readers alike. It includes Botticelli's glorious and relatively unknown illustrations of THE DIVINE COMEDY, drawn in the 1480s.

The humour of the shop and the pilgrimage counterbalance the tragic and sentimental story of Little Nell. The story is rich in Dickensian characters, including Mrs Jarley, Quilp, Dick Swiveller, and the Marchioness. A Disney production of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP has recently finished shotting in Ireland, starring James Fox, Peter Ustinov, and Tom Courtenay.

A Superb historical novel set in the late seventeenth century, Rob Roy is also an adventure story. Using his favourite device of contrasting characters and places, Scott sets romantic rural Scotland against the prosaic cities of Glasgow and London. In his tragic portrait of Rob Roy MacGregor, he shows the feudal world of the Highlands withering away under the onslaught of new commercial and political realities. With his own sympathies equally balanced, he is perfectly quipped to portray the struggle between them. Rob Roy has been made into a film, starring Liam Neeson, John Hurt, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth and Eric Stolpz.

The everyman Signet Shakespeare series continues with the first volume of Comedies containing THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. LOVES LABOUR'S LOST, ROMEO AND JULIET (sic) and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Published in 1851, Harriet Beecher-Stowe's novel rapidly became world-famous and remained so. A didactic and sentimental drama set among the slaves of the American South, Uncle Tom's Cabin is nevertheless a lively and forceful story. It made a major contribution to the Emancipationist cause and probably helped to sway the outcome of the Civil War. Given the history of race relations in our time it remains relevant even today.

Kipling's masterpiece is perhaps the most remarkable literary product of British India. The story of a half-caste boy, part Indian part Irish who journeys throughout the subcontinent with an aged lama in search of religious enlightenment, the nominal plot revolves around the Great Game: the struggle between Britian and Russia for control of Afghanistan. But the glory of the book lies less in the amusing picaresque adventures than in the unsurpassed panorama of Indian life they evoke: brilliant, moving and intensely alive.

Published in 1864, CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? was the first volume in what turned out to be the Palliser sequence of six political novels, serialized on television some years ago. It is in this book that we first meet Plantagenet Palliser, later to become Duke of Omnium, but the forces of attention concerns two women and their lovers: Lady Glencora and Alice Vavasour. Trollope wonderfully contrasts their private dramas with the public excitements of politics in a book which has all the breadth and scope of the best nineteenth-century epics.

This selection covers the full range of Kipling's extraordinary short stories throughout his career. Ranging in subject matter from the Indain to the Occult, from children to animals, from domestic comedy to public tragedy, each is masterly in its way. Above all, they convey a wonderful sense of life and energy and reveal Kipling as a far greater and more diverse writer than most people suspect. This is an ideal gift-book, perfect for reading in short snatches or long stretches, according to taste.