Books in Cambridge Library Collection - Astronomy series

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wanted his last novel 'to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity, and to point, without a mincing of words, the tragedy of unfulfilled aims'. First published in its present form in 1895 (although post-dated 1896) after appearing as an abridged serial, the work was met with as much opprobrium as admiration. Critics wrote reviews entitled 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate' because of the novel's explicit content and deliberate attacks on the education system and marriage laws; even Hardy's wife took personal offence. Sparse and bleak, the story follows Jude Fawley, a promising self-taught scholar and village stonemason, as he navigates with increasing difficulty between the prejudices of the class system and two very different women: his wife, Arabella, and his ethereal, disturbed love, Sue Bridehead.

The quintessential satire of life in early nineteenth-century Britain, Vanity Fair is a panoramic tour of English social strata, charting the rise and fall of the opportunistic Becky Sharp. Rejected by several publishers before finding a place with Bradbury and Evans, this 'novel without a hero' first appeared as a popular serial. The twenty parts were finally printed together in 1848, incorporating the author's own illustrations. Although William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63) was not a debut author, this was the first of his works to bear his name on the title page; the vast scope of the novel gained him immediate critical acclaim, though reviewers often expressed misgivings about the dark portrayal of human nature. In response, Thackeray wrote that 'we are for the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people ... I want to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story.'

Thomas Stevenson (1818-1887) was the son of the engineer Robert Stevenson, and father of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Like his brothers David and Alan, he became a lighthouse designer, being responsible for over thirty examples around Scotland. Throughout his career he was interested in the theory as well as the practice of his profession, and published over sixty articles on engineering and meteorology. He was an international expert on lighthouses, and advised on projects in India, China, Japan, New Zealand and Canada. Lighthouse Construction and Illumination, published in 1881, was an expanded version of his Lighthouse Illumination of 1859, and remained a standard text. Many of his improvements in illumination came into universal use. According to his son, as a result of Thomas' work 'the great sea lights in every quarter of the world now shine more brightly'.

Sir John Richardson (1787-1865), surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer, went on Sir John Franklin's first two Arctic expeditions as ship's doctor and naturalist, and made observations and collected a large number of plant and animal specimens from the Canadian Arctic. On his return to England after the second expedition he began to write this four-volume work of natural history, first published between 1829 and 1837. A volume is dedicated to each of the classes of mammal, bird, fish and insect, which are found in the Canadian Arctic. This work is an interesting example of pre-Darwinian natural history, full of detailed descriptions of the appearance, anatomy and behaviour of the different species. Volume 3 was first published in 1836 and is devoted to the species of fish found in the Canadian Arctic. It contains many detailed illustrations, and discussions of the similarities between different species of fish.

Since it was first published in 1897, this infamous Gothic horror novel, which brought its author international acclaim, has spawned a global following, inspiring hundreds of films and setting the seaside town of Whitby in North Yorkshire on the map forever. A sickly child, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) developed a fascination with the supernatural during his enforced confinement. He went on to become actor Henry Irving's business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London, yet continued to pursue his literary interests. His iconic villain takes his name from Vlad the Impaler (1431-76), also known as Vlad Dracula, whereas the vampire's appearance and powerful personality is modelled on Irving. Famous for its epistolary form, Dracula went through eleven editions during Stoker's lifetime. Succeeding generations continue to be enthralled and thrilled anew by the tale's dark terror and deeply unsettling undercurrents.

'Birds have been to me the solace, the recreation, the passion of a lifetime.' So wrote Reginald Bosworth Smith (1839-1908), former Classics master at Harrow School. As a young man, he published his first book on birds while teaching at Oxford, and he continued to combine his lifelong love of birds with classical and literary teaching and research. He retired to a country house in Dorset and in 1905 published this book, based on a series of articles written in his retirement. Recording his own observations, some of many years before, and peppered with scholarly references to birds in literature, the essays cover individual birds such as the owl, the raven and the magpie, as well as bird-watching in Dorset and beyond. Imparting a love and respect for wildlife that remains inspiring, this book will be of great interest to the bird-lover and scholar of today.

Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt (1839-1907) drew on a distinguished career in canal and river engineering for this illustrated two-volume survey, here reissued in its enlarged 1896 second edition. Having started as an assistant to the civil engineer John Hawkshaw, Vernon-Harcourt was appointed resident engineer in 1866 for new works on London's East and West India docks. Later, as a consulting engineer, he specialised in the design and construction of harbours, docks, canals and river works, and he was elected professor of civil engineering at University College London in 1882. This publication covers the design and construction of tidal and flood defences, canals, locks, and irrigation works. Volume 1 covers the physical characteristics of rivers and estuaries, and the control of their flow through dredging and works such as weirs and breakwaters. Vernon-Harcourt also discusses the design of flood defences. His Harbours and Docks (1885) is also reissued in this series.

This short novel, published in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), may well be more familiar in its many stage, film and television adaptations than in its original form, while 'Jekyll and Hyde' has become the shorthand for a character who seems to have a 'split personality'. Stevenson claimed that the main features of the story came to him in a dream, and he wrote it very rapidly, though ill and bedridden at the time. Priced at one shilling (the genre of macabre and horror stories was known as the 'shilling shocker'), it was an immediate success. Though not the first of Stevenson's works to explore the notion of the divided self, in a period where increasing concern was felt about the possible negative sides of discoveries in both the physical and biological sciences, the story clearly struck a chord, and it has remained popular ever since.

In the delicately impoverished town of Cranford, everyone is keen to know everyone else's business. The community is almost devoid of men, and in their place a solid matriarchy has formed. Manners must be observed, house calls must not exceed a quarter of an hour, and neither money matters nor death may be discussed in public. But the peace is often disturbed. Rumoured burglars, literary disagreements, and the arrival of Captain Brown and his tactless daughters all cause ripples, warmly charted by the conversational narrator, Mary Smith. When the past erupts through the fragile class distinctions and disputed tea sales, the customary perspective of the town shifts in small but perceptible ways forever. First published as a magazine serial from 1851 and then in novel form in 1853, Cranford is the best-known work by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65). This reissue is of the 1853 second edition.

During the early nineteenth-century craze for conducting kite experiments in lightning, deaths were not unheard of. Electrical physicists, meanwhile, were often shocked badly enough to collapse in the course of their work. However, the perils of electricity did not deter its proponents. Published in 1844, this enlarged collection of lectures by Henry Minchin Noad (1815-77) had proven immensely popular in earlier incarnations, eventually running to four editions and recognised as an invaluable textbook for electricians and telegraph engineers until the turn of the century. An electrical practitioner himself, Noad includes illustrated explanations of some of the most significant ideas in the field, and describes many of his own experiments, from his version of the lightning kite to a battery constructed with fifty jars and a thousand feet of wire. His work remains relevant to students in the history of science.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) was an established novelist when he decided to produce a Christmas story, which was written in only six weeks and published at the end of 1843. The book was an immediate bestseller, and had it not been for the very high production costs of the specially commissioned illustrations and the decorative binding, it would have been a great commercial success. This strategic error meant that Dickens did not make the profits he expected, which contributed to his falling out with the publishers, Chapman and Hall. The story, however, has endured to this day as a classic and remains Dickens' best-known and most adapted work. This reissue of the first edition, with its famous illustrations by Punch caricaturist John Leech (1817-64), is printed in black and white, but the four colour illustrations found in the original can be viewed at http://www.cambridge.org/9781108060400.

Born within walking distance of ten Nottinghamshire pits, David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) was painfully aware that his frail physique and quiet character were ill suited to the mining industry upon which his community depended. The difficulties of his youth are manifest in Sons and Lovers, his first major novel and an insider's portrayal of the culture of the collieries. Writing to a friend, Lawrence explained the seed of his plot: 'a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life'. Stemming from this are the intricate difficulties in the relationships of Paul Morel, the second son of this unhappy mother, torn between her overpowering influence and two vastly different women - the quiet, old-fashioned Miriam and the modern divorcee Clara. Although initially deemed indecent and rejected for publication, Sons and Lovers appeared for the first time in 1913.