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Books published by publisher Wordsworth Editions Ltd.

  • Thirty-Nine Steps Wordsworth Classics

    John Buchan

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, )
    None
  • Fathers and Sons

    Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Aug. 5, 1997)
    Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has long been acclaimed as Turgenev's finest work. It is a political novel set in a domestic context, with a universal theme, the generational divide between fathers and sons. Set in 1859 at the moment when the Russian autocratic state began to move hesitantly towards social and political reform, the novel explores the conflict between the liberal-minded fathers of Russian reformist sympathies and their free-thinking intellectual sons whose revolutionary ideology threatened the stability of the state. At its centre is Evgeny Bazorov, a strong-willed antagonist of all forms of social orthodoxy who proclaims himself a nihilist and believes in the need to overthrow all the institutions of the state. As the novel develops Bazarov's political ambitions become fatally meshed with emotional and private concerns, and his end is a tragic failure. The novel caused a bitter furore on its publication in 1862, and this, a year later, drove Turgenev from Russia.
  • The Secret Garden

    Frances Hodgson Burnett

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Jan. 5, 1998)
    Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her hunchback uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend it, a change comes over her and her life. She meets and befriends a local boy, the talented Dickon, and comes across her sickly cousin Colin who had been kept hidden from her. Between them, the three children work astonishing magic in themselves and those around them.
  • The Last Man

    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Nov. 5, 2004)
    With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Bickley, The Godolphin and Latymer School, formerly of Royal Holloway, University of London The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the radical philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died ten days after her birth and the young child was educated through contact with her father's intellectual circle and her own reading. She met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812; they eloped in July 1814. In the summer of 1816 she began her first and most famous novel, Frankenstein. Three of her children died in early infancy and in 1822 her husband was drowned. Mary returned to England with her surviving son and wrote novels, short stories and accounts of her travels; she was the first editor of P.B.Shelley's poetry and verse.
  • Le Morte D'Arthur

    Sir Thomas Malory, William Caxton

    eBook (Wordsworth Editions, May 26, 2011)
    Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of the famous stories of King Arthur and the round table. The seminal English language interpretation of the Arthurian legend, Mallory drew heavily from French sources like the Lancelot-Grail cycle (this influence inspired the French title) along with some older English works.One of the first books published in England using the printing press, Le Morte D'Arthur was extremely popular when first published in the 15th century. This popularity, combined with the Malory's comprehensive and effective story-telling, caused Le Morte D'Arthur to influence many later authors' interpretations of Arthur, including T. H. White's The Once and Future King.
  • King Lear

    William Shakespeare

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Aug. 5, 1997)
    Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex King Lear has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare's most powerful tragedy. Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature.
  • The Princess and the Goblin & The Princess and Curdie

    George MacDonald

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, March 5, 2013)
    When Princess Irene and her nursemaid stay out too late one night and are chased home by goblins, a young miner boy called Curdie comes to their rescue. So begins a fantastic adventure in which Irene and Curdie must try to stop a goblin invasion, helped by Irene's mysterious great-great-grandmother. This much-loved tale was a personal favourite of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. This edition includes the sequel, The Princess and Curdie.
  • Frankenstein

    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Sept. 1, 1997)
    With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Siv Jansson, University of Greenwich Begun when the author was only eighteen and conceived from a nightmare, Frankenstein, is the deeply disturbing story of a monstrous creation which has terrified and chilled readers since its first publication in 1818. The novel has thus seared its way into the popular imagination while establishing itself as one of the pioneering works of modern science fiction.
  • Wind in the Willows

    Kenneth Grahame

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, April 1, 1998)
    Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad (with his 'Poop-poop-poop' road-hogging new motor car), have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall.
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  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

    Leo Tolstoy

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions, Dec. 5, 2004)
    With an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In 'The Kreutzer Sonata' he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in 'The Devil' a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.
  • The Wind in the Willows

    Kenneth Grahame

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Jan. 5, 1998)
    Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad, have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall.
    F
  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    Paperback (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Aug. 5, 1997)
    Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature leads her to both tragedy and true love. It tells of the dashing Sergeant Troy whose rakish philosophy of life was '...the past was yesterday; never, the day after'. And lastly, of the introverted and reclusive gentleman farmer, Mr Boldwood, whose love fills him with '...a fearful sense of exposure', when he first sets eyes on Bathsheba. The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods.