Books published by publisher Wordsworth Edition

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Patsy Stoneman, University of Hull Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell's skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes.

With an Introduction and Notes by Karl Ashley Smith, University of St Andrews Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite his visionary eccentricity and declining health. But Dombey also has a daughter, whose unfailing love for her father goes unreturned. 'Girls' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son'. When Walter Gay, a young clerk in her father's office, rescues her from a bewildering experience in the streets of London, his unforgettable friends believe he is well on his way to receiving her hand in marriage and inheriting the company. It is to be a very different type of story.

When Jerry, Jimmy and Cathy discover a tunnel that leads to a castle, they pretend that it is enchanted. But when they discover a Sleeping Princess at the centre of a maze, astonishing things begin to happen. Amongst a horde of jewels they discover a ring that grants wishes. But wishes granted are not always wishes wanted, so the children find themselves grappling with invisibility, dinosaurs, a ghost and the fearsome Ugli-Wuglies before it is all resolved. This edition of The Enchanted Castle has forty-seven evocative illustrations by H.R. Millar

This novel, written when Dickens was only 25 years old, immediately brought him immense popularity. Presenting a host of now-classic characters in a series of adventures, it displays the richness of his skills of characterization and description.Mr Samuel Pickwick is general chairman of the Pickwick Club, whose members - Tracy Tupman, Augustus Snodgrass, and Nathaniel Winkle - form a society to report their adventures and observations. From these reports emerge the rascal Jingle and his servant, Job Trotter, Mr Wardle in his hospitable Dingley Dell, the engaging Sam Weller, the greedy drunkard Stiggins, and many more of Dickens's best-loved characters.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Carole Jones, freelance writer and researcher. George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they search for personal and vocational fulfilment and sympathetic relationship. Set largely in the degenerate English aristocratic society of the 1860s, Daniel Deronda charts their search for meaningful lives against a background of imperialism, the oppression of women, and racial and religious prejudice. Gwendolen's attempts to escape a sadistic relationship and atone for past actions catalyse her friendship with Deronda, while his search for origins leads him, via Judaism, to a quest for moral growth. Eliot's radical dual narrative constantly challenges all solutions and ensures that the novel is as controversial now, as when it first appeared.

Pollyanna #1 and Pollyanna #2 (Pollyanna Grows Up), by Eleanor H. Porter, are both included in this edition and are timeless, classic children's stories about the power of positivity and how profoundly it affects others. Pollyanna (Pollyanna book 1) Pollyanna Whittier has had a difficult life. Her mother died when she was little and all she's ever known is poverty. Then sadly, at the age of 11 her father passes away, leaving her an orphan. But this story isn't one about sadness! It's about overcoming the hard parts of life by thinking positively. Years before Pollyanna's father died, he gave her a gift in the form of a game; The Glad Game. This game, or rather philosophy, comes in handy in the new town she finds herself in, living as an orphan with her ill-tempered aunt in the city of Beldingsville. Pollyanna's exuberance and positivity affect everyone who meets her, and she spreads joy and love wherever she goes. Soon tragedy strikes and Pollyanna finds her optimistic attitude tested, and she must learn to find happiness again. Pollyanna Grows Up, Pollyanna book 2 In Pollyanna Grows Up, the only sequel written by Eleanor H. Porter herself, Pollyanna finds that despite overcoming the health issues that she faced in the original Pollyanna, adulthood brings fresh challenges to conquer. This Pollyanna sequel is told in two halves; the first part takes place about two years after the first book and the second half of the story races forward several years to follow a young 20-something year-old Pollyanna. Readers get to visit with beloved, familiar characters such as Aunt Polly, Dr. Chilton and Jimmy Bean. This story involves loss and hardship but largely focuses on love and growing up. The heart of this sequel remains consistent with the first, in that there is always something to be glad about. Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up brings us a strong and admirable heroine, despite the modern, infamous use of the character s name to describe those who utilize false positivity or phony optimism. Pollyanna is able to change her circumstances, and the circumstances of those around her, by practicing being glad. Positivity is contagious and that lesson is still as relevant for young children today as it was in 1913 when this story was first published and flew off the shelves, the year leading up to WWI. This book is great for: YOUNG READERSFOSTER FAMILIES AND FOSTER KIDSCHILDREN AND KIDS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED LOSSREADING ALOUD TOGETHERCHILDREN IN PHYSICAL THERAPY OR WITH PHYSICAL DISABILITIES

'A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die...'. Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task. Yet 'The Origin of the Species' (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and - by implication - within the human world. Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, 'The Origin of the Species' remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.

COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED. With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. James Joyces astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Blooms voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its Modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, Ulysses offers the reader a life-changing experience.

Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren. University of Kent at Canterbury The Man in the Iron Mask is the final episode in the cycle of novels featuring Dumas celebrated foursome of D Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, who first appeared in The Three Musketeers. Some thirty-five years on, the bonds of comradeship are under strain as they end up on different sides in a power struggle that may undermine the young Louis XIV and change the face of the French monarchy. In the fast-paced narrative style that was his trademark, Dumas pitches us straight into the action. What is the secret shared by Aramis and Madame de Chevreuse? Why does the Queen Mother fear its revelation? Who is the mysterious prisoner in the Bastille? And what is the nature of the threat he poses? Dumas, the master storyteller, keeps us reading until the climactic scene in the grotto of Locmaria, a fitting conclusion to the epic saga of the musketeers.

With an Introduction by Dr. Julian Wolfreys. This EDITION CONTAINS TWO COLLECTIONS of short stories, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes documents the earliest cases of the greatest fictional detective of all time, while The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes brings us to what Doyle intended to be Holmes' last appearance, in The Adventure of the Final Problem, as he plunges into the depths of the Reichenbach Falls with his archenemy, Professor Moriarty. This edition contains the original illustrations from Strand Magazine drawn by Sidney Paget.