With an Introduction and Notes by Sally Minogue This edition is based on the collection of poems assembled by Thomas himself and published in November 1952, just a year before his death in New York.

Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family life of the four March sisters living in a small New England community. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen, is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Lawrence family and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever. This edition also includes the sequel, Good Wives, which takes up the story of the March sisters some three years later when, as young adults, they must face up to the inevitable trials and traumas of everyday life in their search for individual happiness.

A Hill Country Christmas-Truths for Troubled Trails is a collection of 13 holiday tales representing the varied cultures and communities of the Texas Hill Country. Eight authors, each with their own distinct style, bring historical events to life in these heartwarming stories about the blessings of Christmas and truths that transcend time. In every era it's been said that "man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward," but these inspirational stories from Christmases past reassure us there will always be truths we can trust.

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain's ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin's brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still celebrated the Soviet Union, claiming that the terrors of its show trials, summary executions and secret police were either exaggerated or necessary. But, to Orwell, Stalin was always a "disgusting murderer" and he wanted to remind people of this fact in a powerful and memorable way.But how to do it? A political essay would never reach a wide enough audience; a traditional novel would take too long to write. Orwell hit on the inspired idea of combining the moralism of the traditional 'beast fable' with the satire of Gulliver's Travels. A group of farmyard animals, led by the pigs, overthrow their human masters. Their revolution is inspired by high ideals: the farm will be run in the interests of its animals with no more slaughtering, plenty of food for all and comfort in retirement. But when Napoleon the pig takes command, he quickly corrupts their principles, creating a new tyranny worse than the old.Orwell wrote Animal Farmin the middle of the Second World War, but at first no publishers wanted to touch it. It was finally published in August 1945, once the war was over. This little book quickly became a seminal text in the emerging 'cold war' (a phrase that Orwell himself coined). It also became a site of that conflict itself, suffering various attempts to subvert or change its meaning.Today, Animal Farmremains a powerful fable about the nature of tyranny and corruption which applies for all ages.Our edition also includes the following essays: Shooting an Elephant; Charles Dickens; Inside the Whale; The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda; Literature and Totalitarianism; Fascism and Democracy; Patriots and Revolutionaries; Catastrophic Gradualism; Some Thoughts on the Common Toad; Why I Write; Writers and Leviathan

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A selection of poems from one of the greatest female poets of the Nineteenth Century.

Ibsen's Four Plays includes: A Doll's House Hedda Gabler The Master Builder Peer Gynt

Like many talented women of her day, Dora Wordsworth (1804-47) has been remembered - if at all - in connection with an illustrious male relation. However, she possessed drive and imagination of her own and a determination to grasp every opportunity that presented itself. Thus it came about that she made a six-week tour through the Low Countries and the Rhineland in the summer of 1828 in the company of her father and Coleridge. Though often exhausted by the heat, arduous journeys and intensive sight-seeing, Dora kept a lively daily record of their experiences, describing both the high points of the tour and her own setbacks in a manner designed to entertain her family. She mentions Coleridge almost every day, recording his comments on works of art, his conversations with passers-by, his bouts of illness and his acts of kindness. The two middle-aged poets acted constantly as her 'guardians' and 'tutors' (as she put it) but clearly she herself played a quiet and unacknowledged role in ensuring that they remained on amicable terms throughout the tour. Dora's manuscript journal, in the collection of the Wordsworth Trust since 1935, is published here in its entirety for the first time, complemented by associated material and a wealth of contemporary illustrations. Two hundred years after the tour itself her vivid snapshots of travel through some of the most famous and scenic areas of northern Europe will linger long in the minds of her modern readers.

The second of two volumes which contain the complete collection of Beatrix Potter's much-loved tales.

Mathildais Mary Shelley’s haunting story of an incestuous and fatal love. The narrative traces the teenaged Mathilda’s reunion with her unnamed father, and the development of their obsessive bond that culminates in suicide. Shelley’s own father, William Godwin, was so disturbed after reading the manuscript that he refused to return it to her and it remained unpublished for over one hundred years. This near-forgotten and harrowing work encompasses the Romantic themes of the individual’s growth, isolation, and the power of imagination. Shelley’s violent and terrifying short stories share Mathilda’s fixation with feminist concerns and Gothic conventions. The murderous plots and sinister settings of these later stories reveal Shelley’s ongoing preoccupation with the supernatural, transformation, and untamed nature