Having been shipwrecked, the navigator Robinson Crusoe, by chance, finds himself on a desert island off the coast of America. Having lived there all alone for 28 years, due to unexpected circumstances, he once left him on an English ship. The famous novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) about extraordinary adventures Robinson Crusoe in a wonderful retelling for children by Korney...

‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is a classic of ‘horror literature,’ a work whose popularity only increases with time. This short novel about a Victorian scientist who conducts a daring and dangerous experiment on himself, thereby unleashing his dark ‘self’ from the depths of his subconscious – the sinister villain and murderer Mr. Hyde – continues to stir minds and hearts,...

This book is highly recommended as a reference book for family reading and for use in all educational institutions. And as for government officials and other persons in positions of power, they should consider it their duty to familiarize themselves with this work, lest their exercise of power turn into an even greater misfortune for the Fatherland.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend, to...

Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce...

Sparked by Thoreau’s outrage at American slavery and the American-Mexican war, Civil Disobedience is a call for every citizen to value his conscience above his government. Within this 19th century essay, Thoreau explains government of any sort – including democracy – does not possess more wisdom or justice than its individual citizens, and that it is every citizen’s responsibility to avoid...

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing deomcratic system in America...

The master of the novella, Prosper Mérimée, created some of the most vivid characters in world literature, combining captivating plots with historically and ethnographically accurate descriptions of Corsican and Spanish life. This edition includes his best novellas, among them ‘Mateo Falcone,’ ‘The Game of Backgammon,’ ‘Colomba,’ and, of course, the famous ‘Carmen.’

The collection includes Kafka's most famous ‘short’ works from different years. Here you will find the so-called Kafkaesque nightmares – ‘The Metamorphosis,’ ‘In the Penal Colony,’ elegant parables, satirical stories and miniatures, as well as diary entries.

His feelings for the Czech journalist Milena Jesenská became the most vivid experience in the life of the ‘Prague genius.’ Their romance didn't last long, but their correspondence continued for several years. It was to Milena that the writer entrusted his diaries and the later famous ‘Letter to his Father,’ and their complex, emotional relationship was reflected in Kafka's main work – the...

The short novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ was first published in 1902 and caused a major upheaval in English-language literature, of which it is still considered a classic, and Francis Ford Coppola's film ‘Apocalypse Now,’ based on it, was and remains one of the most powerful works in the history of world cinema. Young Captain Marlow sails up the Congo River, through the wild African jungle, full...

‘A Room of One's Own’ is a famous essay based on lectures Woolf gave at Newnham College and Girton College – two women's colleges at Cambridge University – in October 1928. In it, she addresses all women engaged in literature and recalls her great predecessors – Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot – who were forced to write in the common living room, hide their manuscripts from...