Is there any music more instantly recognisable and beautifully scored than Tchaikovsky’s wildly popular ballet Swan Lake? These and other works have become enduring classics,...

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between...

Published in 1801, Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda is an absorbing novel that mirrors social and domestic life among the English gentry. In her pursuit of a suitable marriage, Belinda...

Written in 516, The Rule of Saint Benedict for monastic living has been soul-inspiring for a countless number of people – not only monks, nuns and priests, but also a...

William James was one of the most influential figures in 19th-century American philosophy and psychology. His Pragmatism is a set of lectures that he gave in 1906–07 in answer...

Published in 1884, Against Nature (À rebours) concerns the attempts of its cultured and neurotic anti-hero, Des Esseintes, to escape contemporary Parisian life. At his rural...

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and...

George MacDonald, described by W.H. Auden as ‘one of the most remarkable writers of the 19th century’, was valued in his own time as an original thinker and spiritual guide....

Peter Wickham talks about the infamous libertine Giacomo Casanova, and his explosive autobiography, The Story of My Life. Perhaps best known for his serial womanising, Casanova...

In this third sequel to The Darling Buds of May, Charley and Mariette decide to get baby Blenheim christened, leading to a wholesale christening of all seven of the Larkin...