Arcturus Paperback Classics Books

Twelve short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and the faithful Dr. Watson in a series of their earliest cases. They include A Scandal in Bohemia where, uniquely, Holmes is outwitted – by a beautiful...

‘Patience, Firmness, and Perseverance were my only weapons.’Agnes Grey (1847) was Anne Bronte’s first novel and a poignant account of her own experience as a struggling governess, obliged to earn her living...

‘I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.’ – Charles DickensThe story of David Copperfield (1850) began as a memoir of Dickens’ boyhood experiences...

The structure of ['Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'] follows a path as indirect and elusive as its multiple narrative voices. With its obliquely recorded incidents, its eyewitness accounts and sealed confessions, it...

A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation, language, and culture to become one of the most popular novels ever written. It is a quintessential tale of suspense and horror, boasting...

Jane Austen wrote some of the most remarkable romantic novels in English, and Emma is said to be written at the height of her powers. Like all her novels (Pride and Prejudice...

Swiss medical student Victor Frankenstein discovers the secret of life (which he never reveals, lest someone repeat the mistake). He then puts together a body, essentially a man, from various corpses. He...

‘The horror! The horror!’Seaman Charlie Marlowe takes a decaying steamboat on a perilous voyage to the heart of Africa. His mission is to relieve an ivory agent named Kurtz, taken sick at...

This groundbreaking English version by Robert Fagles is the most important recent translation of Homer's great epic poem. The verse translation has been hailed by scholars as the new standard, providing an...

The loneliness and cruelty of Jane's childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in...

Professor Otto Lidenbrock’s great adventure begins by chance when a scrap of paper drops out of an ancient book he has just bought. The coded inscription reveals the existence of a passageway...

‘I always labour at the same thing, to make the sex relation valid and precious instead of shameful. And this novel is the furthest I’ve gone. To me it is beautiful and...

The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns--in part--a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of between 500 to 1,500 Anglo-American...

The novel, with the subtitle Moeurs de province ("Provincial Customs"), first appeared in installments in the Revue from October 1 to December 15, 1856. It ushered in a new age of realism...

The main character, Fanny Price, is a young girl from a poor family, raised by her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, at Mansfield Park. She grows up with...

Defoe wrote this after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become recognised as a novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. His political work was...

The legendary Moonstone diamond is presented to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. Looted by Rachel’s uncle from an Indian temple, it is said to carry a curse. Staked out in the...

Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century. But most...

Oliver Twist's famous cry of the heart--"Please, sir, I want some more"--has resounded with generations of readers of all ages. The author poured his own youthful experience of Victorian London's unspeakable squalor...

As is often the case with Ms. Austen's fiction, "Persuasion" deals with the social issues of the times and paints a fascinating portrait of Regency England, especially when dealing with the class...

Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has...

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what...

The Professor, eventually published in 1857, was actually Charlotte Bronte’s first novel, completed as early as 1846. The deliberately unromantic hero is William Crimsworth – the only time the author used a...

Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on...

Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility is a wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. While Elinor is thoughtful,...

The period from 1775 - the outbreak of the American Revolution - to 1789 - the storming of the Bastille - is the turbulent setting of this uncharacteristic Dickens novel. It is...

‘...it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband – I HATE him!’Anne Bronte’s second novel, published in 1848, defends a woman’s right to flee a disastrous marriage;...

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment...

Two young women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, leave Miss Pinkerton’s Academy together. They are friends, yet the witty and flirtatious Becky looks set to outdo the passive, sweet-natured Amelia with her...

Published in 1847, WUTHERING HEIGHTS was not well received by the reading public, many of whom condemned it as sordid, vulgar, and unnatural--and author Emily Bronte went to her grave in 1848...