Everyman's Library CLASSICS – serie

How can the individual be both free and happy? What are freedom and happiness and how do they relate to each other? These are the questions that Mill aims to answer from both a political and a philosophical perspective.

Dostoesky's drama of sin, guilt and redemption transmutes the sordid story of an old woman's murder by a desperate student into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. Grim in theme and setting, the book nevertheless seduces by its combination of superbly drawn characters, narrative brilliance and manic comedy.

Tolstoy is said to have called Les Miserables the greatest novel ever written, and it exerted a powerful influence on the creation of War and Peace. At one level a detective story in which the relentless Inspector Javert obsessively pursues the escaped convict Jean Valjean, culminating in a dramatic chase through the sewers of Paris, at another level Hugo's masterpiece is a drama of crime, punishment and rehabilitation set against a panoramic description of French society in the years after Napoleon's fall from power. But this book is also about the metaphysical struggle between good and evil in the soul of every man and every community. Coloured by Hugo's distinctive philosophy, it is a plea for social justice, political enlightenment and personal charity which continues to speak with the undiminished authority more than a century after its first appearance.

This is about the quest of Captain Ahab, a man consumed by his obsession with a legendary, giant white whale, Moby Dick. As the ship sails into dangerous waters, The captain's hysterical pursuit becomes a symbol for the inherent, often destructive, nature of human ambition. "Moby-Dick" is not merely a tale of daring do; it is a profound meditation on the human condition itself. It can be read as part thriller, part sea adventure and part allegory.

This study of natural goodness is Dostoevsky’s most touching novel. Prince Myshkin, the last, poverty-stricken member of a once great family and regarded by many as an idiot, returns to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland in order to collect an inheritance. Before he has even arrived home he becomes involved with Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the fascinating Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. But this is only the main thread of a rich and complex book in which a dazzling host of characters, from generals to street urchins, present the picture of an entire society on the verge of dissolution. A tragicomic masterpiece.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, published 1871-2, is set in the imaginary county of Loamshire during the years of unrest preceding the 1832 Reform Bill. With its complex plot, broad canvas and huge cast of characters, it has long been recognized as one of the few truly classic English novels.

On the day of his wedding, Edmond Dantes, master mariner, is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges and spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d'If, an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely. Escaping from the chateau by a series of daring manoeuvres, he unearths a great treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, buried there by a former fellow prisoner who bequeaths to him the secret of its whereabouts. Thus armed with unimaginable wealth and embittered by his long imprisonment, he resolves to devote his life to tracking down and punishing those responsible. This classic nineteenth-century translation has been revised and updated by Peter Washington, with an introduction by award-winning novelist Umberto Eco.

Describing his collection of Essays as ‘a book consubstantial with its author’, Montaigne identified both the power and the charm of a work which introduces us to one of the most attractive figures in European literature. A humanist, a sceptic, an acute observer of himself and others, he reflects the great themes of existence through the prism of his own self-consciousness. Apparent in every line he wrote, his virtues of tolerance, moderation and disinterested inquiry amount to an undeclared manifesto for the Enlightenment, whose prophet he is. This complete edition of his works supplements the Essays with travel diaries and letters, thereby completing the portrait of a true Renaissance man.

This brilliantly coloured tale of the French Revolution is an historical romance set in Paris and London. Famous for the character of Sidney Carton who sacrifices himself upon the guillotine' it is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done '- the novel is also a powerful study of crowd psychology and the dark emotions aroused by the Revolution, illuminated by Dickens' lively comedy

Tacitus was the greatest historian of the Roman empire. Born in about AD 55, he served as administrator and leading senator. This career gave him an intimate view of the empire at its highest levels, experience brought to bear on his writing.His major works are the Annals and the Histories, both of which have come down to us incomplete. Between them, they cover a period of about 80 years, from the death of the first emperor, Augustus, to the death of Domitian in 96AD. In addition, Tacitus also composed two short historical books or essays, the Agricola (about his father-in-law, a distinguished provincial governor) and the Germania, an account of the tribes beyond the Rhine.Tacitus is a brilliant narrator and master stylist who had ample material for his story in the dramatic, violent and often bloody events of the first century. His portraits - especially those of Tiberius, Nero, and Nero's immediate circle - are unforgettable, his scene-setting masterly, his psychological analysis as acute as any novelist. He is also a fierce critic of the decadence and corruption which marked struggles for the imperial succession. As Robin Lane Fox writes in his brilliant introduction, 'Above all Tacitus was supremely wary of the distortions and "spin" of official announcements. He had no illusions about the capacities of presidential, one-man rule.' Napoleon disliked him, not surprisingly.Everyman reprints the classic translation by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, with extensive notes considerably revised and updated by Dr Eleanor Cowan.

Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirées alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed.

Young Pip lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith, with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his past - the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella - and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart.

The name of Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (1725-1798), in now synonymous with amorous exploits, and there are plenty of these, vividly narrated, in him memoirs. But Casanova was not just an energetic lover. In his time he was diplomat, business man, trainee priest, traveller, prisoner, magician, confidence trickster, gambler, professional entertainer and chalatan. He financed business projects, organised lotteries, wrote opera libretti and dabbled in high politics. Above all he was an autobiographer of enduring brilliance and subtlety who left behind him what is probably the most remarkable confession ever written. Casanova was a Venetian who explored to the full all the possibilities 18th century Venice offered by way of love and profit before being imprisoned, escaping from gaol, and fleeing from the city to begin travels which took him across Europe. In Moscow and London, Berlin and Constantinople, he met the famous men and women of the time - Catherine the Great, Voltaire, Louis XV, Rousseau - and recorded his encounters for the memoirs he wrote in retirement at the end of his life. These memoirs are by turns subtle, touching, thrilling, wonderfully comic and quite irresistible. Although the present edition includes one third of Casanova's enormous (though unfinished) book, it contains all his major adventures and all is greatest affairs of the heart. 'Casanova is unsurpassed as the recreator of the daily talking interests of 18th century Europe. he ranges from slut to patrician, from closet to cabinet, waterfront to palace.' - V S PRITCHETT

The spirit of satire flourished during the Enlightenment, and its crowning achievement was Voltaire's "Candide". It follows the worldwide encounters - with shipwrecks, earthquakes, pestilence and human insanity - of its hero and his absurd tutor, Dr Pangloss.

Written over a period of more than half a century, Tolstoy’s enchanting short stories and novellas reflect every aspect of his developing art and outlook. Volume 1 of the Everyman Collected Shorter Fiction is dominated by the characteristic experiences of his early life as soldier, land-owner, husband and father, the life which shaped Anna Karenina and War and Peace. It also includes several short fables which point to his later preoccupation with the religious life. Volume 2 reveals how these spiritual intimations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces which equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers of The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius, Master and Man and Hadji Murad will recognize the brilliant younger novelist, now transfigured by his passionate quest for salvation and forgiveness.

Probably the popular favourite among Jane Austen's novels, Pride and Prejudice was the first to be written (1796-7), when the author was just twenty-one. Revised for publication thirteen years later, it combines the freshness of youth with the skill of maturity, not least in the brilliance of the characterization and the attractiveness of the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.

Although Plato's celebrated work of philosophy describes a society which to some seems the ideal human community and to others like a totalitarian nightmare, it also raises enduring questions about politics, art, education and the general conduct of life.

A magnificent new translation of Dostoevsky's masterpiece, which when first published in 1991 was described by the TIMES as 'a miracle' and by THE INDEPENDENT as a near 'ideal translation'. The BROTHERS KARAMAZOV - Dostoevsky's most widely read novel - is at once a murder mystery, a mordant comedy of family intrigue, a pioneering work of psychological realism and an unblinking look into the abyss of human suffering.

In a novella which remains highly controversial to this day, Conrad explores the relations between Africa and Europe. On the surface, this is a horrifying tale of colonial exploitation. The narrator, Marlowe journeys on business deep into the heart of Africa. But there he encounters Kurtz, an idealist apparently crazed and depraved by his power over the natives, and the meeting prompts Marlowe to reflect on the darkness at the heart of all men. This short but complex and often ambiguous story, which has been the basis of several films and plays, continues to provoke interpretation and discussion.

Benvenuto Cellini is an artist-craftsman, one of the greatest sculptors in the renaissance, passionately devoted to art, the worshipper and frequenter of the great men of his time, the 'divine' Michelangelo, who came to his studio, the 'marvellous' Titian (the adjectives are Cellini's ). He loathed the sculptor Torregiano because he had broken Michelangelo's nose.His autobiography gives a quite extraordinarily vivid account of daily life in Renaissance Florence and Rome, its studios, its taverns, its violence, his loves, the kings, cardinals and popes who commission his works. At 27 he helps direct the defence of the castello San Angelo; his account of his imprisonment there under a mad castellan (who thought he was a bat), his escape by an improvised rope, his recapture, his confinement in 'a cell of tarantulas and venomous worms' is a chapter of adventure equal to any in fact or fiction. Later he describes burning all his furniture to achieve sufficient heat to cast of one of his most famous works, Perseus and the Head of Medusa. Cellini's Life was translated by Goethe into German. The Everyman translation by Anne Macdonell (1903) is widely recognised as the most faithful to the energy and spirit of the original.

ON WAR is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832 it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of soilders statemen, and intellectuals from Marx and Bismarck to Raymond Aron.

The Aeneid is a journey of Aeneas, a survivor of the siege of Troy. The themes within this classic work include piety, respect, destiny, war and peace. The city of Rome and its empire, its formation, and its history is a central character among others - including Dido, Venus, Juno the queen of heaven, Helen of Sparta , Jupiter and a host of other gods. This epic tale takes the hero through battles on the field and in the mind to the underworld and back and finally arriving at his destiny in Rome.

Primarily known as a dramatist, Chekhov also wrote short stories. This selection of his work includes "The Swedish Match", "Easter Eve", "Mire", "On the Road", "Verotchka", "Volodya", "The Kiss", "Sleepy" and "The Steppe".

Victor Frankenstein driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experiments with alchemy and science to build a monster stitched together from dead remains. Once the creature becomes a living breathing articulate entity, it turns on its maker and the novel darkens into tragedy.

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was for half a century America's dominant wildlife artist. His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, is still a standard work, and the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over. Born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a French sea-captain, he was raised in France and sailed to America at the age of 18 where he went into business and began his study of birds. In 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy; with no other prospects, he set off on his epic quest to depict America's avifauna, with nothing but his gun, artist's materials, and a young assistant. Floating down the Mississippi, he lived a rugged hand-to-mouth existence while his devoted wife, Lucy, earned money as a tutor to wealthy plantation families. In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection to England. Lionized as the 'American woodsman', he hit just the right Romantic note for the era, and was an overnight success, finding printers for his book first in Edinburgh, then London. It was a classic American tale of triumph over adversity.Here are vivid 'bird biographies', his correspondence with Lucy, journal accounts of his dramatic river journeys and hunting trips with the Osage Indians, and a generous sampling of brief stories that have long been out of print, 'The Burning of the Forests' and 'Kentucky Barbecue on the Fourth of July' among them. The Audubon Reader is an unforgettable encounter with early America: with its wildlife and birds, with its people and its primordial wilderness.

This is the only novel that Conrad set in London, and it communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. Verloc, (a Russian spy who is also working for the police) is ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho.

3et in the Malay Archipelago, where Conrad spent much of his youth as an officer in the British Merchant Navy, VICTORY is a sombre yet brilliant study of good and evil in Conrad's mature manner. The characteristic theme of a man reaching out from his apparently total solitude in sympathy for another human being is explored through the story of Axel Heyst's attempt to rescue a girl from the machinations of a brutal gang. Conrad's extraordinary blend of moral profundity, pathos and bitter irony is conjured up in prose which is at once atmospheric and inimitable. The book is published to coincided with the film staring Rufus Sewell Sam Neill, William Defoe and Irene Jacob

Lord Jim explores the dilemmas of conscience, of moral isolation, of loyalty and betrayal confronting a sensitive individual whose romantic quest for an honourable ideal are tested to the limit. In this novel, Conrad draws on his background as Polish emigré, as well as his first-hand experience as a seaman, to experiment radically with the presentation of human frailty and doubt in the modern world

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War. At its center is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his conflict with his leader Agamemnon. Interwoven in the tragic sequence of events are powerfully moving descriptions of the ebb and flow of battle, the besieged city of Ilium, the feud between the gods, and the fate of mortals.