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First published in 1711, An Essay on Criticism was one of Pope's earliest major poems. As the title suggests, it is an exploration of what Pope considered to be the essential aspects of good critical writing.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (aka PG Wodehouse) wrote in excess of 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories between 1902 and 1974 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. Right Ho, Jeeves! is his second in a series of books written about a luckless young British millionaire named Bertram Wooster and his sharp valet, Jeeves.

Although unfamiliar with the Persian language, the eminent English poet and critic Richard le Gallienne had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1901 he published a collection of 261 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Justin Huntly McCarthy. In his introduction, Le Gallienne suggests that his ignorance of Persian was in fact an advantage as it allowed him to focus on producing good poetry rather than merely an accurate translation.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a poetic marvel, a work that has survived translation into many languages, while losing little of its force and its wry character. As a source of literary imagery and memorable quotations it ranks with the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. While Edward Fitzgerald was neither the first nor the most scholarly of the English translators of the Rubaiyat, his translation has been largely responsible for the world-wide popularity of this monument of classic Persian poetry.

The plot follows the usual trajectory of a young girl falling in love and the relationship becoming compromised by unforeseen circumstances. In this case, Austen’s heroine is a naïve country girl, Catherine Morland, who has an addiction to reading the Gothic horror novels which were so popular in the Regency period. When she is invited to stay at the family seat of her love interest and discovers it to be a vast and ancient castle, her romantic imagination runs riot. What secrets lie hidden in this vast pile over which the widowed head of the house exercises an iron control?

Baudelaire’s most famous collection of poems is The Flowers of Evil, which was published in 1857 and which was widely condemned as being unwholesome and decadent. The publication actually led to Baudelaire being prosecuted on a charge of offending public morals. There have been numerous translations of Baudelaire’s work into English, but many of them have been judged as not being particularly successful. Strum’s version of The Flowers of Evil is unusual and notable for its accuracy in capturing the elusive appeal of the originals.

Thomas Troward (1847 - 1916) was a divisional Judge in the British administration of India. In his later years, he developed a distinctive discipline of personal development which he called Mental Science. He had a particular reverence for Jesus. In the introduction, the author asserts that "we possess latent powers which a better knowledge of the truth regarding ourselves will enable us to develop, and that the purpose of the Bible is to lead us into this knowledge in a perfectly natural manner while guarding us against the dangers arising from misuse of it."

The story concerns the young and vivacious Emma Watson, one of six children of a widowed clergyman. Emma has spent most of her life under the care of a wealthy aunt of liberal views, and has received a good education. However, when her aunt enters into a second marriage, Emma is forced to return to the family home, where she is affronted by the crass hunting for husbands undertaken her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

Wells had a keen interest in the political and social issues of his day, one of the most significant of which was the outbreak of the First World War. This book, written in 1916, presents the story of Mr Britling, a political commentator, living in comfortable security in his country estate at Matchings Easy, in Essex. He entertains a varied assembly of guests, including Mr Direck, an American journalist, and Herr Heinrich, a German philology student who acts as a family tutor, and the general atmosphere is a hectic social whirl.

Alexander Pope was celebrated for his command of classical Greek and produced seminal translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Prior to the preparation of these translations, Pope took advantage of his mastery of the classical style and also his waspish wit to compose a burlesque epic about the theft of a lock of hair. The incident that inspired Pope was related to him by his friend John Caryll. Lord Petre had cut off a lock of the hair of Arabella Fermor, whom he was courting at the time, without asking the lady's permission.

Unlike most of Peacock's novels, The Misfortunes of Elphin has a distinct plot, built around the adventures of prominent figures of Arthurian legend, like Taliesin, the bard, the princes Elphin, and Seithenyn and King Arthur himself. The drama comes to a satisfactory resolution when Arthur's wife, Gwenyvar, who has been kidnapped by the ambitious King Melvas, is restored to her husband, after some skilful negotiation by Seithenyn and a cunning abbot.

Oedipus the King is the story of a man whose life is destroyed by his own good intentions. When a terrible secret from his past is brought to the light of day, the consequences are chilling - and ineluctable.

Amongst all the figures in the history of Western art forms, Beethoven is one of the most radical and influential. Not only did he produce some of the most celebrated and recognizable music of all time, but his influence dramatically accelerated the development of musical composition. He was instrumental in raising the status of the composer from that of a court servant to one of an independent artist.

This enigmatic scripture is attributed to the mysterious sage Lao Tze, who is believed to have lived in the sixth century BCE. In the present translation by religious scholar Paul Carus, the title is presented as The Canon of Reason and Virtue, and in the body of the text Carus renders the word usually translated as “Tao” as “reason.” This book is an extract from the author’s larger work, Lao-Tze’s Tao Teh King. The latter contained an historical introduction, the Chinese text, a transliteration, explanatory notes and an index, including the Chinese terms.

Although Rupert Brooke is known today as a "war poet", he was never actually engaged in combat: His death was the result of an infection from an insect bite that occurred while he was in transit to commence duty in Turkey. Unlike Wilfred Owen, who had a bitter experience of life in the trenches, Brooke's vision was of the glory rather than the horror of war. Only the first section focuses on issues stemming from the war. Poems in the other sections are generally wistful evocations of places that the poet had visited in his travels and reflections on youthful love.

This classic farce was first performed in 1892. Since the record-breaking initial run in London, it has been revived many times around the world in a variety of languages, and has also been adapted for a number of presentations on film. The play incorporates many of the features which have become standard in romantic comedies: a cross dressing central character, identity confusion, young lovers kept apart by parental influence and older lovers unexpectedly reunited.

Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was a divisional Judge in British-administered India, who, in his later years, developed a highly idiosyncratic New Thought philosophy. One of Troward's most startling assertions was that thought had the power to directly create phenomenal manifestation. This theme is explored in detail in this particular book. According to Troward, the universe is the expression of a Universal Creative Principle, which is activated by the self-contemplation of Spirit. To be complete, creation is obliged to incorporate physical expression.

Young Cedric lives with his widowed mother in New York. His late father was a British earl who had been disowned by his father for marrying an American. As all of the earl of Dorincourt's sons have now died, he begrudgingly looks to Cedric as his sole heir. While the earl soon comes to love the endearing little Cedric, conflict arises when a strange woman appears on the scene and insists that her son is the true heir.

Spend your next 30 minutes traveling to a future where first adopters have the most advanced robot butlers or where everyone has a superpower - except the young man you just met. Or perhaps you prefer a good hard-boiled detective story or one about a hardscrabble life in the Australian outback.

This brief and lively pamphlet on the history of the medieval church is a concise and entertaining introduction to an extremely complex subject. Covering the period between the seventh century and 1500, the author provides succinct summaries of major developments like the Crusades, the growth of scholastic and mystical theology, the removal of the Papacy to Avignon, and the great councils convened to resolve the papal schism.