Clásicos

En 1984, la sociedad ha cambiado tanto que resulta irreconocible. La Franja Aérea 1, la antigua Gran Bretaña, está sometida a la implacable vigilancia del Gran Hermano. Nadie puede escapar de ella... salvo, tal vez, Winston Smith. En su puesto del Ministerio de la Verdad, donde trabaja reescribiendo la historia, sueña en secreto con ser libre. En un mundo donde el amor y el sexo están prohibidos, donde no es fácil diferenciar amigos de enemigos, conocerá a Julia y a O’Brien, y jurará rebelarse.

Aus dem Zeitalter der Uniformität. Aus dem Zeitalter der Einsamkeit und des Doppeldenk. Aus dem Zeitalter des Big Brothers. Von mir, Winston Smith. Grüße. Es ist das Jahr 1984 und das Leben hat sich massiv verändert. Luftstützpunkt Nummer Eins, vormals bekannt als Großbritannien, ist ein Ort, den Big Brother ständig überwacht und wo sich niemand verstecken kann. Außer vielleicht Winston Smith. Während er im Ministerium für Wahrheit daran arbeitet, die Geschichte umzuschreiben, träumt er insgeheim von der Freiheit.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read, performed, and adapted today.

Gerry Wade is known to his houseguests as a man who can sleep the day away, so a practical joke is devised at his expense. Eight alarm clocks are set to go off, one after the other, starting at 6:30 a.m. But when morning arrives, one clock is not where they left it, and the joke has unfolded with tragic consequences.

Anthony Cade undertakes a small, seemingly innocuous favour for a friend which begins to draw him into the center of a deadly conspiracy. Unable to escape the web he becomes entangled within, he begins to realize that the simple favor has placed him in serious danger. As events unfold, the combined forces of the Metropolitan Police and the French Sûreté corner in on Chimneys, the great country estate that hides an unbelievable secret.

Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy: The Major Novels, masterfully read by two Audie award-winning narrators - Jonathan Keeble and David Rintoul - includes unabridged recordings of four of the greatest novels of all time and the great authors' lasting masterpieces: The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment, WAr & Peace, and Anna Karenina. Translations by Constance Garnett and Aylmer & Louise Maude.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Anna Karenina, a literary masterpiece by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Brontë reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There, she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquette.

Reegarded by many as the greatest American novel, Herman Melville’s tale of the hunt for the white whale, Moby-Dick, is a sublime work of the imagination, an American Odyssey. It is at once an adventure story of the high seas, and an exploration of the uncharted regions of the soul.

James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth. Joyce's aim was to tell the truth — to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Don Quixote and experience the compelling world of this classic novel!

Bartleby is one of the final works of fiction published by Herman Melville before he slipped into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby Dick. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, Bartleby is often thought of as Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce decides they have had enough, and chooses to live a different kind of life?

George Eliot’s sweeping story of a manufacturing town and its inhabitants is widely acknowledged to be her masterpiece and is considered to be one of the greatest English novels. A compelling exploration of social change and human nature, Middlemarch is the most requested title on our website and our edition is an ambitious production that reflects its literary significance.

Silas Marner is the third novel by George Eliot, published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, Eliot's celebrated novel is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated treatment of a variety of issues ranging from religion to industrialisation to community.

The Great Gatsby takes us to New York in the 1920s, where jazz can be heard everywhere, underground alcohol trade flourishes, and the mafia rules the city. It is a time of great crisis and equally great profits. A time when it was easiest to become somebody in a short period after previously being nobody. Such a person was Jay Gatsby, dreaming of great wealth and power. To fulfill these dreams, he gets involved in the gears of the criminal underworld and high finance.

Partners in Crime is a collection of short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, a couple who own and manage Blunt’s International Detective Agency. In their previous adventure Tommy and Tuppence rescued the pink pearl against all odds. Now the best and brightest are at their door, and throughout these 15 stories we see them crack cases from the mysterious to the murderous.

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.

This coming-of-age novel explores themes including religious skepticism, socialism, ennui, English society, sexual relationships, and metaphysics, as George searches for an ideal to which he can devote his life. Like all Wells’s novels, Tono-Bungay abounds with social critique.

The thesis of this story is that “because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world. To attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for [hu]mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.”

When the village is besieged by strange thefts by an uncatchable thief, the clues might lie with the odd-acting stranger. Revealing his incredible secret, he has turned himself invisible, Griffin escapes and seeks those whom he might suborn into aiding him. Driven to darkness by his inability to make himself visible again, Griffin decides to use his misfortune to terrorise others. Greeted with fear and suspicion and betrayed by those around him, Griffin is determined to show just how dangerous an unseen enemy can be.

Hailed by Arthur Miller as ‘the mad inventor of modern theatre’, Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, poet and novelist whose groundbreaking works mingled naturalism and psychology and paved the way for Expressionist drama. A prolific writer – penning over 60 plays, 19 novels and nine autobiographies – his turbulent life was marked by emotional conflict. This wide-ranging collection brings together 13 of his most important dramas and a semi-autobiographical ‘occult diary’, enhanced through stunning soundscapes and music composed by Strindberg himself.

On the eve of his wedding to the beautiful Mercedes, Edmond Dantès is betrayed by jealous rivals and wrongfully imprisoned for treason. Locked away in the dreadful Château d'If, he spends years plotting his escape and planning a brilliant revenge against those who destroyed his life. As the mysterious and powerful Count of Monte Cristo, he returns to exact justice, but along the way, he faces his own vulnerability.

A priceless gem, a diamond from India imbued with religious significance, is stolen on the very night it is given as an eighteenth birthday present to a captivating heiress; and so the mystery begins. The rules for the golden age of crime novels are formed in The Moonstone – an English country house, a complex cast of characters, the bungling local constabulary, a celebrated sleuth and the reconstruction of the crime.

"Emma" is the fourth book by celebrated British author Jane Austen and the final book to be published during her lifetime. The story concerns Emma Woodhouse, a precocious young lady who fancies herself a matchmaker and thus intrudes upon the love lives of her friends and relations to find them suitable mates. When she attempts to cement the romance between her cousin Harriet (a girl of modest means) and a wealthy suitor, Emma is admonished by her brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley, for her meddling and a series of romantic entanglements soon ensues.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

The Beatrix Potter Collection is perfect for introducing a new generation to the magic of her adored classic stories. Featuring her much-loved children’s tales and showcasing some of the most recognisable characters in English literature, it will enthral and entertain young listeners whilst providing warm nostalgia for those already acquainted.

One of Jane Austen’s most beloved works, Pride and Prejudice, is vividly brought to life by Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike ( Gone Girl). In her bright and energetic performance of this British classic, she expertly captures Austen’s signature wit and tone. Her attention to detail, her literary background, and her performance in the 2005 feature film version of the novel provide the perfect foundation from which to convey the story of Elizabeth Bennet, her four sisters, and the inimitable Mr. Darcy.

Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a tale of love and marriage told with irony and insight. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth have met and seperated years before. Their reunion, after the passage or irrecoverable years of their youth, forces a recognition of the false values that drove them apart.

Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down.

When the self-effacing 10-year-old Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relations at Mansfield Park she seems shy and withdrawn beside her witty and vivacious cousins. Growing up in the Bertram household, she is always treated as an inferior, only finding an ally in her cousin Edmund. But Fanny's steadfast and purposeful character eventually makes her an indispensable part of the household. During the absence of Fanny's uncle, the others become entangled in a maze of flirtation and intrigue upon the arrival of Mary Crawford and her brother Henry.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

A Signature Performance: Tim Curry, the source of our inspiration, returns – this time, he captures the quirky enthusiasm of this goofily visionary adventure.

George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; and the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career.

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.