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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘I pay very little regard…to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.’Humble and lowly, a young Fanny Price goes to live with her wealthy Aunt and Uncle at their grand house, Mansfield Park. Growing up with her privileged and spoilt cousins, the Bertrams, she lives in the shadows of their glamorous lives, but manages to find an ally in her cousin, Edmund.When Henry and Mary Crawford come to visit, the house is thrown into disarray as romance flourishes between the young people, leading Fanny to finally confront the extent of her true feelings for Edmund.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Christopher Newman is an American expatriate in Paris; his fortune made, he has moved to the Old World to enjoy his wealth and find a wife. Newman soon falls for a young widow, the aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde, but his brash New World sensibility horrifies her haughty family. Though the family oppose the idea of the couple’s marriage, reversals of fortune cause them to reconsider. When another suitor arrives on the scene all appears lost, until Newman befriends Claire’s younger brother Valentin and finds himself in possession of a dark family secret. As the novel unfolds, James’s unmistakable stylistic grace combines with his less well-known sense of melodramatic romance, resulting in a finale that combines duels, death, betrayal and blackmail.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.’The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achilles and the battles and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon. Attributed to Homer, The Iliad, along with The Odyssey, is still revered today as the oldest and finest example of Western Literature.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘In black ink my love may still shine bright…’Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare’s Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart. Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love.Enticing lovers and scholars alike, these 154 beautiful and sensual sonnets are as relevant and important today as when they were written 400 years ago.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.’Centred around a glorious yellow diamond that carries with it a menacing history, The Moonstone tells the story of Rachel Verinder, who inherits the stone on her eighteenth birthday. That very evening, the diamond is stolen and there begins an epic enquiry into hunting down the thief. At the same time, three Indian men, Brahmin guardians of the diamond are attempting to reclaim the stone in order to return it to their sacred Hindu Idol.Told from the perspective of 11different characters, Wilkie Collins’ tale of mystery and suspicion was considered the first modern English detective novel at its time of publication.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.’Set in the agricultural town of Raveloe in the English countryside, Silas Marner is a tragic figure. Exiled from a religious community because of a wrongful accusation of theft, he works from day to day as a weaver, saving his money and living a lonely life as a recluse.It is only when his money is stolen and a small orphan girl, Eppie appears in his life that Silas’s fortunes begin to change and he truly begins to learn what it means to regain his faith in life.

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HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.‘My true name is so well known in the Records or Registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work.’Born into the seedy world of Newgate Prison and abandoned as a baby at six months old, Moll Flanders soon learns that she can only rely on herself. Her story is an unapologetic one of bigamy, prostitution and theft told in her own indomitable and alluring way. Scurrilous and incorrigible, the reader is left wondering whether Moll is merely a brazen criminal, or a victim or her own circumstance.Defoe’s witty romp through the eighteenth-century underworld has much to say about the forces of good and evil and is undeniably one of his most satirical novels.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Grace Melbury, the only daughter of a timber-merchant, arrives home in Little Hintock after an expensive education and her father looks to find a husband for her. There are two rivals for her hand: Giles Winterborne, a good-hearted yeoman and her childhood sweetheart, and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious young doctor of good family. Fitzpiers wins her, but the mismatch brings unhappiness not just to the young couple, but to a wider circle in the woodland community.‘The Woodlanders’ is one of Hardy’s most powerful works and the one he liked best. With brooding sexual undertones, it addresses themes about which the author held strong views – the laws of divorce, the inequalities of society, and the uncertainty of land tenure.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘…for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.’Married to Charles, a provincial doctor, Emma Bovary yearns for a more glamorous life. Disenchanted with her husband and seeking an escape from their dull marriage she is soon tempted into a brief romantic liaison with another man. Although short-lived, she remains desirous of passion and the finer things in life and embarks on another affair, destroying her reputation.Considered scandalous at the time, Emma Bovary’s superficial and immoral behaviour shocked readers and caused moral outcry. Flaubert holds up to ridicule not only Madame Bovary herself, but the society that dares to judge her.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘“For,” said he, “there never was nor is there one chaste woman upon the face of earth.”’A collection of Persian, Arabian and Indian tales dating from the 9th century, Sir Richard Burton’s most well-known translation of Arabian Nights brings together ancient folklore and stories passed down from generation to generation.Featuring tales about love, history, tragedy and comedy as well as fables and fairy tales, this edition remains a well-loved collection of exotic and evocative stories. Fantastical and curious customs are bought to life by Burton’s translation in stories such as ‘The Lovers of Bassorah’, ‘The Concubine of Al-Maamun’ and ‘The Hunchback’s Tale’.