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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.The Professor is Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, reflecting her own experience of life in Brussels and published after her untimely death. Viewed as a precursor to the narrative style and characterization she perfected in her later works, such as Jane Eyre, the novel is Brontë’s portrayal of a love story from a male perspective.Writing from the point of view of orphaned young teacher William Crimsworth – as the sole male protagonist among Brontë’s works – the author allows herself a freedom of action in love and will that reveals her character’s loves, desires, and ambitions, as he forges a new life on his own terms in Brussels. William finds himself caught between the desire he feels for Zoraide Reuter, the beguiling head of the girls’ school where he teaches, and the gentle love he feels for one of his pupils, Frances Henri.Exploring questions of love, identity, freedom, and independence, The Professor is an important work in the small opus that is Charlotte Brontë’s significant contribution to English literature.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Set in the 1740s, just after the start of the French and Indian wars, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer tells the story of a young Natty Bumppo, most famously known as ‘Hawkeye’, and his Mohican ‘brother’ Chingachgook, as they attempt to rescue Chingachgook’s betrothed, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Hurons. When Bumppo’s friends Harry March and Tom Hutter are also captured, Bumppo must go on his first warpath in order to rescue them.Cooper’s final addition to his classic Leatherstocking series is one of the earliest novels to be considered truly ‘American’, due in no small part to the novel’s protagonist, who embodied the popular American ideals of individualism and liberty. The novel is a worthy prequel to the popular The Last of the Mohicans, full of adventure, suspense and romance.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Caution comes too late when we are in the midst of evils.’Set just before the Jacobite Rising in 1715, Scott drew upon the political and economic struggles leading up to the rebellion and the tumultuous history of the Highlands in his classic adventure novel Rob Roy. Despite the book’s title, Frank Osbaldistone is the protagonist, travelling through England and the Scottish Highlands to collect a debt owed to his father by his cousin Rashleigh. On his journey he comes across the mysterious and striking Rob Roy, the infamous yet hunted outlaw. A story about justice, love and the harsh realities of 18th-century Highland life, Scott’s work is still viewed as the ultimate historical adventure novel.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and to tell her that it smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to say such things…’One harsh winter in 1900s New England, Ethan Frome toils at his farm while struggling to maintain a bearable existence with his forbidding wife, Zeena. When Ethan takes Zeena’s cousin, Mattie, home from a dance he is entranced: Mattie brings with her the possibility for happiness, and with that she quickly becomes a symbol of hope for Ethan.First published in 1911, Ethan Frome is an intimate look at choices not made and lives not yet lived. Told through the eyes of a city outsider, this heartbreaking portrait of three lives haunted by thwarted dreams remains for many the most subtle and moving of Wharton’s works.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.’Set in fictitious Coketown, England during the Industrial Revolution of the 1850s, Dickens wished to expose the enormous gulf between the rich and poor through his writing. In Hard Times, the social and moral purpose of his work is at its most evident. Openly ironic and satirical in its tone, Dickens suggests a mechanization of society, where the wealthy are ruthless and uncharitable towards those less fortunate than themselves.Siblings Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are raised by their father, a harsh and pragmatic educator and his influence means that they go on to lead lives that are lacking in all areas. Louisa marries the arrogant and greedy Josiah Bounderby, ending in an unhappy pairing and the unfeeling and villainous Tom robs his own brother-in-law’s bank. As their father watches their plight, he realises that his own principles may have led to their downfall.

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A masterpiece of social satire, featuring one of literature’s best-loved characters, Becky Sharp.Ruthless social climber and irrepressible anti-hero Becky Sharp will do anything to raise her position in Society, from impoverished orphan to woman of means. Clever, lively and resourceful, Becky is the total opposite of her naive and sentimental schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a pampered yet good-natured girl from a wealthy family.As both women pursue love and life in London, against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, Thackeray paints a vivid portrait of decadent Regency England and satirises its corruption and flaws to delightful effect.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘The red and yellow tulips, heavy with flowers, seemed to lean upon the dusk. A grey cat, dragging its belly, crept across the lawn, and a black one, its shadow, trailed after.’Powerful and evocative, each of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories is a masterclass in the form that made her name. Cut tragically short at the age of 34, hers was a life of passion that took her from New Zealand to Bohemian London and Paris. These various landscapes are reflected with verve in her writing, and are peopled with astutely and intimately drawn characters: lonely Miss Brill in her ermine, Colonel Pinner’s adrift daughters, mysterious Pearl Fulton.Praised by Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, Mansfield’s inimitable stories are essential reading.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds…’Set in the industrial unrest of 1840s Manchester, Mary Barton is a factory-worker's daughter living a working-class life in Victorian England. She soon attracts the attentions of the mill-owner's son, Harry Carson, and in the hope that marrying him will improve her prospects and help her to transcend class boundaries, she rejects her former lover Jem Wilson.However, when Harry is shot the main suspect is Jem and Mary finds herself torn between the two men. At the same time, she discovers that her father, John Barton, who has been active in fighting for the rights of his fellow workers is implicated in the murder. Gaskell's exploration of the class division and the oppression of the working-class is demonstrated effectively through the character of Mary, highlighting how lack of communication and mistrust can arise through such vast differences in lifestyle and wealth.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories…This heart-warming collection of festive short stories and novellas perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas. Focused on the journeys taken through life and the inherent goodness of mankind, these tales explore the true meaning of Christmas and revel in the joyful season of goodwill. Imbued with a moral message, Dickens’s writing gives a voice to the plight of working-class families during a period of social and political change in Victorian England.With such tales as ‘The Chimes’, ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’ and ‘What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older’, this is a beautiful collection for Dickens fans, and a wonderful companion for all those who cherish ‘A Christmas Carol’.

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HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?’Set on the bleak moors of Yorkshire, Lockwood is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights, the home of his new landlord, Heathcliff. The intense and wildly passionate Heathcliff tells the story of his life, his all-consuming love for Catherine Earnshaw and the doomed outcome of that relationship, leading to his revenge.Poetic, complex and grand in its scope, Emily Brontë's masterpiece is considered one of the most unique gothic novels of its time.

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