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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods.’Still considered one of the most important and groundbreaking works of science ever written, Darwin’s eminently readable exploration of the evolutionary process challenged most of the strong beliefs of the Western world. Forced to question the idea of the Creator, mid-nineteenth century readers were faced with Darwin’s theories on the laws of natural selection and the randomness of evolution, causing massive controversy at the time. However, Darwin’s theories remain instrumental in providing the backbone to modern biology today.

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John Bunyan’s much-loved allegory, telling the story of Christian and his journey to the Celestial City.THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, John Bunyan’s masterful religious allegory, narrates the journey of an everyman hero, Christian, as he attempts to navigate the trials and tribulations of this world, the City of Destruction, on the path towards paradise, the Celestial City. Though weighed down by the burden of original sin, Christian overcomes the distractions of the world, moving past the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, while simultaneously resisting the temptations of the Worldy Wise, the Vain and the Ignorant. The product of a lifetime of religious work and thought, Bunyan’s virtuosic narrative fundamentally altered Protestant belief, and remains one of the most important and influential works in the English language.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.From the author of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ is a tale of love, tragedy, and the changing charm of traditional village life when it is met with the cold reality of modernity.Centring on the quaint rural village of Mellstock, set deep within Hardy’s imagined and picturesque county of Wessex, the novel revolves around a double plot of the hopeful love story of Dick Dewey and Fancy Day and the tragic demise of the Mellstock Choir, and what the crumbling of long-held traditions means to the local community. The arrival of Mr Maybold, a new vicar with newfangled ideas, unsettles the local community with ideas of revolutionary change, in which the church and its generations-old choir are an anchor.Considered one of Hardy’s most upbeat and optimistic novels, Under the Greenwood Tree explores issues of past and future, hope and love, and is a delightful addition to the Collins’ canon of Thomas Hardy classic novels.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Don't you sometimes feel that this is the kind of life we were meant to live on this earth? Everything we need, everything, right here, right at our fingertips.’Said to be inspired by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Wyss’ tale of a family stranded at sea and washed up on a tropical island has become a much-loved classic. As the Swiss pastor, his wife and four sons struggle to create a life for themselves on the island, they soon learn to use their own ingenuity and rely upon the natural resources supplied by the nature that surrounds them. Daily challenges and struggles test the family, but each member discovers how to harness their own unique skills and qualities to overcome any obstacle.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Set in the fictional country of Ruritania, The Prisoner of Zenda tells the story of Rudolf Rassendyll, identical cousin to King Rudolf of Ruritania, who must stand in for the king at his coronation when a plot to steal the crown leaves the king drugged and unable to attend. Rudolf must foil the plans of the king’s brother, Prince Michael, and when the king is kidnapped and taken to a castle in Zenda, Rudolf must overcome the plots of the prince’s mistress and his henchman in order to rescue him.Anthony Hope’s swashbuckling adventure is held up as his greatest work of fiction and sparked its own genre, Ruritanian romance, named after the fictional country in which the story is set.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Guy Fawkes night, Diggory Venn, a reddleman dyed red from his trade, transports a young woman, Thomasin Yeobright, to her aunt’s house on Egdon Heath. Despite Venn’s love for the sweet-natured Thomasin, he agrees to secure the man of her choice, the fickle innkeeper Damon Wildeve, who delayed his marriage to Thomasin earlier that day. Wildeve is still enchanted by the beautiful Eustacia Vye, who detests the heath upon which she lives with her grandfather and longs for a glamorous life abroad. When Thomasin’s cousin, Clym Yeobright, returns from his life as a diamond merchant in Paris, Eustacia sees her chance to escape. However, Wildeve cannot let her go.

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From Collins Classics and the author of ‘The Great Gatsby’ a marriage unravels in this autobiographical tale.‘Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.’Set on the French Riviera in the 1920s, American Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are the epitome of chic, living a glamorous lifestyle and entertaining friends at their villa. Young film star Rosemary Hoyt arrives in France and becomes entranced by the couple. It is not long before she is attracted to the enigmatic Dick, but he and his wife hold dark secrets and as their marriage becomes more fractured, Fitzgerald laments the failure of idealism and the carefully constructed trappings of high society in the Roaring Twenties.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.’When Richard Hannay is warned of an assassination plot that has the potential to take Britain into a war, and then a few days later discovers the murdered body of the American that warned him in his flat, he becomes a prime suspect. He flees to the moors of Scotland and a spirited chase begins as he is pursued by the police and the German spies involved with stealing British plans.Buchan’s tale unfolds into one of the seminal and most influential 'chase' books, mimicked by many, yet unrivalled in the tension and mystery created by his writing. Buchan reveres Hannay as an ordinary man who puts his country's good before his own and the classic themes of the novel influenced many films and subsequent 'man-on-the-run' novels.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.“For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive.”When a strange, meteor-like object lands in the heart of England, the inhabitants of Earth find themselves victims of a terrible attack. A ruthless race of Martians, armed with heat rays and poisonous smoke, is intent on destroying everything that stands in its way. As the unnamed hero struggles to find his way across decimated wastelands, the fate of the planet hangs in the balance . . .H. G. Wells was a pioneer of modern science fiction. First serialised in the UK in 1897, The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to depict conflict with an extraterrestrial race, and has influenced countless adaptations and sequels.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.’Set in 16th-Century England and following the lives of two young boys, The Prince and the Pauper is a classic and timeless tale. Tom Canty, the lowly pauper is almost identical in appearance to Edward Tudor, a prince. Unbeknownst to those around them, the boys strike up an unlikely friendship and soon realise that with their similar looks they could easily pass for one another.When the Prince’s father dies, some of the more underhand court officials persuade the pauper to act as the Prince in order to reap the benefits of the ‘mistake’ and there follows a tale of friendship and growing up in one of Mark Twain’s most infamous works.

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