Author: Centaur Classics

‘‘In Search of Lost Time’ is widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century.’ —Harold Bloom’At once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of …

This book contains the (almost) complete short stories of Guy de Maupassant in the chronological order of their original publication. Here you will find the largest collection of Maupassant’s short s …

This book contains the complete novellas and tales of Henry James in the chronological order of their original publication. Das E-Book Henry James: The Complete Novellas and Tales (Centaur Classics) …

«Sense and Sensibility» is the first published novel by Jane Austen. Originally published under the pseudonym ‘A Lady, ‘ Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Mari …

«The Divine Comedy» is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. …

A mysterious young widow arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years, with her young son and servant. She lives there in strict seclusion under the assumed na …

‘One of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world.’ —D. H. Lawrence ‘‘Moby-Dick’ is the book which I put down with the unqualified thought, ‘I wish I had written that’…’ —William Faulkner ‘ …

«Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero» is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847–48, satirizing society in early 19th-century Britain. The book’s title comes from John Bunyan’ …

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset …

Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as "The Pickwick Papers"–-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivate …

Following the tremendous popular success of «Jane Eyre», which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle tha …

This book contains the complete novels of Charles Dickens in the chronological order of their original publication. [1836-1837] The Pickwick Papers [1837-1839] Oliver Twist [1838-1839] Nicholas Nickl …

This book contains the complete Edgar Allan Poe’s tales in the chronological order of their original publication. Here you can also find the two unfinished tales ‘The Journal of Julius Rodman’ and ‘T …

‘Only Shakespeare comes close to Cervantes’ genius.’ —Harold Bloom ‘The highest creation of genius has been achieved by Shakespeare and Cervantes, almost alone.’ —Samuel Taylor Coleridge ‘What a monu …

‘One of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world.’ —Upton Sinclair ‘The greatest of all novels.’ —Leo Tolstoy ‘Hugo is unquestionably the most powerful talent that has appeared in France in the ni …

‘Among the writers who have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen.’ —Thomas Macaulay ‘‘Pride and Prejudice’ is the best novel in the langu …

«Gulliver's Travels» is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a cla …

‘The last word of the landlord’s literature and the brilliant one at that.’ —Fyodor Dostoyevsky’The best ever Russian historical novel.’ —Nikolai Leskov’One of the most remarkable books of our age.’ …

‘All modern American literature comes from… ‘Huckleberry Finn’. It’s the best book we’ve had.’ —Ernest Hemingway’Probably the most stupendous event of my whole life.’ —Henry Louis Mencken'[Huck is] o …

Dark allegory describes the narrator’s journey up the Congo River and his meeting with, and fascination by, Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. …

"One of the few English novels written for grown-up people." —Virginia Woolf "What do I think of ‘Middlemarch’? What do I think of glory — except that in a few …

‘‘Madame Bovary’ has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone: it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment.’ —He …

Joseph Conrad’s 1904 adventure novel, set amid the mist-covered mountains of a fictional South American republic, spins a colorful tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion. The story begins half …

«A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man» represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce’s «Dubliners» and the symbolism of «Ulysses» and is essential to the understanding of the late …

Laurence Sterne’s great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and lif …

‘Dostoyevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss.’ —Albert Einstein ‘Dostoyevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious; that is in reality the reason why his characters seem …

Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the roma …

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian’s beauty; he believes that Dorian’s beauty is responsible for the ne …

Hailed as one of the world’s supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, «The Death of Ivan Ilyich» is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevita …

Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitous …

Buck, a sturdy crossbreed canine (half St. Bernard, half Shepard), is a dog born to luxury and raised in a sheltered Californian home. But then he is kidnapped and sold to be a sled dog in the harsh …

‘A great book because it gives an honest picture of the relationship between father and son, and it could do that because Butler was a truly independent observer, and above all because he was courage …

‘Among the few English novels which we can call indisputably great.’ —Virginia Woolf ‘Crusoe himself is a representative of humanity in general; neither his intellectual nor his moral qualities set h …

‘The finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country.’ —Henry James ‘[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy.’ —Malcolm Cowley ‘There coul …

‘One of humanity’s most impressive achievements — perhaps even its supreme achievement — in the art of prose fiction.’ —Ronald Hingley ‘Dostoyevsky’s most confused and violent novel, and his most sat …

‘[‘Fathers and Sons’] stirs the mind… because everything is permeated with the most complete and most touching sincerity.’ —Dmitry Pisarev ‘[Turgenev] was of the stuff of which glories are made.’ —He …

‘The genius of Richardson’s narration is not simply the innovative use of epistolary fiction… but also the subtlety with which he unfolds the dark tragedy of Clarissa’s fatal attraction to Lovelace.’ …

‘The tragedy of tragedies.’ —Wang Guowei ‘[‘The Dream of the Red Chamber’] is to the Chinese very much what ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ is to Russian and ‘In Search of Lost Time’ is to French literature …

‘It is as impossible to miss the light of its extreme beauty and wisdom as it would be to miss the full moon on a clear night.’ —Rebecca West ‘A masterpiece.’ —Julian Barnes ‘I don’t know how many ti …

‘There are few novels which grip so thrillingly as those first read in childhood, and for me none which has quite matched the excitement of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’.’ —P. D. James ‘ …

‘Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination.’ —Irving Howe ‘What a commonplace genius he has; or a genius for …

‘I do not say there is no character as well-drawn in Shakespeare [as D’Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly.’ —Robert Louis Stevenson ‘A masterpiece which remains as fresh and livi …

‘Trollope did not write for posterity. He wrote for the day, the moment; but these are just the writers whom posterity is apt to put into its pocket.’ —Henry James ‘A wise man told me I would learn m …

‘The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.’ —E. M. Forster ‘[Lawrence] was a language, a setting, a world entirely of his own… He was, like all true poetry, against tepid living and tepid …

‘One of the comic gems of the English language.’ —Robert Mc Crum ‘[Jerome saw] that one of the funniest things a human being has is his conscience.’ —V. S. Pritchett Martyrs to hypochondria and gener …

‘Nature has endowed [Goethe] more generously than anyone since Shakespeare.’ —Friedrich Schiller ‘[In] ‘Werther’, all the richness of [Goethe’s] gift was apparent… The extreme, nerve-shattering sensi …

Here you can find our list of the 100 greatest novels of all time. …

This book contains the complete novels of Virginia Woolf in the chronological order of their original publication.[1915] The Voyage Out[1919] Night and Day[1920] Jacob’s Room[1925] Mrs Dalloway[1927] …

Netochka Nezvanova – a ‘Nameless Nobody’ – tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, Efimov, a failed musician who believes he is a neglected genius. The young girl is strangely dra …

Dostoyevsky’s narrator has been summoned to his uncle Colonel Rostanev’s remote country estate in the hope that he will act as decoy and rescue Rostanev’s former ward, Nastenka Yezhevikin, from the t …