Author: Tom Griffith

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According to Mohammed, the one true religion was revealed to five great prophets before him – Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. But each time their message was ignored and people chose to worship …

With an Introduction by Rosemary O’Day.London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greate …

With an Introduction by Professor Stuart Sim.John Bunyan was variously a tinker, soldier, Baptist minister, prisoner and writer of outstanding narrative genius which reached its apotheosis in this, h …

According to tradition Cervantes first conceived his comic masterpiece in jail – his avowed intent being to debunk the romances of chivalry. From first publication Don Quixote was a best-seller, init …

Translated by J.J. Graham, revised by F.N. Maude Abridged and with an Introduction by Louise Willmot.On War is perhaps the greatest book ever written about war. Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian soldie …

Cook’s three voyages of discovery, which took place between 1768 and 1779, are among the most remarkable achievements in the history of exploration. Cook charted vast areas of the globe with astonish …

With an Introduction by Jeff Wallace.’A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die…’.Darwin’s theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to ort …

With an Introduction and revised translation by Adrianne Tooke.Sentimental Education has been described both as the first modern novel and as a novel to end all novels. Weaving a poignant love story …

The Prophet represents the acme of Kahlil Gibran’s achievement. Writing in English, Gibran adopted the tone and cadence of King James I’s Bible, fusing his personalised Christian philosophy with a sp …

Translated with Notes by George Rawlinson. With an Introduction by Tom Griffith.Herodotus (c480-c425) is ‘The Father of History’ and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. T …

Kafka’s final novel was written during 1922, when the tuberculosis that was to kill him was already at an advanced stage. Fragmentary and unfinished, it perhaps never could have been finished; perhap …

With an Introduction by Angus Calder.As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First Wor …

Translated by C.E.Detmold. With an Introduction by Lucille Margaret Kekewich.Written in 1513 for the Medici, following their return to power in Florence, The Prince is a handbook on ruling and the ex …

With an Introduction by Helen Moore.The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is one of the most enduring and influential stories in world literature. Its themes – love, war, relig …

Tamburlaine the Great – I and II, Dr Faustus (A Text and B Text) The Jew of Malta, Edward II, The Massacre at Paris, Dido Queen of Carthage. With Introductions by Emma Smith. If Shakespeare had died …

With an Introduction by Mishtooni Bose.More s Utopia is a complex, innovative and penetrating contribution to political thought, culminating in the famous description of the Utopians, who live accord …

Translated by Thomas Common. With an Introduction by Nicholas Davey.This astonishing series of aphorisms, put into the mouth of the Persian sage Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, contains the kernel of Niet …

With an Introduction by Derek Matravers.Rights of Man is a classic statement of the belief in humanity’s potential to change the world for the better. Published as a reply to Burke’s Reflections on t …

With an Introduction and Notes by Bernard Waites, The Open University In 1795 Mungo Park, a twenty-four year old Scottish surgeon, set out from the Gambia to trace the course of the Niger, a river of …

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) began his celebrated diary on 1st January 1660 immediately prior to the Restoration of Charles II to the throne and the subsequent loosening of the rigid moral and social cod …

Translated by John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan. With an Introduction by Stephen Watt.The ideas of Plato (c429-347BC) have influenced Western philosophers for over two thousand years. Such …

This translation first appeared in a privately printed edition in 1904 (the translator remains anonymous).With an Introduction by Derek Matravers.When it was first published in 1781, The Confessions …

With an Introduction by Derek Matravers.In The Social Contract Rousseau (1712-1778) argues for the preservation of individual freedom in political society. An individual can only be free under the la …

Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson.The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating …

When I received the script of The Voyage of the Discovery I was amazed. I had only to read a few pages to realise that it was literature, unique of its kind . . . Scott’s mind was like wax to receive …

The final letters and diary entries of Robert Falcon Scott – written in his last days, while hopelessly trapped in a tiny tent by a raging blizzard on the Great Ice Barrier – are among the most poign …

Translated by H. F. Cary With an introduction by Claire Honess.Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the most important and innovative figures of the European Middle Ages. Writing his Comedy (the epi …

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in Trier into a middle-class Jewish family in 1818, by the time of his deat …

In The Descent of Man Darwin addresses many of the issues raised by his notorious Origin of Species: finding in the traits and instincts of animals the origins of the mental abilities of humans, of l …

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in Trier into a middle-class Jewish family in 1818, by the time of his deat …

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was one of the brightest stars of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was his most important book. Fir …

Translated by Antony M. Ludovici. With an Introduction by Ray Furness.The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche’s last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controver …

Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an (also known as The Koran) is the sacred book of Islam. It is the word of God whose truth was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabri …

With an introduction by Dr. Laurence Marlow.A spectre is haunting Europe (and the world). Not, in the twenty-first century, the spectre of communism, but the spectre of capitalism. Marx’s prediction …

Notes and Introduction by Mark G. Spencer, Brock University, Ontario John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the most influential English writer of his time. His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690 …

With an Introduction by Ellen Rees, Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo.The plays of Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) are critically acclaimed throughout the world. The father of …

With an Introduction by Dr Richard Serjeantson, Trinity College, Cambridge Since its first publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes s Leviathan has been recognised as one of the most compelling, and most c …

No nineteenth-century American writer can claim to be as modern as Henry David Thoreau. His central preoccupations – the illusory nature of much of what we call ‘progress’, the proper symbiotic relat …

Translated by A.A. Brill With an Introduction by Stephen Wilson.Sigmund Freud’s audacious masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has never ceased to stimulate controversy since its publication in …

Abridged, with an Introduction by Patrick Renshaw.Democracy in America is a classic of political philosophy. Hailed by John Stuart Mill and Horace Greely as the finest book ever written on the nature …

With an Introduction by Colin Harrison, Lecturer in American Literature at Liverpool John Moores University. I was sitting upon a low bench, made of rough boards, and without coat or hat. I was handc …

Translated by George Chapman, with Introductions by Jan Parker.Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, Achilles dra …

When people use the adjective ‘Kafkaesque’, it is The Trial they have in mind – the nightmarish world of Joseph K., where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and any help there may …

Translated, with an introduction, by John R. Williams.This selection of Kafka’s shorter prose writings includes one of the few works published during his lifetime: the harrowing story of Gregor Samsa …

With an introduction by Charlotte R. Brown and William Edward Morris.David Hume (1711 1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English, as well as a master stylist. This volume conta …