World War I began disastrously for the English when the Germans routed them at Mons, Belgium, on August 23 and 24, 1914. On September 29, 1914, the Anglo-Welsh writer Arthur Machen fictionalized this encounter in a newspaper story, claiming that the English were saved by the appearance of angelic bowmen sent by St. George. But his fiction became accepted as fact. The believers--notables G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle and C. S. Lewis, along with almost forgotten figures like Harold Be...

The Edwardian period was a time of great social and political change. The six texts in this edition are all notable for their imaginative portrayals of the future. This is the only critical edition of these works. Essays and introductory matter explore the themes in the novels, as well as the literary-historical context they appeared in.

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 is the first volume in William Manchester's epic three volume The Last Lion - the best-selling and definitive biography of one of Britain's pre-eminent prime ministers.When Winston Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, Imperial Britain stood at the splendid pinnacle of her power. Yet within a few years, the Empire would hover on the brink of a catastrophic new era. This first volume of the best...

The year 2000 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of The Great War and Modern Memory, winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and recently named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books. Fussell's landmark study of WWI remains as original and gripping today as ever before: a literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, the one that changed a generation, ushered in the mode...

Florence Nightingale was a healer, a comforter, and a nurturer. But like all of us, she had a dark side. Because of her mystique and her charisma, she always got what she wanted. Seldom did anyone really know her. They were drawn to her. They had to be with her. They admired her. At least one man literally worked himself to death for her. But they did not really know her. There is no doubt she was a force with which one had to attend. Denial of her passion and abilities generally led only ...

Every letter contains a miniature story, and here are some of the greatest. From Oscar Wilde's unconventional method of using the mail to cycling enthusiast Reginald Bray's quest to post himself, Simon Garfield uncovers a host of stories that capture the enchantment of this irreplaceable art (with a supporting cast including Pliny the Younger, Ted Hughes, Virginia Woolf, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, David Foster Wallace and the Little Red-Haired Girl). There is also a br...

This three-volume collection brings together the best of C.S. Lewis’s letters – some published for the first time. This second volume covers the years from 1931–1949, charting Lewis’ emergence as a great Christian thinker and apologist.C.S. Lewis was a most prolific letter writer and his personal correspondence reveals much of his private life, reflections, friendships and feelings. This collection, carefully chosen and arranged by Walter Hooper, is the most extensive ever publishe...

'We feasted on love, every mode of it - solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes as comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers.' C. S. LewisThe celebrated scholar and writer C. S. Lewis achieved great success in his life - yet to many he remained an engima. Although he had many friends, few if any ever saw the real, private Lewis and for six decades of his life he remaine...

Classic tales of the fantastic, creepy and weird, with a foreword from the award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo Del ToroMachen's weird tales of the creepy and fantastic finally come to Penguin Classics. With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories is the perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story "The White People"...

The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone. Lines such as 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?' and 'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old' have come to express the feelings of a nation about the horrors and aftermath of war. This new anthology provides a definitive record of the achievements of the Great War poets. As well as offerin...

Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse. She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, for which she was arrested. She was subsequently court-martialled, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. She was shot by a German firing squad at the age of 49. Her execution was greeted with worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage. A woman of profound faith, ...

Harold Schofield, a brilliant Oxford doctor who had laboured as a missionary in China for many years, was on his knees praying, Lord, give me missionaries from British Universities to help in China'. The day he died, D. E. Hoste applied to Hudson Taylor for mission work in the China Inland Mission (Now Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Schofield's prayer was answered as seven Cambridge students volunteered to leave behind cosy lives of wealth and privilege to serve God in whatever way they ...