"The Young Pretenders" (1895) is a children's book whose sophistication, humour and ironies are nowadays appreciated by both children and adults. Babs lives most contentedly in a large house in the country with her grandmother, her nanny and her brother (their parents are in 'Inja'). Then their grandmother dies and they are sent to live in Kensington with their uncle and his wife. Having run wild in the country, spent hours with the gardener (very like the gardener in "The Secret Garden") and had a great deal to do and to think about, suddenly they are abandoned in a world of artifice and convention and are expected to behave artificially and conventionally. 'It all came of so much pretending. But then it was simply impossible for the children not to pretend. It would have been so dull to have lived their child lives only as the little Conways, when they might be pretending that they were such exciting things as soldiers or savages, cab-horses or mice.'Babs cannot, of course, stop playing, and the central theme of the book is that she has not learned how to dissemble (as opposed to playing 'let's pretend') but must learn how to do so. However, as Charlotte Mitchell, the Preface writer, says, this is not a solemn book, on the contrary, 'its great characteristic is a gay malicious irony' as Babs misunderstands the adult world and fails to conform to adult norms. 'As anyone who has tried to bring up children knows, you spend a good deal of time teaching them to be insincere, to simulate gratitude or contrition, and not to repeat other people's comments at the wrong moments. Many of the jokes depend on the fact that Babs has yet to learn these lessons.'The focus, and the star, of "The Young Pretenders" is Babs. She is intelligent, fun, kind, lively and honest and it is hard to think of a heroine in children's fiction (that is, fiction written for children but enjoyed equally as much by adults) who is like her. Her most touching characteristic is her openness and her complete lack of fear. "'What was we naughty about?'" she asks her brother after their uncle scolds them: 'The children could not know that some very persistent tradesmen had insisted on immediate payment of their bills.' When the news comes from India that they have a new sister Babs thinks of a name for her - Mrs Brown. Her aunt slaps her down, saying that it's not a name but Babs persists, "'It is, I know it is, 'cause nurse has a sister-in-law what's called it.'" Then she 'began to think so hard that she refused a second helping of pudding' eventually announcing, to renewed scorn, that "'I'd like her to be called Strawberry Jam.'"

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Pip doesn't expect much from life...His sister makes it clear that her orphaned little brother is nothing but a burden on her. But suddenly things begin to change. Pip's narrow existence is blown apart when he finds an escaped criminal, is summoned to visit a mysterious old woman and meets the icy beauty Estella. Most astoundingly of all, an anonymous person gives him money to begin a new life in London. Are these events as random as they seem? Or does Pip's fate hang on a series of coincidences he could never have expected?

Penguin publishes forty-five of the nation’s top 100 favourite titles. If you haven’t read them yet, then now’s your chance to enjoy some of the nation’s favourite reads in our special 3-for-2 offer.

Choose any three titles from The Big Read promotion and get the cheapest one FREE.

Please note: Your shopping basket will show the list price of each item with a subtotal and your discount will be applied at the checkout.

‘It was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me’

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens’s haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his ‘great expectations’.

This definitive edition uses the text from the first published edition of 1861. It includes a map of Kent in the early nineteenth century, and appendices on Dickens’s original ending and his working notes, giving readers an illuminating glimpse into the mind of a great novelist at work.

With the excitement at the beginning of the 20th century came a whole new genre of writing. The dawn of the Edwardian era produced a host of new themes and subjects for a new generation of writers to be inspired by. With over 800 A-Z entries covering writers (nearly half of whom are women), individual works, literary periodicals, and general themes, this Companion, now available in paperback, offers access to the writings, the authors, and the preoccupations of the Edwardian era.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingAcentsa -a centss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for e

This is a new edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's witty and poignant comedy of early-Victorian life in a country town. A lively and up-to-date introduction by Charlotte Mitchell discusses the originality and subtlety of the book's treatment of women's experience.