M.R. James is probably the finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre, but are also superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror.

Although Tennyson has often been characterized as an austere, bearded patriarch and laureate of the Victorian age, his poems still have relevance. His mastery of rhyme, metre, imagery and mood communicate their dark, sensuous and sometimes morbid messages.

With an Introduction and Notes by Sally Minogue This edition is based on the collection of poems assembled by Thomas himself and published in November 1952, just a year before his death in New York.

John Donne's poetry is marked by a scientific colloquial directness and a complex, even tortured, intelligence. It falls into two classes. There is the early ironic and erotic poetry that contains some of the finest English love poetry and also his later, religious poetry.

Born in 1759 into miserable rustic poverty, by the age of 18 Burns had acquired a good knowledge of both classical and English literature. This collection includes some of his most famous works such as the ballad "Auld Lang Syne", and "Tam o'Shanter".

The brothers rediscovered a host of fairy tales, telling of princes and princesses in their castles, witches in their towers and forests, of giants and dwarfs, of fabulous animals and dark deeds.

Outrageously pretentious, hypocritical and snobbish, Queen Lucia, 'as by right divine' rules over the toy kingdom of 'Riseholme' based on the Cotswold village of Broadway. Her long-suffering husband Pepino is 'her prince-consort', the outrageously camp Georgie is her 'gentleman-in-waiting', and the village green is her 'parliament'.

These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye).