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Ever since Chaucer’s day, when the host of the Tabard Inn in Southwark rose to welcome the Canterbury Pilgrims with a joke, the After Dinner Speech, designed, if possible, to reduce the assembled company to helpless merriment, has presented the ultimate challenge.

Orwell’s chilling farmyard parody of Soviet Russia is brought vividly to life with illustrations by Quentin Blake.

Unique to Folio, this collection explores the genesis of Heart of Darkness, and features an introduction by Conrad expert J. H. Stape and contemporary photographs.

Illustrator David Hughes captures the anarchic energy of Kesey's iconic novel.

With their outrageous tastes and boundless energy, the Larkins have charmed many a reader. Alice Tait’s illustrations for Folio capture the epicurean excesses of this flamboyant family.

An idyllic existence brought to life in the famously charming diary of Parson Woodforde.

In his ‘intimate history’, Richard Fortey unlocks the geological secrets of the Earth – its origin and the constant processes that destroy and create it. His aim is to unite the natural and human history of particular places with the geological realities that underlie them.

Leading lights of the golden age of crime fiction, among them Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers, take turns weaving an inventive murder mystery.

John Adams – revolutionist, political theorist. An acclaimed biography of one of America’s Founding Fathers in a superb Folio edition.

Kafka’s first novel follows the adventures of Karl Rossman, sent away from home after getting a maid pregnant. Part social satire, part coming-of-age novel, it is lighter in tone than the rest of his fiction, and owes a debt to a writer he hugely admired: Charles Dickens.

Umberto Eco’s paranoid world of conspiracy theories is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Capote’s masterpiece of suspense was an immediate sensation when it was serialised in the New Yorker in 1965. Our edition, introduced by Rupert Thomson, includes rare courtroom photographs.

The Middle Ages have often been depicted as a period in which life had few comforts. Nonsense, says the great medieval scholar Chiara Frugoni, in this delightful examination of the many inventions we owe to the period.

Skilfully interweaving a spellbinding retelling of the Arthurian myths with the parallel story of an ordinary boy in the Middle Ages, this is the third and final book in the award-winning trilogy which is a landmark in children’s fiction.

Distinguished historian Averil Cameron introduces this seminal book about the origins of the Middle Ages. Numerous photographs show a fascinating array of archaeological sites, illuminations and mosaics.

A brilliant overview of prehistory by a 'towering influence' in archaeology.

The book of Parkman's youth and one of the first great chronicles of the American West, The Oregon Trail remains the most popular of all his works.

Compelling romance, epic tale of misadventure, cutting parable of cultural imperialism, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda is overwhelmingly a story of all-consuming passions.

A rousing tale of mistaken identity, The Prince and the Pauper reveals a side of Mark Twain seldom seen. The young prince suddenly becomes the pauper and the pauper, Tom, heir to the throne of England.

Pushkin's celebrated and influential short stories, presented alongside the work of acclaimed illustrators Anna and Elena Balbusso.

Opening, literally, with a cliffhanger, Household's classic thriller plunges you into a exhilarating game of cat and mouse as a would-be assassin is chased across 1930s Europe.

Sourced from the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, these accounts give an explorer’s eye-view of some of the most extraordinary human journeys ever undertaken.

The poetic account of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece, written in the 3rd century BC and now an inspiration for artist Daniel Egnéus.

A wickedly dry and witty collection of stories, satires, travel pieces, speeches, letters and anecdotes from Mark Twain.

A charming account of Stevenson’s adventure in the wilds of southern France, accompanied only by his stubborn but loveable donkey.

Celebrated writer and historian Cecil Woodham-Smith turns her acerbic eye on the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade.

Dilettante detective Lord Peter Wimsey returns in this collection of short stories.

A marvellous, kaleidoscopic social history of London during the 1660s, from Pepys to the Great Fire. Introduced by Jenny Uglow.

This seminal book was an influence on Oscar Wilde and other aesthetes. Introduced by Michael Prodger, with paintings by Botticelli and Michelangelo.