About Chiltern Classics
Chiltern Publishing is a recent publisher, formed only in 2018, but is already achieving its mission to create beautiful editions of the classics. The famous 1800s “peacock edition” of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a clear inspiration for their designs.
The books are small – reflecting the size and format of the original books when they were printed in Jane Austen’s time. And they all feature wonderfully detailed and textured covers, sparkling gilt edges, creamy pages and are robustly made with strong stitched bindings. They feel surprisingly weighty in your hards (due to the quality materials) and are a real joy to read. I highly recommend them.
The 2018, 2019 and 2020 releases are listed below, with future titles expected to include: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle Book, Black Beauty, Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Phantom of the Opera, The Scarlet Letter, Kidnapped, Oliver Twist, Moll Flanders, Gulliver’s Travels, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The Books
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Released September 2018
The arrival of two rich bachelors stirs Mrs Bennet to hope that wedding bells will soon be in the air. Jane forms an early attachment to Mr Bingley, but her spirited sister Elizabeth takes against the arrogant Mr Darcy.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Released September 2018
Elinor Dashwood’s cool reason and her sister Marianne’s more demonstrative nature are revealed when their father Henry dies and they are uprooted from the family home. For Elinor and Marianne, salvation lies in making a suitable match, but both must overcome adversity to achieve it.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Released September 2018
Seven years after she was persuaded to break off their engagement, Anne Elliot is unexpectedly reacquainted with Captain Frederick Wentworth. Anne is still in love with Wentworth, but mischance and misunderstanding stand in their way.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Released September 2018
The story of the orphaned Pip and his relationship with Joe, the kindly blacksmith, the mysterious Magwitch, the reclusive Miss Havisham and the beautiful but cold-hearted Estella.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Released September 2018
The passionate dark tale of Catherine and Heathcliff, whose love and loss is as wild as the moors surrounding their childhood home, Wuthering Heights.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Released September 2018
Orphaned Jane Eyre endures a life of hardship until she is appointed governess at Thornfield Hall. She is drawn to its master, the remote, brooding Edward Rochester, but he harbours a dark secret that bars their path to happiness.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Released September 2018
Nick Carraway takes us into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick’s cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and to explore the mystery that surrounds him.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Released September 2018
An ancient Chinese military treatise devoted to warfare and military strategy and tactics.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Emma by Jane Austen
Released November 2019
‘Handsome, clever, and rich’, Emma is also an ‘imaginist’, ‘on fire with speculation and foresight’. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Released November 2019
Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Released November 2019
The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results of adultery, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Released November 2019
Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868) follows the lives, loves and tribulations of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. The story is based on the childhood experiences Alcott shared with her real-life sisters, Anna, May and Elizabeth. *Important note, American readers, this is ‘part one’ of the story, as the second part was released separately as Good Wives in the UK.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Abes (used)
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Released November 2019
A young prince visits various planets, including Earth, addressing themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Released November 2019
When Jim Hawkins sets sail searching for buried treasure and adventure, he finds himself caught up in a deadly mutiny where he must outwit the cunning pirate Long John Silver in order to stay alive.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Released November 2019
Victor Frankenstein driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experiments with alchemy and science to build a monster stitched together from dead remains. Once the creature becomes a living breathing articulate entity, it turns on its maker and the novel darkens into tragedy.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Released November 2019
A classic collection of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits, where from his Baker Street apartment, Holmes wields his powers of deduction in pursuit of justice and truth, venturing out into foggy Victorian London accompanied by his faithful sidekick Dr Watson.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Released August 2020
Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian’s beauty. Understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian sells his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
Released August 2020
James Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes for advice after his friend Sir Charles Baskerville was found dead in the park surrounding his manor, in the moors of Devon. The death was attributed to a heart attack, but according to Mortimer, Sir Charles’s face retained an expression of horror, and not far from the corpse the footprints of a gigantic hound were clearly visible.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Released August 2020
Alice falls through a rabbit hole into Wonderland and has many adventures there.
➡ See also the Alice bibliography
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Released August 2020
Ishmael, the narrator, stays in a whaler’s inn in Massachusetts, where he has to share a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Released August 2020
The novel tells the story of Dracula’s attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Released August 2020
Charles Bovary struggles his way to a medical degree and marries the unpleasant woman his mother has chosen for him, Héloïse Dubuc. He sets out to build his practice, but is smitten by Emma, a beautiful, poetically dressed young woman who has received a “good education” in a convent. She has a powerful yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Released August 2020
The tragic story of young Tess, and the troubles she has in her relationships with two men.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Released August 2020
A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
→ Buy from Book Depository | Amazon | Amazon (AU)