These nine novels are the best of the bestgreat writing by some of the most brilliant literary minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Samuel Johnson’s biography of Richard Savage raises the life of a scoundrel to the level of great art; George Eliot profoundly influenced Henry James with her horror storyThe Lifted Veil; Le Fanu writes a sinister but gracious” supernatural gothic; Joseph Conrad draws from his life as a sea captain inThe Secret Sharer; Nightmare Abbey is Thomas Love Peacock’s satire on his friends, the romantic poets Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron.These, with the other short novels in this collection, represent the pinnacle of achievement in their genre.Life of Richard Savage, by Samuel JohnsonCastle Rackrent, by Maria EdgeworthThe Room in the Dragon Volant, by Joseph Sheridan Le FanuCousin Phillis, by Elizabeth GaskellThe Lifted Veil, by George EliotThe Secret Sharer, by Joseph ConradThe Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, by George MeredithNightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love PeacockLiber Amoris, by William Hazlitt Read Less