Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway’s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young… If it was only the other way!’ Wilde’s first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray’s sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.

The Prince, political treatise by Niccolò Machiavelli, written in 1513. A short treatise on how to acquire power, create a state, and keep it, The Prince represents Machiavelli’s effort to provide a guide for political action based on the lessons of history and his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence.

“The Raven” is by far Poe’s best-known poem and it is one of more than forty to be found in The Raven and Other Poems, a volume that collects the best of Poe’s exercises in verse. Here, readers are treated to such masterpieces as “Annabel Lee,” “The Haunted Palace,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “The City in the Sea,” “Lenore,” and many more. These poems are imbued with the somber seriousness that we associate with Poe’s macabre fiction, but also with his marvelous appraisals of the mysteries of our and other worlds, and his fervent belief in undying love.