Böcker i Everyman's Library CHILDREN'S CLASSICS-serien

H.' The game's afoot for the most famous amateur detective of all time in this collection of eight of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tales. 'The Speckled Band', a Victorian melodrama in a country house, comes complete with murderous villain, murdered heroine, and a very unpleasant snake;

This classic story of a Swiss family - pastor, wife and four sons -shipwreaked on an uninhabited island (most fortunately blessed with an unlikely profusion of natural resources) was written by a Swiss army chaplain for the entertainment of his own four sons.

'The very essence of all illustration for children's books' said The Times on Christmas Eve, 1878, shortly after the publication of Caldecott's first two picture books, or Toy Books as they were called, John Gilpin and The House that Jack Built.

Described on the title-page of the first edition as 'the autobiography of her horse, translated from the original equine', BLACK BEAUTY was Anna Sewell's only book, written when she fatally ill but determined to record her passopnate indignation at the insensitive behaviour of people towards animals.

The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is stranded on an uninhabited island far away from any shipping routes. With patience and ingenuity, he transforms his island into a tropical paradise. For twenty-four years he has no human company, until one Friday, he rescues a prisoner from a boat of cannibals.

Wonderful collection of nonsense verse, from Chesterton to Dahl, Lear to Carroll. With beautitul, original illustrations, both full colour and black & white.

First published as a serial in YOUNG FOLKS between May and July 1886 and now reprinted in an Everyman edition on the centenary of Stevenson's death. Rowland Hilder is famous for his paintings of the English countryside but his work in book illustration covered a much wider canvas.

Lewis Carroll's two Alice stories are renowned for their fantastic plots and use of nonsense. The edition, containing both stories, features John Tenniel's original illustrations.

Edward Lear, the 20th child of a London stockbroker, entered the household of Lord Stanley as little more than a servant, but his sense of humour soon made him welcome above stairs and he began to amuse the children with comic drawings and rhymes. This book was first published in 1846.

Stevenson's great adventure story, set in the 18th century, was conceived in the Scottish Highlands, where the author and his 12-year-old stepson amused themselves by making a map that showed the location of buried treasure on an island. The illustrations first appeared in 1949.

The legends of King Arthur - the most revered hero of British Mythology - have been retold many times, but Roger Lancelyn Green's version has become a classic since its first publication in 1953.

From the Eastern folk tales that make up the vast collection known as THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS certain stories - of Aladdin, Sindbad and Ali Baba - have become everlasting favourites with children and a magical ingredient of Christmas pantomine.

This most romantic of fairy tales is found in many versions, and the story of the beautiful girl who falls into a long sleep, to be awakened by a lover, has been interpreted by some as an allegory of the spring revival of the earth after a long winter.

Just two years after the extraordinarily successful publication of LITTLE WOMEN and GOOD WIVES, Louisa Alcott's brother-in-law died, leaving two sons.

Everyone knows Pinocchio, the walking, talking wooden puppet carved from a table leg. Sold to a circus, then to a man who tries to drown him for his donkey-skin, he miraculously turns back into a puppet and goes in search of his 'father' (whom he must rescue from the belly of a giant dogfish ...).

Auntie Katusha has just come from the Old Country, bringing poppy seeds to make cakes for a mischievous four-year-old boy named Andrewshek. A little neighbour, Erminka, who wears red boots which are too big for her, joins Andrewshek for a series of adventures with talking animals, including a greedy goose who steals the cakes;