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John Milton’s Paradise Lost is considered one of the greatest works of English literature, yet is little read today, largely on account of its complexity. John Carey’s edition presents substantial extracts, including the work’s finest poetry, with linking passages that preserve its epic sweep while explaining the narrative, the ideas, and the protagonists’ motivations.

The Nobel Prize-winning author of a dozen novels, William Golding is still remembered chiefly for his first dark vision of humanity, Lord of the Flies. Drawing on unpublished papers including the novelist’s private journal, this illuminating biography plumbs the sources of that darkness in the writer himself; a war hero who considered himself a monster, who battled depression and alcoholism, but put his faith in the imagination above all.