Introducing our Oxford World’s Classics library

To celebrate our new partnership with Oxford University Press we have a Reader Story from a group enjoying one of our new Oxford World's Classics.

Earlier this year we heard about the wonderful research emerging from the Chronic Pain group at Broadgreen Hospital. Kate, who delivers the Shared Reading group, also wanted to tell us about what the group are currently reading and it happens to be a book of our new Oxford World's Classic library.

Reader Story:

Feel Better With A Book, our Shared Reading group at Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool for people living with Chronic Pain, has just finished reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.

It’s been a fantastic book to share: gripping from the very first, wife-selling chapter and full of cliff hangers, twist and turns. People found Michael Henchard a hard man to understand and sympathise with, puzzled and outraged, at times, by his repeated impulsive acts and almost immediate contrition - though we did also recognise something of his species of ‘stuckness’ in people we know and even (occasionally!) in ourselves…

The group were particularly fascinated by how we can become stuck in the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works and how other people are – the patterns of thinking we fall into - and how that shapes our outlook and expectations. How can we break out of that – or does our character limit us? Several of the group have had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help manage their pain and improve quality of life, so using thinking to help is important.  There were cheers when Henchard had a ‘but what if I’m getting it wrong…’ moment near the end.

The book has hung around in people’s heads from week to week -  ‘I was thinking about that Henchard at midnight last night on my shift’, said one lady (who is an A&E nurse) when we were in the thick of it. ‘I feel bereft’, said another when we finished the last page.

Our Oxford World's Classics Library:

And what else can our Shared Reading group members look forward to reading from our new Oxford World's Classics library? There's a lot to choose from!

• The Woodlanders– Thomas Hardy
• The Odyssey- Homer
• The Scarlet Letter– Nathaniel Hawthorn
• The Major Works– Gerard Manley Hopkins
• The Turn of the Screw– Henry James
• The Varieties of Religious Experience– William James
• Dubliners– James Joyce
• The Major Works– John Keats
• The Jungle Book– Rudyard Kipling
• Kim– Rudyard Kipling
• Sons and Lovers– DH Lawrence
• The Call of the Wild, White Fang– Jack London
• Selected Stories – Katherine Mansfield
• Doctor Faust & Other Plays– Christopher Marlowe
• A Day in the Country & Other Stories– Guy de Maupassant
• Paradise Lost– John Milton
• Selected Poems- Rainer Maria Rilke
• Poems and Prose– Christina Rossetti

• A Midsummers Night's Dream– William Shakespeare
• All's Well that Ends Well– William Shakespeare
• The Complete Sonnets & Poems– William Shakespeare
• Hamlet– William Shakespeare
• King Lear– William Shakespeare
• Measure for Measure– William Shakespeare
• The Merchant of Venice– William Shakespeare
• Othello– William Shakespeare
• Macbeth– William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet– William Shakespeare
• The Tempest– William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night– William Shakespeare
• Frankenstein– Mary Shelley
• The Major Works– Phillip Sidney
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Dracula – Bram Stoker

• The Major Works – Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Anna Karenina– Leo Tolstoy
• The Death of IvanIlyich – Leo Tolstoy
• War and Peace– Leo Tolstoy
• Cousin Henry– Anthony Trollope
• He Knew He Was Right– Anthony Trollope
• Journey to the Centre of the Earth– Jules Verne
• Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
• The House of Mirth– Edith Wharton
• Leaves of Grass– Walt Whitman
• The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays – Oscar Wilde
• Selected Poetry– William Wordsworth
• The Major Works – William Wordsworth