This carefully curated anthology brings together a broad selection of timeless works in one digital edition. Readers can discover essential voices, memorable stories and enduring ideas across a rich variety of literary styles. Prepared for comfortable continuous reading, this collection is ideal for exploring classic literature or returning to lasting favorites.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.’In first-century Judea, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur is falsely accused of assassinating a Roman governor, and sentenced to life as a galley slave. His fortunes are reversed when he saves the captain’s life and he returns, determined to seek his revenge against those who have brought misfortune to both...

Called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century," Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ was a best-seller in the 1880s, eclipsing the sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin and, later, Gone With the Wind to become the best-selling American novel of all time. The story recounts the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince from Jerusalem, who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the 1st century and becomes a charioteer and a...

The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by sands tossed from the Euphrates, there to lie, fo...

According to Wikipedia: "Lewis "Lew" Wallace (April 10, 1827 February 15, 1905) was a lawyer, governor, Union general in the American Civil War, American statesman, and author, best remembered for his historical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ… Wallace's most notable service came in July 1864, at the Battle of Monocacy, part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864... Wallace participated in the military commission trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators as well as the court-martial of ...

Gathering Ben-Hur, The Fair God, and The Prince of India, this illustrated volume displays Lew Wallace's ambitious fusion of romance, history, theology, and imperial spectacle. These novels range from first-century Judaea and Rome to the Aztec world at the coming of Cortés and the fall of Constantinople, using richly pictorial prose, dramatic reversals, and moral symbolism characteristic of nineteenth-century historical fiction. Wallace writes in the tradition of Scott and Bulwer-Lytton, y...

In first century Judaea, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur is betrayed by his childhood friend Messala and sentenced to life as a Roman slave. When, during a pirate attack in the Aegean, Ben-Hur saves the life of a galley commander, his fortunes improve and he returns to Galilee a free man. There, his quest for vengeance turns into insurrection, but his life is transformed when he witnesses Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist.Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the best-selling nove...

Ben-Hur is a story of two very different heroes. Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is involved in an accident to the Roman procurator which is taken to be intentional. He is seized and sent to the fleet as a galley-slave, while his family is imprisoned and the family goods confiscated. When Ben-Hur saves the fleet captain from drowning after his ship is sunk in a fight with pirates, that officer adopts him as son and heir. With Roman training, Ben-Hur distinguishes himself in the arena...

Called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century," Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ was a best-seller in the 1880s, eclipsing the sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin and, later, Gone With the Wind to become the best-selling American novel of all time. The story recounts the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince from Jerusalem, who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the 1st century and becomes a charioteer and a Christian. Parallel with Judah's narrative ...

A proud first century Jew, Judah Ben Hur is wrongly sent to the galleys through a bizarre quirk of fate and betrayal by his best friend, the Roman noble Messala. Miraculously, Judah Ben Hur returns to Palestine an honored Roman citizen, bringing with him a ravenous appetite for settling old scores and toppling a government. In reality, Judah is doomed to destroy his own hardening soul, unless he can come to grips with someone more powerful than his hatred: Jesus Christ.

First published in 1880, this epic novel follows much of the life of Judah Ben-Hur, a man living in the time of Christ. Wallace intertwines the lives of Judah and Jesus of Nazareth, beginning the novel with the events of the Nativity and later following the downfall and ensuing hardships of Judah's life. The events depicted in the Gospels of the New Testament concerning Jesus are carefully threaded throughout Judah's story, ultimately finding both Jesus and Judah at the Crucifixion, though...

The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by sands tossed from the Euphrates, there to lie, fo...