The first World's Classics were introduced by some of the greatest writers of their day, including Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. In these hardback editions, contemporary novelists including A.S. Byatt and Joyce Carol Oates introduce their favourite classics in original pocketbook size. Echoing the original World's Classics series, the books are produced to gift-book standard with stitched binding, head and tail bands, printed on 60msg paper and featuring matt laminated jackets in a "retro-look" design. Writing at the moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged, George Eliot fashions in "Middlemarch" (1871-2) the quintessential Victorian novel; a concept of life and society free from the dogma of the past yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age.