Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by…
'Their icy blasts are refreshing and restorative. They tell you the worst. And having heard the worst, you feel less bad' Blake MorrisonWritten in Greek by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher, without any intention of publication, the…
Selected from the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Seneca's Letters from a Stoic are a set of 'essays in disguise' from one of the most insightful philosophers of the Silver Age of Roman literature. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the…
'Enigmatic, vatic, emphatic, passionate . . . Nietzsche's works together make a unique statement in the literature of European ideas' A. C. GraylingNietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustr…
Niccolo Machiavelli's brutally uncompromising manual of statecraft, The Prince is translated and edited with an introduction by Tim Parks in Penguin Classics.As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-century Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli knew how quickly…
The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translationThrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden…
In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects…
'The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? - but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the foo…
Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of th…
'A groundbreaking work of economic analysis. It is also a literary masterpice' Francis Wheen, GuardianOne of the most notorious and influential works of modern times, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it ge…
In late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing yet bizarre examples of the genre ever written. In this extraordinary work…
"The Songs of the South" is an anthology first compiled in the second century A.D. Its poems, originating from the state of Chu and rooted in Shamanism, are grouped under seventeen titles and contain all that we know of Chinese poetry's ancient begi…
In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking cust…
New to Penguin Classics, The Will to Power contains some of Nietzsche's most fascinating and combative writings on nihilism, metaphysics and the future of Europe.Assembled by Nietzsche's sister after his death, The Will to Power is a collection of t…
Epictetus, a Greek stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicropolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. T…
Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole without giving a thought about how she might get out. And so she tumbles into Wonderland: where animals answer back, a baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a disorderly…
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman, as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of a society overrun by nihilistic violence and governed by a menacing totalitarian state, A Clockwork Orange includes an introduction by Blake Morrison in Penguin Modern Classics.Fifteen-year-old Alex doesn't just…
Jules Verne's wild and riotous fantasy Journey to the Centre of the Earth delves into the hidden mysteries of a vast, uncharted subterranean world. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the French by Frank Wynne with an introduction by Ja…
John Henry Newman, one of the towering figures of the early Victorian Church of England, caused shock and outrage in equal measure when he announced his espousal of Roman Catholicism in 1845. His Apologia, written nearly twenty years later in respon…
'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!'The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases ever to challenge the brilliant analytical mind of Sh…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and remains one of Sherlock Holmes's greatest and most popular adventures. Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskervill…
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and poetry in Penguin Classics, edited and introduced by Colm Toibin.At the start of 1895, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London, widely feted for his most recen…
One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on rel…
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Me…
The teachings of Epicurus-about life and death, religion and science, physical sensation, happiness, morality, and friendship-attracted legions of adherents throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and deeply influenced later European thought. Tho…
A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written: Marco Polo's seminal account of his journeys in the east, in a collectible clothbound edition. Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1…
The companion book to Beyond Good and Evil, the three essays included here offer vital insights into Nietzsche's theories of morality and human psychology.Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of The Genealogy of Morals was to call attention to his pre…
Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes.
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Be…
This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition celebrates 200 years of Austen's beloved novel. With a beautiful cover designed by illustrator Dadu Shin and comprehensive notes sourced from the Jane Austen Collection, this is an edition to be treasured by stud…
Retells the adventures of an eccentric country gentleman and his companion who set out as knight and squire of old to right wrongs and punish evil.
This beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition of Tolstoy's great novel is translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs, and with an afterword by Orlando Figes.At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations…
Regarded as the founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus (AD 204-70) was the last great philosopher of antiquity, producing 0works that proved in many ways a precursor to Renaissance thought. Plotinus was convinced of the existence of a state of supreme p…
One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, in…
Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wh…
Henry Fielding's picaresque tale of a young man's search for his place in the world, The History of Tom Jones is edited with notes and an introduction by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely in Penguin Classics.A foundling of mysterious parentage brought…
A rousing call to arms whose influence is still felt today, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto is edited with an introduction by Gareth Stedman-Jones in Penguin Classics. Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working cl…
The political tract in which Marx presented the core of his philosophy and revolutionary program, with an introduction analyzing its significance to the realities of today and to Marx's own times.
Penguin Classics relaunch.
Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr.…
The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In contrast to the formalised and official theology of the "founding fathers" of the church, the Desert Fathers were ordinary Christ…
A haunting and hugely influential Modernist masterpiece, the Penguin Classics edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is edited with an introduction by Owen Knowles. Conrad's narrator Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psy…
A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. Regarded as one of the sacred texts of…
The action of the saga takes place at the end of the tenth century, at about the time Scandinavia was converting from worship of Norse gods to Christianity. A masterpiece of medieval literature, the story focuses on two families - that of Hoskuld, a…
After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's…
Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Pensees is a collection of philosohi…
The Penguin English Library editionWhen Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality and violence. Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened hou…
'There's a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.'From the moment Dr John Watson takes lodgings in Baker Street with the consulting detective…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet is the literary debut of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, introduced by Iain Sinclair with notes by Ed Glinert in Penguin Classics.Convalescing in London after a disastrous exp…
Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", regarded by many to be first novel in English. This edition contains a full chronology of Defoe's life and times, explanatory notes, glossary and a critical introduction discussing "Robinson Crusoe" as a pioneering…
The Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's savagely satirical A Modest Proposal and Other Writings is edited with an introduction and notes by Carol Fabricant.To ease poverty in Ireland by eating the children of the poor was the satirical 'sol…
Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a char…
The original mindfulness book, in a landmark new translation by the award-winning translator of the I Ching and The Art of War A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper The most translated book in the world after the Bibl…
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Co…
Banned and vindicated, condemned and lauded, Lady Chatterley's Lover is D.H. Lawrence's seminal novel of illicit passion and forbidden desire. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with notes by Michael Squires and an introduction by Doris Lessing…
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who led the Macedonian army to victory in Egypt, Syria, Persia and India, was perhaps the most successful conqueror the world has ever seen. Yet although no other individual has attracted so much speculation across…
St Benedict's inspirational work has been guiding Benedictine monks for fifteen centuries, and the Penguin Classics edition of The Rule of Benedict is translated with an introduction and notes by Carolinne White.Founder of a monastery at Monte Cassi…
