A young orphan, Pip, receives a fortune from a mysterious benefactor and travels to London in order to become a gentleman
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.…
Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes.
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…
The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction. With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a w…
Dick Davis, "our pre-eminent translator from the Persian" (Washington Post) has revised and expanded his highly-praised translation of Ferdowsi's masterpiece, including more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis's elegant combination of pro…
Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome (27 BC-AD 14), brought peace and prosperity to his city after decades of savage civil war. This selection from Cassius Dio's Roman History gives the fullest description of that long struggle and ultimate tr…
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy - a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he…
This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The…
Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of th…
Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alte…
'Sets out the London of the 1830s before you, streets, people, pleasures, low life, prisons' Claire TomalinCharles Dickens's first published book, Sketches by Boz is a funny and touching collection of observation, fancy and fiction showing the Londo…
A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The Civil War is a tense and gripping depiction of his struggle with Pompey over the leadership of Republi…
As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduc…
Originally published in 1823, The Pioneers is the first of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, and the one that incorporates most fully his own experience of growing up in a town of the American frontier. The heart of the novel is a conflict over w…
One of the major political figures of his time, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) served in the court of Elizabeth I and ultimately became Lord Chancellor under James I in 1617. A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosop…
The acclaimed Couture Classics with cover designs by Ruben Toledo have become collector's items in the worlds of literature, fashion, design, and popular culture. Now, Toledo's signature style graces the covers of three new Deluxe Editions of gothic…
'The noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers ... ethically he is supreme' Bertrand RussellPublished shortly after his death in 1677, the Ethics is Spinoza's greatest work - a fully cohesive philosophical system that strives to provide a p…
'His characters are marvellous, his insights wonderful ... You don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better' Ruth RendellThe Old Curiosity Shop was an instant bestseller that, even while it was criticized for its sentimentality, capt…
Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true 'Rena…
Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu…
A new translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a C10 court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the TALE OF GENJI, this is one of the major Japanese Classics.
'Like Shakespeare, Dickens was able to embrace a whole world' John MortimerWhen Charles Dickens set out for America in 1842, he was the most famous man of his day to make the journey, and embarked on his travels with an intense curiosity. His frank…
Set alongside The Analects and Mencius, these two texts make up the 'Four Books' of Chinese Confucian tradition. Their depiction of the 'Way of Great Learning' focuses on the moral tenets of Confucian thinking, establishing a universal framework tha…
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…
Penguin Classics relaunch.
'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…
A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and…
Viewing politics as a science capable of the same axiomatic approach as mathematics, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan retains its appeal for the modern reader, not just in its elevation of politics to a science, but in its overriding concern for peace. Thi…
'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short' Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case f…
'One of my life's greatest tragedies is to have already read Pickwick Papers - I can't go back and read it for the first time' Fernando PessoaFew first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers - a comic masterpiece that…
Raising questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world, Aristotle's The Politics remains central to the study of political science millennia after its compilation. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from…
"The Prince" shocked Europe on publication with its ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) came to be regarded as some by an agent of the Devil and his name taken for…
A seminal work of European literature that has inspired writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare, the Penguin Classics edition of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron is translated with an introduction by G.H. McWilliam.In the summer of 1348, as the Black…
Journey into the underworld through three thousand years of visions of hell, from the ancient Near East to modern AmericaFrom the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes…
Fifteen-year-old Alex doesn't just like ultra-violence - he also enjoys rape, drugs and Beethoven's ninth. He and his gang of droogs rampage through a dystopian future, hunting for terrible thrills.
Gathers Vedic hymns about creation, death, sacrifice, ritual, and the various gods and characters of Hindu mythology, in a definitive translation that includes an updated bibliography, comprehensive notes, and informative introduction to the texts.…
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar WildeThe Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and F…
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…
Poems include elegies to Ovid's mistress, advice on courtship, suggestions on how to break off a relationship, and a discussion of the art of cosmetics
First written down in the eighth century AD, these early Irish stories depict a far older world - part myth, part legend and part history. Rich with magic and achingly beautiful, they speak of a land of heroic battles, intense love and warrior ideal…
Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York TimesMary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva…
Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse form. This collection brings together fantasy poems, such as Goblin Market, and terrifyingly vivid verses for children, love lyrics and s…
'The first great book, and the first great book about the suffering and loss of war' GuardianOne of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles, t…
A work of tremendous influence that has inspired writers from his ancient Greek contemporaries to modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot, Homer's epic poem The Iliad is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Peng…
'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The TimesThe first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dra…
'Poverty does not consist in the want of money,' I answered, 'nor is begging to be deplored. Poverty consists in the desire to have everything, and through violent means if necessary'From their founding in the fifth century BC and for over 800 years…
This volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary character and forged the distinctive prose style that established him as a p…
The original 'Great American Novel', Herman Melville'sMoby-Dick is a masterful study of obsession. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Andrew Delblanco, with explanatory commentary by Tom Quirk. 'Call me Ishmael.' So begins Her…
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. Sh…
Edited with an introduction by Robert DeMaria, Jr Chronology, further reading and notes Text based on the first edition of 1726 and reproduces all original illustrations ‘I felt something alive moving on my left Leg … when bending my Ey…
A gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, Honore de Balzac's Cousin Bette is translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in Penguin Classics.Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on…
The works collected in this volume form the true foundation of Western philosophy - the base upon which Plato and Aristotle and their successors would eventually build. Yet the importance of the Pre-Socratics thinkers lies less in their influence -…
'Nevill Coghill's easy, seductive translation ensures that this, the most popular work in English Literature - now 600 years old - will run through yet more centuries' Melvyn BraggIn The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones…
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.In…
At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a jovial group of pilgrims assembles, including an unscrupulous Pardoner, a noble-minded Knight, a ribald Miller, the lusty Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. As they set out on their journey towards the shrine of Tho…
