Forced by the death of her parents to seek her fortune in London, Fanny Hill is duped into prostitution by an old procuress. In Mrs Brown's bawdy-house the naive young woman begins her sexual initiation - progressing from innocence to curiosity and…
Born in the Castilian town of Avila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when she was twenty-one. Tormented by illness, doubts and self-recrimination, she gradually came to recognize the power of prayer and contemplation…
Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend - and reach, at the end of a perilous journey, an unknown land cut off from the world, where terrible dangers threaten anyone who ventures near the spectacular diamond mines of…
Two former lovers embark on a game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conques…
With the emergence of democracy in the city-state of Athens in the years around 460 BC, public speaking became an essential skill for politicians in the Assemblies and Councils - and even for ordinary citizens in the courts of law. In response, the…
The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973-c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes, it offers revealing glimpses of the Japanese imp…
English Romantic poetry from its beginnings and its flowering to the first signs of its decadence. Nearly all the famous pieces de resistance will be found here - 'Intimations of Immortality', 'The Ancient Mariner', 'The Tyger', excerpts from 'Don J…
Matthew Lewis's Gothic masterpiece, depicting a holy man slowly becoming entangled in a web of sin, The Monk is edited with an introduction by Christopher MacLachlan in Penguin Classics. Savaged by critics for its blasphemy and obscenity, particular…
'The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists' Virginia Woolf With its depiction of the wronged 'pure woman' Tess and its powerful criticism of Victorian hypocrisy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's…
Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural wo…
Tells the story of a poor orphan's adventures in the criminal underworld of mid-nineteenth-century London.
From the first moment Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young nobleman, sets eyes on the veiled figure of Ellena, he is captivated by her enigmatic beauty and grace. But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her conf…
'Have little thought of self and as few desires as possible' Whether or not Lao Tzu was a historical figure is uncertain, but the wisdom gathered under his name in the fourth century BC is central to the understanding and practice of Taoism. One of…
Charting the rise and fall of an ambitious young social climber in a cruel, monarchical society, Stendhal's The Red and the Black is translated with an introduction and notes by Roger Gard in Penguin Classics. Handsome, ambitious Julien Sorel is det…
Taking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, GORGIAS debates perennial questions about the nature of government and those who aspire to public office. Are high moral standards essential or should we give our preferen…
A furiously witty response to Tobias Smollett's curmudgeonly 'Travels through France and Italy', Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy became a hugely influential work of travel writing in its own right. This Penguin Class…
The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise little-known period of its development. A selection of letters and small-scale theological treatises from a g…
Spanning centuries and the entire continent of Africa, a panoramic collection of traditional African myths, fables, and folklore captures the rich and diverse cultures of Africa, from ancient Egypt and Ethiopia to the desert Sahara and sub-Saharan r…
Mark Twain's witty, satirical tale of childhood rebellion against hypocritical adult authority, the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is edited with a critical introduction by Peter Coveney. Mark Twain's story of a boy's…
Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, Seacole set out independentl…
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression A Penguin Classic Over seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbeck's tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America's most widely read a…
Goethe's Faust reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so…
Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician Women portrays the rival sons of King Oedipus and…
In 1758 Diderot's friend the Marquis de Croismare became interested in the cause celebre of a nun who was appealing to be allowed to leave a Paris convent. Less than a year later, in an affectionate attempt to trick his friend, Diderot created this…
At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a "sensibility on tour," Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer's impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of Fl…
Christine de Pizan (c.1364 1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine has a dreamlike…
'In Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached' George Orwell A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's mat…
'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. Wilson The hero of Dickens's flamboyantly exuberant novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is left penniless after his father's death and forced to make his own way…
A masterpiece of autobiography, and perhaps the first literary memoir of an addict, the Penguin Classics edition of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is edited with an introduction by Barry Milligan. Confessions is a remarkab…
This is the second of a new two-volume edition of the works of Descartes in Penguin Classics. This volume is designed for students who approach Descartes from the point of view of his philosophy of science. Includes DISCOURSE ON METHOD, the most acc…
An epic poem describes the adventures of a Spanish ladies' man and satirizes English society and customs as it follows the irrepressible Don Juan from an illicit teenage love affair and subsequent exile to Italy, shipwreck, slavery, exploits in Russ…
Follows the 1872 adventures of the reserved Phileas Fogg, an imperturbable English gentleman, and his French manservant Passepartout, as he tries to win his rash wager that he can travel completely around the world in eighty days. Reprint.
Thady Quirk, devoted steward to the decaying estate of the Rackrent family, narrates a riotous story of four generations of a dying dynasty in Castle Rackrent (1800). Thady will defend his masters to the end, but eventually his naivety and blind loy…
Now the basis for the major BBC tv adaptation The Paradise, this is a lavish drama and a timeless commentary on consumer capitalism. The Penguin Classics edition of Emile Zola's The Ladies' Delight is based on an acclaimed, vivid and modern translat…
The collected essays of the "moral voice of the] American stage" (The New York Times) in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Arthur Miller was not only one of America's most important twentieth-century playwrights, but he was also one of its most inf…
The Ancien Regime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) is an objective observer of both periods - providing a merciless critique of the ancien regime, with its v…
Presents the English statesman's classic denunciations of sixteenth-century tyranny and corruption and vision of an ideal society, along with historical and biographical notes.
Aurora Leigh (1856), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic novel in blank verse, tells the story of the making of a woman poet, exploring 'the woman question', art and its relation to politics and social oppression. The texts in this selection are based…
These pioneering writings on the mechanics, tactics, and strategies of government were devised by the Roman Republic's most enlightened thinker.
Founding father of the famous monastery on the island of Iona, a site of pilgrimage ever since his death in 597, St Columba was born into one of the ruling families in Ireland at a time of immense expansion for the Irish Church. This account of his…
"Startling and astringently poetic." --The New York Times A literary discovery: an extraordinary account, in the tradition of The House on Mango Street and Angela's Ashes, of a Colombian woman's harrowing childhood This astonishing memoir was haile…
SHAMELA is a brilliant parody of Samuel Richardson's PAMELA, in which a virtuous servant girl long resists her master's advances and is eventually 'rewarded' with marriage. Fielding's far more spirited and sexually honest heroine, by contrast, merel…
Young, impoverished and ambitious, science student Mr Lewisham is locked in a struggle to further himself through academic achievement. But when his former sweetheart, Ethel Henderson, re-enters his life his strictly regimented existence is thrown i…
One of Bernard Shaw's most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valour is…
Columbus' letters and other documents record his journeys to America
Restoration-era poet, playwright and novelist Aphra Behn was the first truly professional woman writer in English, and Oroonoko is her sophisticated and insightful condemnation of slavery. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction…
'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding' Dickens's story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by a series of ghostly visitors, has had an enduri…
Born into poverty in a small desert town in the American Midwest, Thea Kronborg is one of seven children. But Thea is exceptional, a fact recognized by a discerning few, including Ray Kennedy, who longs to marry her but whose fate it is to set her f…
'The ultimate English classic ... The story of a man in search of truth' Observer In John Bunyan's timeless allegory, Christian sets off on a journey to find salvation. His path is not easy, and he is beset by trials, including the destructive Apoll…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!' Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On…
