The Autobiographies of Charles Darwin (1809-82) provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the world's intellectual giants. They begin with engaging memories of his childhood and youth and of his burgeoning scientific curiosity and love o…
An unsettling new collection of Henry James's best short stories exploring ghosts and the uncanny'There had been a moment when I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously st…
Penguin Classics relaunch. In "Paradise Lost", Milton produces a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting Satan and Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created…
Reflecting the voices of poets, soldiers, the families they left behind and their comrades who would never return, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, previously published as In Flanders Fields, is edited with an introduction by George Walte…
'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. WilsonThe hero of Dickens's flamboyantly exuberant novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is left penniless after his father's death and forced to make his own way i…
Collecting three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century's greatest authors, Jane Austen's Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon is edited with an introduction by Margaret Drabble in Penguin Classics.These three short works show Austen ex…
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…
'The most magnificent novel ever written' Sigmund FreudThe murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for…
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…
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 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…
An ancient Greek epic which underpins the whole of western literature, Homer's The Iliad is a timeless evocation of the struggle to retain a sense of honour and virtue amidst the horrors of war. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an in…
Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by a…
The Awakening and Selected Stories is Kate Chopin's groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire, edited with an introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert in Penguin Classics.When 'The Awaken…
In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852…
Infamous as the inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A Rebours) is translated by Robert Baldick with an introduction by Patrick McGuinness in Penguin Classics.A wildly origin…
Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, the Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still…
Demonstrating Sophocles' aptitude for humanising figures from Greek myth and transforming simple fables into complex high tragedy, Electra and Other Plays is translated by David Raeburn with an introduction and notes by Pat Easterling.The plays coll…
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…
One of the most influential books in human history, in a revelatory new translation.China's first and greatest teacher, Confucius traveled from state to state as an itinerant philosopher. The Analects preserves his major teachings, as compiled by hi…
The Analects express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one's fellow man, he argued that…
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…
Dickens's sense of comedy and concern with the human psyche are evident in tales of the supernatural, impressionistic sketches, and dramatic monologues
Botchan is a modern young man from the Tokyo metropolis, sent to the ultra-traditional Matsuyama district as a Maths teacher after his the death of his parents. Cynical, rebellious and immature, Botchan finds himself facing several tests, from the p…
The third volume of the book that changed the course of world history, Capital's final chapters were Marx's most controversial writings on the subject, and were never completed.
'Dostoyevsky's finest masterpiece' John BayleyDostoyevsky's great novel of damnation and redemption evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur. It tells the story of Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate fo…
The "forgotten" second volume of Capital, Marx's world-shaking analysis of economics, politics, and history, contains the vital discussion of commodity, the cornerstone to Marx's theories.
Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
'Still remarkably vivid. It is easier to read this for pure pleasure than just about any other ancient text' Nicholas Lezard, GuardianOvid's sensuous and witty poem begins with the creation of the world and brings together a dazzling array of mythol…
'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia WoolfJane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot,…
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…
One of the most influential and well-loved books of Christianity, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis appears here in Penguin Classics in a new translation by Robert Jeffery, with an introduction by Max Von Habsburg, notes, a chronology and f…
The predictions of the sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus have long proved captivating. He has been credited with anticipating the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Today, as the wor…
'If I were assured of your eventual destruction I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept my own.'In The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective's notoriety as the arch-despoiler of the schemes concocted by the criminal…
Vivid, powerful and absorbing, this is a first-person account of one of the most startling military episodes in history: the overthrow of Montezuma's doomed Aztec Empire by the ruthless Hernan Cortes and his band of adventurers. Bernal Diaz del Cast…
Alphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gyp…
Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is m…
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.…
Applying his controversial theory of evolution to the origins of the human species, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man was the culmination of his life's work. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by James Moore and Adrian De…
Penguin Classics relaunch.
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…
Miguel de Cervantes's mock-epic masterwork, Don Quixote was voted the greatest book of all time by the Nobel Institute, and this Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction and notes by John Rutherford.Don Quixote has become so entra…
Five men and five women, seeking refuge in an abbey, share stories about the relationship between men and women, husbands and wives, and the individual and society
While his old furniture rots in storage, Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris, with little but a library reader's card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables. Every person he sees seems to carry their death with them, and he…
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…
The greatest expression of his talent for witty, observant explorations of what it means to 'live well', Henry James's The Ambassadors is edited with an introduction and notes by Adrian Poole in Penguin Classics.Concerned that her son Chad may have…
Joris-Karl Huysmans' shocking novel of an innocent's descent into a world of depraved, blasphemous rituals, The Damned (La-Bas) caused a scandal when it was first published in nineteenth-century France. This Penguin Classics edition is translated wi…
'Stallings's new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days - witty, gritty, and unsettlingly relevant - is not to be missed' TLS, Books of the YearSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 RUNICMAN AWARDA new verse translation of one of the foundational ancient Greek w…
