'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…
Collecting the most incisive and influential writings of one of Rome's finest orators, Cicero's Selected Works is translated with an introduction by Michael Grant in Penguin Classics. Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome's Republic, C…
'The father of science fiction' Guardian The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel. It sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, when he is initially delighted to find that suffering has bee…
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…
A young orphan, Pip, receives a fortune from a mysterious benefactor and travels to London in order to become a gentleman
Although Bram Stoker is best known for his world-famous novel Dracula, he also wrote many shorter works on the strange and the macabre. This collection, comprising Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, a volume of spine-chilling short stories col…
Robert Fagles's award-winning translations of Homer's twin works The Iliad and TheOdyssey have sold more than a million copies and become classics in their own right. With this stunning modern verse translation, Fagles introduces Virgil's Aeneid to…
Aeneas the True - son of Venus and of a mortal father - escapes from Troy after it is sacked by the conquering Greeks. He undergoes many trials and adventures on a long sea journey, from a doomed love affair in Carthage with the tragic Queen Dido to…
'Probably the most important archaeological find in history ... Vermes' translations are a standard in the field' Los Angeles Times The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judaean desert between 1947 and 1956 was one of the greatest finds of al…
Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in life This landmark work of criticism is fuelled by Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of…
'Well-being for all is not a dream.' In this brilliantly enjoyable, challenging rallying-cry of a book, Kropotkin lays out the heart of his anarchist beliefs - beliefs which surged around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and which…
'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…
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…
One of the first woman authors, Julian of Norwich produced in Revelations of Divine Love a remarkable work of revelatory insight, that stands alongside The Cloud of Unknowing and Piers Plowman as a classic of Medieval religious literature. This Peng…
Buddhist philosophy and the experiences of the author's own family underlie this eighteenth-century novel of a Chinese family's declining fortunes
The classic coming-of-age story presents David Copperfield, who suffers the wrath of his stepfather, the abusive Mr. Mudstone, and the betrayal of the scheming Uriah Heep, finds a new life with his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood, and falls deeply…
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it…
Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons explores the ageless conflict between generations through a period in Russian history when a new generation of revolutionary intellectuals threatened the state. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Ru…
Composed during a critical time in the evolution of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and the Christian faith.…
Penguin Classics relaunch.
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtl…
For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined…
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 e…
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…
Also known as Journey to the West, Wu Ch'eng-en's Monkey is one of the Four Great Classical Novels in Chinese literature, translated by Arthur Waley in Penguin Classics. Monkey depicts the adventures of Prince Tripitaka, a young Buddhist priest on a…
Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Man…
Aristotle's probing inquiry into some of the fundamental problems of philosophy, The Metaphysics is one of the classical Greek foundation-stones of western thought, translated from the with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred in Penguin Classics.…
Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable wea…
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…
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…
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…
'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…
Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king stories of adventu…
In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work which defined him as one of America's most influential voices, and which he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual em…
Daniel Defoe's bawdy tale of a woman's struggle for independence and redemption, Moll Flanders is edited with an introduction and notes by David Blewett in Penguin Classics. Born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later, Moll Flanders' drive…
'Anthology' comes from the Greek word that stands for garlands - a bouquet of flowers. An anthology then, should be a small token of something much larger. In the case of flowers, they bring to mind the colour & fragrance of the fields, of a season.…
Spanning thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, DECLINE & FALL is one of the greatest narratives in European Literature. David Womersley's masterly selection and bridging commentary enables the reader…
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.…
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…
During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and iconocl…
Mark Twain's great American masterpiece, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible Penguin editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stampe…
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…
Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas…
"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…
Thomas Gradgrind destroys the spiritual and emotional lives of his children by denying the importance of human feelings.
The Voyage of the Beagle is Charles Darwin's account of the momentous voyage which set in motion the current of intellectual events leading to The Origin of Species. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Janet Bro…
'That sense of the meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work' Malcolm Bradbury Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of hi…
Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of li…
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 entr…
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.
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…
Artist, architect, poet and philosopher, Leon Battista Alberti revolutionized the history of art with his theories of perspective in On Painting (1435). Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the princi…
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…
