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…
First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness and religious experience, and together form a triumphant conclusion to Flaubert's literary career. With elegant simplicity, 'A Simple Heart' relates t…
When young Francis Osbaldistone discovers that his vicious and scheming cousin Rashleigh has designs both on his father's business and his beloved Diana Vernon, he turns in desperation to Rob Roy for help. Chieftain of the MacGregor clan, Rob Roy is…
This richly evocative novel-in-letters tells the story of two Persian noblemen who have left their country - the modern Iran - to journey to Europe in search of wisdom. As they travel, they write home to wives and eunuchs in the harem and to friends…
Horace (65-8 bc) was one of the greatest poets of the Golden or Augustan age of Latin literature, a master of precision and irony who brilliantly transformed early Greek iambic and lyric poetry into sophisticated Latin verse of outstanding beauty. O…
A French courtier, secret agent, libertine and adventurer, Beaumarchais (1732-99) was also author of two sparkling plays about the scoundrelly valet Figaro - triumphant successes that were used as the basis of operas by Mozart and Rossini. A highly…
One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to contro…
A physician with a particular interest in psychological disorders and satirist, Mandeville published versions of his notorious Fable of the Bees from 1714 to 1732. Each was a defence and elaboration of his short satirical poem The Angry Hive, 1705.…
Moliere combined all the traditional elements of comedy - wit, slapstick, spectacle and satire - to create richly sophisticated and enduringly popular dramas. The Miser is the story of Harpagon, a mean-spirited old man who becomes obsessed with maki…
"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine." So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discov…
A selection of Mozart's letters, translated into English, complete with notes, linking commentary and chronology.
An 'Upanisad' is a teaching session with a guru, and these thirteen texts, the 'Principal Upanisads', form a series of philosophical discourses between teacher and student that question the inner meaning of the world. Composed from around the eighth…
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics. Ethan Frome work…
As essential to the canon as the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare, The Book of Common Prayer has been in daily use for centuries. Originally produced for the Church of England in the sixteenth century by Thomas Cranmer, who was burned at the stake…
Spanning his entire career, a compehensive collection of writings by the Latin American literary pioneer encompasses a variety of works by the leader of the Modernista movement, including a bilingual selection of poetry organized thematically, as we…
Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton was the first Mexican-American woman to write novels in English and the first nineteenth-century Californian writer to publish a novel in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Her first book, "Who Would Have Thought…
Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. Composed by a monk of St David's in Wales who became Bishop of Sherborne in Alfred's service and worked with him in his efforts to revive r…
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings is a collection of Alexander Pope's greatest works, edited with an introduction by Leo Damrosch in Penguin Classics. Alexander Pope was the greatest English poet of his age, whose acerbic insights into h…
A volume of key writings on the Buddha, collected from a variety of languages and traditions While Buddhism has no central text comparable to the Bible or Koran, there is a powerful body of scripture from across Asia that encompasses the dharma, or…
The volume contains Richard II, Henry IV Part One, henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Each play possesses its own distinctive mood, tone and style, and together they inhabit the turbulent period of change from the usurpation of the throne of Richard II…
Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of…
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
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…
Fifteen exquisite tales from one of the world'd greatest writers of the short story Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in…
As Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass 'might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing', for it exhibits 'Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman t…
The Satires of Horace (65-8 BC), written in the troubled decade ending with the establishment of Augustus' regime, provide an amusing treatment of men's perennial enslavement to money, power, glory and sex. Epistles I, addressed to the poet's friend…
Living in a revolutionary age, Coleridge's poetry was written in a spirit of moral and emotional inquiry into the absolutes of the human condition. He is best known for his visionary poetry ('Kubla Khan') and his ballads ('The Rime of the Ancient Ma…
The daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, Paula Power inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions George Somerset, a young architect, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula but she, the L…
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH Young Chris Guthrie lives a brutal life in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland, torn between her passion for the land, duty to her family and her love of books. When her mother, broken by repeated childbirths,…
Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that has all but disappeared from today's public rhetoric. Lincoln's writings are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of…
Tom Canty and Edward Tudor could have been identical twins. Their birthdays match, their faces match, but there the likeness stops. For Edward is a prince, heir to King Henry VIII, whilst Tom is a miserable pauper. But when fate intervenes, Edward i…
A legendary work of African literature, Devil on the Cross is one of the cornerstones of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's enduring fame - and at the heart of his perennial contention for the Nobel Prize. An impassioned cry for a Kenya free of dictatorship and fo…
Set within a framing narrative told by Chrystal Croftangry, these three stories are set in the years following the Jacobite defeat and all feature characters who are leaving Scotland to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In 'The Highland Widow' and 'The…
Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of a European Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole. The money he receives in payment for th…
This unique anthology offers a more comprehensive look at the poems of Christopher Marlowe, England's first great poet and playwright.
First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled intelligence of his three…
Shakespearean comedy has as much to do with the structure and movement of the drama as with the wit of its dialogue or the humour of its characters. In these four comedies there is a near-tragic crisis at which disaster or happiness may ensue, but t…
'A truer prophecy of the future than either Brave New World or The Shape of Things to Come.' - George Orwell Part science fiction, part dystopian fantasy, part radical socialist tract, Jack London's The Iron Heel offers a grim depiction of warfare b…
A dark classic of Russia's silver age, this blackly funny novel recounts a schoolteacher's descent into sadism, arson and murder. Mad, lascivious, sadistic and ridiculous, the provincial schoolteacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucin…
An epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality, this historical novel is set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome.
A continuous text made up of extracts from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal and a selection of her brother's poems. Dorothy Wordsworth kept her Journal 'because I shall give William pleasure by it'. In doing so, she never dreamt that she was giving futu…
'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.' With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel…
Offers translations of poems by the two Chinese writers
Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautreamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, i…
Songs and Sonnets (1557), the first printed anthology of English poetry, was immensely influential in Tudor England, and inspired major Elizabethan writers including Shakespeare. Collected by pioneering publisher Richard Tottel, it brought poems of…
Japanese no theatre or the drama of 'perfected art' flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries largely through the genius of the dramatist Zeami. An intricate fusion of music, dance, mask, costume and language, the dramas address many subj…
First released in 1704, offers a detailed report on a storm that hit Britain, leaving thousands dead and homes and businesses destroyed for miles in every direction.
One of the most important civil rights leaders in American history, Cesar Chavez was a firm believer in the principles of non-violence, and effectively employed peaceful tactics to further his cause. Through his efforts, he helped achieve dignity, f…
The poems collected in this volume are exquisite and languorous expressions of a spirit of self-indulgence, eroticism and moral rebelliousness that emerged in the late Victorian age. They deal with eternal themes of transition, artifice and, above a…
Returning to England after years in South Africa, Richard Hannay enters the Secret Service accidentally after he finds a murdered neighbor in his apartment and finds himself on the run from the police and the killers alike. Reprint.
