Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wh…
Faced with cancer and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president, Ulysses S. Grant wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future. In doing so he won himself a unique place in American letters. Acclaimed by write…
Thomas Gradgrind destroys the spiritual and emotional lives of his children by denying the importance of human feelings.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Gene…
In a new translation of the comic classic of Russian literature, Chichikov, an enigmatic stranger and schemer, buys deceased serfs' names from their landlords' poll tax lists hoping to mortgage them for profit and to reinvent himself as a gentleman.…
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…
A new edition of the most widely known and popular collection of Japanese poetry. The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above al…
In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects…
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…
'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times The 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 dr…
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' Guardian One 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,…
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…
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde The 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…
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 p…
A haunting Modernist masterpiece and the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning film Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness explores the limits of human experience and the nightmarish realities of imperialism. Conrad's narrator Marlow, a se…
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.
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…
Demons, also known as The Possessed or The Devils, is a dark masterpiece that evokes a world where the lines between and good and evil long ago became blurred. This Penguin Classics edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Demons is translated by Robert A. M…
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 "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.
In Irving's great work, The Sketch Book, fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker introduces us to Rip van Winkle, the Dutch colonist who slept through the Revolutionary War; Ichabod Crane, the superstitious, social-climbing schoolmaster; and the…
Anne Bronte's first novel is the compelling autobiographical tale of a young woman desperately seeking a place in the world When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a gove…
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…
Set in the Paris of society women, prostitutes and small-minded bourgeousie, and the isolated villages of rural Normandy that de Maupassant knew as a child, the thirty-three tales in this volume are among the most darkly humorous and brilliant short…
Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve…
The writings of William James represent one of America's most original contributions to the history of ideas. Ranging from philosophy and psychology to religion and politics, James composed the most engaging formulation of American pragmatism. 'Prag…
'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…
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…
'Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir debate since its publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others,…
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, John Locke (1632-1704) provides a complete account of how we acquire everyday, mathematical, natural scientific, religious and ethical knowledge. Rejecting the theory that some kno…
'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' sees a baby born in 1860 begin life as an old man and then age backwards. F. Scott Fitzgerald hinted at this kind of inversion when he called his era 'a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought…
'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet' The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting world-views. The Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recounts how, slowly an…
One of a major new Classics series - books that have changed the history of thought, in sumptuous, clothbound hardbacks. The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting faiths and worl…
'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…
'A groundbreaking work of economic analysis. It is also a literary masterpice' Francis Wheen, Guardian One of the most notorious and influential works of modern times, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it g…
The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encou…
The Book of Chuang Tzu draws together the stories, tales, jokes and anecdotes that have gathered around the figure of Chuang Tzu. One of the great founders of Taoism, Chaung Tzu lived in the fourth century BC and is among the most enjoyable and intr…
The hero of Charlotte Bronte's first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous but manipulative Zoraide Reuter, complicates his affections for…
'Like Shakespeare, Dickens was able to embrace a whole world' John Mortimer When 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…
Pliny's Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the…
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…
Showcasing the creative power of one of the most outstanding English Metaphysical Poets, the Penguin Classics edition of John Donne's Selected Poems includes an introduction and notes by Ilona Bell. Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysic…
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…
One of the greatest essayists of the Graeco-Roman world, Plutarch (c. AD 46 -120) used an encyclopedic knowledge of the Roman Empire to produce a compelling and individual voice. In this superb selection from his writings, he offers personal insight…
With its frank portrayal of human passion and sexual desire, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow was banned as 'obscene' in Britain shortly after first publication. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by James Wood. Set in the rural…
The Steppe and Other Stories 1887-91 is a collection that reveals Anton Chekhov's evolution from a novice writer to a master of short narrative form. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Donald Rayfield…
Best remembered as a member of the Algonquin Round Table, the fabled Jazz Age literay coterie, Dorothy Parker built a reputations as one of the era's most beloved poets. Parker's satirical wit and sharp-edged humour earned her a reputation as the wi…
"The Songs of the South" is an anthology first compiled in the second century A.D. Its poems, originating from the state of Chu and rooted in Shamanism, are grouped under seventeen titles and contain all that we know of Chinese poetry's ancient begi…
Henry James's classic tale of romance in urban nineteenth-century America, Washington Square is edited with an introduction and notes by Martha Banta in Penguin Classics. When timid and plain Catherine Sloper is courted by the dashing and determined…
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…
'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases ever to challenge the brilliant analytical mind of S…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and remains one of Sherlock Holmes's greatest and most popular adventures. Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskervil…
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…
