'Across the language barrier Dawood captures the thunder and poetry of the original' The Times The Koran is universally accepted by Muslims to be the infallible Word of God as first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel nearly fourte…
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and poetry in Penguin Classics, edited and introduced by Colm Toibin. At the start of 1895, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London, widely feted for his most rece…
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…
One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience - which juxtapose poems such a…
Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector…
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…
A scientist who has discovered a way to make himself invisible, Griffin seeks the aid of an old friend, Kemp, to find an antidote and unleashes his growing madness and frustrations by terrorizing a small town, in a new edition of the science fiction…
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…
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…
With its insightful portrayals of her protagonist's inner life, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was a hugely influential work of early Gothic horror. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Jacqueline Howar…
The Portable Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue,"…
'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short' Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case f…
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.
'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…
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper.The most translated book in the world after the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, or "Book of the Tao," is a guide to cultivating a life of peace, serenity, and compassion. Through aphorism…
The Tale of the Heike is Japan's great martial epic: a masterpiece of world literature and the progenitor of all samurai stories. This major and groundbreaking new Penguin translation is by Royall Tyler, acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji. Fi…
A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales - now for the first time in English. With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales - the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen - becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver vo…
Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is the fate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirtee…
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…
Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world's first novel - and is certainly one of its finest. Genji, the Shining Prince, son of an emperor, is a passionate character…
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are s…
No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the…
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Wh…
Fairy tales, ghost stories, detective fiction and comedies of manners - the stories collected in this volume made Oscar Wilde's name as a writer of fiction, showing breathtaking dexterity in a wide range of literary styles. Victorian moral justice i…
'His characters are marvellous, his insights wonderful ... You don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better' Ruth Rendell The Old Curiosity Shop was an instant bestseller that, even while it was criticized for its sentimentality, cap…
One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) sought to explain the geological state of the modern Earth by considering the long-term effects of observable natura…
Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original w…
In January 1850 Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. The four years he spent there, startlingly re-created in The House of the Dead, were the most agonizing of his life. In this fictionalized…
George MacDonald occupied a major position in the intellectual life of his Victorian contemporaries. This volume brings together all eleven of his shorter fairy stories as well as his essay "The Fantastic Imagination". The subjects are those of trad…
A parable on Darwinian theory, and a biting social satire, H.G. Wells's science fiction classic The Island of Dr Moreau is a fascinating exploration of what it is to be human. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Patrick Parrinder with notes b…
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…
Writer and religious rebel, William Blake ((1757-1827) sowed the seeds for Romanticism in his innovative poems concerning faith and the visions that inspired him throughout his life. Whether describing his own spirituality, the innocence of youth or…
Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology of her writings. This volume includes selections from her major works, including The Ori…
Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesman of the classical period. Taken from the Lives…
Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as Artist'. Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behi…
Written in 1831 by the father of Russian literature, this beloved tale features the adventures of Vakula, the blacksmith, in his fight against the devil, who has stolen the moon above the village of Dikanka and is wreaking havoc on its inhabitants,…
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…
Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Voelsung family, the Hel-r…
The complete adventures of the well-loved clerical sleuth, collected in one brilliant volume. Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his succes…
Selections from the German philosopher's writings provide an introduction to his work and thought
Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voraciou…
Alcestis/Medea/The Children of Heracles/Hippolytus 'One of the best prose translations of Euripides I have seen' Robert Fagles This selection of plays shows Euripides transforming the titanic figures of Greek myths into recognizable, fallible human…
Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chretien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous re…
The Lost Estate is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, Le Grand Meaulnes. 'I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and loved every page. I find its depiction of a golden time and place just as po…
N. J. Dawood's masterful translation of the Koran, with parallel Arabic text 'Across the language barrier Dawood captures the thunder and poetry of the original' The Times The Koran is universally accepted by Muslims to be the infallible Word of Go…
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is a collection of stories that emerged from a profound spiritual crisis, during which Leo Tolstoy believed that he had encountered death itself. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduc…
E.T.A. Hoffman's wildly original fictions are some of the most unusual examples of German Romanticism's dark passions, and the stories in Tales of Hoffman are selected and translated from the German with an introduction by R.J. Hollingdale in Pengui…
Hardy described Desperate Remedies as a tale of 'mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity'. Cytherea has taken a position as lady's maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves, Edward Springr…
Elizabeth Gaskell's remarkable first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life portrays a love that defies the rigid boundaries of class with tragic consequences. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by MacDonal…
The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In contrast to the formalised and official theology of the "founding fathers" of the church, the Desert Fathers were ordinary Christ…
Poet, pattern-designer, environmentalist and maker of fine books, William Morris (1834-96) was also a committed socialist and visionary writer, obsessively concerned with the struggle to achieve a perfect society on earth. News From Nowhere, one of…
