Leblanc's creation, gentleman thief Arsene Lupin, is everything you would expect from a French aristocrat - witty, charming, brilliant, sly ... and possibly the greatest thief in the world.
'Their icy blasts are refreshing and restorative. They tell you the worst. And having heard the worst, you feel less bad' Blake Morrison Written in Greek by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher, without any intention of publication, the…
Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by…
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. This Penguin Modern Classics edition in…
The Discourses/Fragments/Enchiridion 'I must die. But must I die bawling?' Epictetus, a Greek Stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicopolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhe…
'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself' Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. One of 46 new books in the bestselling…
'Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?' Self-celebrating and self-mocking autobiographical writings from Ecce Homo, the last work iconoclastic German philosopher Nietzsche wrote before his descent into madness. One of 46 ne…
'One of the greatest books of a very great thinker' Michael Tanner Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects traditional Western thought with its notions of tru…
One of the most iconoclastic philosophers of all time, Nietzsche dramatically rejected notions of good and evil, truth and God. Beyond Good and Evil demonstrates that the world is steeped in false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit…
Selected from the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Seneca's Letters from a Stoic are a set of 'essays in disguise' from one of the most insightful philosophers of the Silver Age of Roman literature. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the…
'It is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us ... without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry' For several years of his turbulent life, in which he was dogged by ill health, exile and danger, Seneca was the guiding hand of the Rom…
'What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.' A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of…
At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely…
Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life. 'A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away' Willy…
Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the in…
'Enigmatic, vatic, emphatic, passionate . . . Nietzsche's works together make a unique statement in the literature of European ideas' A. C. Grayling Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathust…
'Dostoyevsky's finest masterpiece' John Bayley Dostoyevsky'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 f…
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. R…
'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneering feminist horr…
'I truly thought I'd never make it back.' Ten of the most memorable and most terrifying cantos from Dante's Inferno. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversit…
'The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs' Biting and timeless reflections on patriotism, prejudice and power, from the man who wrote about his nation better than anyone. Penguin Modern: fift…
'A seminal meditation on race by one of our greatest writers' Barack Obama 'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a…
When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancee to return from vaca…
Beloved and contemplated by philosophers, architects, writers, and literary theorists alike, Bachelard's lyrical, landmark work examines the places in which we place our conscious and unconscious thoughts and guides us through a stream of cerebral m…
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 Whe…
Part of a beautiful collection of hardcover classics, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries…
'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater' This volume contains a selection of Nietzsche's brilliant and challenging aphor…
'I'll stop doing it as soon as I understand what I'm doing.' Somewhere between a historical account and work of philosophy, Socrates' Defence details the final plea of Plato's beloved mentor. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's…
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. Th…
Literature's grandest evocation of life's journey, at once an ageless human story and an individual test of moral endurance, Homer's ancient Greek epic The Odyssey is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Peng…
Chronicles the exploits and adventures of the warrior Odysseus as he struggles to return home to Ithaca and his beloved wife, Penelope, after the fall of Troy.
Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem, recounting the great wandering of Odysseus during his ten-year voyage back home to Ithaca, after the Trojan War. A superb new verse translation, now published in trade paperback, before the standard Pengu…
'A towering achievement. There is simply nothing like it in the history of Black radical thought' Cornel West 'Cedric Robinson's brilliant analyses revealed new ways of thinking and acting' Angela Davis 'This work is about our people's struggle, the…
'... ever-present, phantom thing; My slave, my comrade, and my king' Some of Emily Bronte's most extraordinary poems Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversit…
"Strange man, how can you have eyes for sale? Eyes? Eyes?" ' The disturbing tale of a young man's obsession with the Sandman, stealer of eyes, which has inspired writers from Sigmund Freud to Neil Gaiman. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Litt…
'Who since Weber, or perhaps even Hobbes, has done as much to show why power is such a profound, elusive and treacherous presence throughout our experience?' The Times Higher Education The third and final volume of the Essential Works of Foucault s…
First time in Black Classics for Forster's autobiographical novel of homosexual love. Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless…
Niccolo Machiavelli's brutally uncompromising manual of statecraft, The Prince is translated and edited with an introduction by Tim Parks in Penguin Classics. As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-century Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli knew how quickl…
'All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others' When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But…
When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by t…
'All animals are equal - but some are more equal than others' When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradu…
From the master of spy thrillers, John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by the author and an introduction…
Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final…
Beautiful 50th Anniversary special edition featuring archival material and with a special cover design Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, and has seen too many good ag…
A collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set…
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…
Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, "Republic" is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. This work addresses the purpose of education and the role of…
'The most magnificent novel ever written' Sigmund Freud The 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…
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and e…
A stunning clothbound edition of William S. Burroughs's cult classic, designed by the acclaimed Coralie-Bickford Smith. Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Int…
'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir Nabokov The heroine of Tolstoy's epic of love and self-destruction, Anna Karenina has beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son, but feels that her life is empty until she encounters…
Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny and self-destruction, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition from Penguin Classics. Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until…
'We have left dry land and put out to sea! We have burned the bridge behind us - what is more, we have burned the land behind us!' Nietzsche's devastating demolition of religion would have seismic consequences for future generations. With God dead,…
'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded' Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays -Dark Days, The Price of the Ti…
'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inward…
George Orwell's masterwork, now in the Penguin Clothbound Classics series with a cover designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present contro…
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience an…
'The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.' These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation. Penguin Modern: fifty…
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. T…
A stunning Penguin clothbound edition of Homer's great epic, in E. V. Rieu's classic translation. The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the…
'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,…
One of the greatest epics in Western literature, THE ILIAD recounts the story of the Trojan wars. This timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves to its tragic…
'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, Guardian Following one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest,…
A beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition of Tolstoy's magnificent epic novel of love, conflict, fate and human life in all its imperfection and grandeur At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by th…
'A book that you don't just read, you live' Simon Schama Tolstoy's magnificent epic novel of love, conflict, fate and human life in all its imperfection and grandeur War and Peace begins at a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, where…
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 proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.' Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes - one of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for…
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 p…
As influential and revelatory in its day as Fifty Shades of Grey is now, Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a groundbreaking anthology of erotic short stories, published in Penguin Modern Classics In Delta of Venus Anais Nin conjures up a glittering casc…
The inspiration for the new film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins 'Achingly beautiful' Guardian Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish nineteen,…
'Imaginative, illuminating and innovative' The New York Times Book Review The grisly spectacle of public executions and torture of centuries ago has been replaced by the penal system in western society - but has anything really changed? In his revol…
'One of the most influential non-fiction books of the twentieth century' The New York Times When Betty Friedan produced The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries' general malaise w…
