Classic General Fiction

Follow the adventures of spirited reader, Anne Shirley, as she settles into her new home, makes friends, and stirs up trouble. Farm-owning siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert want to adopt a boy to help them around the farm. In a mix-up, the orphanage sends them the active and imaginative Anne Shirley instead. They make the most of the mistake as...

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in." EVELYN WAUGH The action is mostly set at Rudge Hall, home to the obese miser Lester Carmody, and at Healthward Ho, a health farm...

Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh, now available in a wonderful hardback edition, is a masterful depiction of World War II. Waugh's own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. The narrative is marked by...

Love in a Cold Climate & The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford explores themes of love, family, and politics within the highly entertaining world of the British aristocracy between the two World Wars. These are two comic masterpieces from the eldest of the endlessly fascinating Mitford sisters, recently brought to life on television. Nancy Mitford drew inspiration from her...

Framley Parsonage is Trollope's story of political advancement, debt, and family pride. Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee a bill for a large sum of money for the disreputable local Member of Parliament, while being helped in his career...

The powerful novel which inspired one of the most famous British films of the 60s, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the key British films of the sixties. Billy Casper is beaten by his drunken brother, ignored by his mother,...

As we publish all of le Carré's work for the first time, a special look for the books featuring his iconic character, George Smiley. A department of ageing British spies will break any rule for the glory of launching a secret agent into communist East Germany, in the fourth novel featuring George Smiley. The Looking Glass War dives into the...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Written in 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River.

Independent and spirited, Miss Annis Wychwood gives little thought to finding herself a suitable husband, thus dashing the dreams of many hopeful suitors. When she becomes embroiled in the affairs of the runaway heiress Lucilla, though, she encounters the beautiful fugitive's guardian - as rakish and uncivil a rogue she has ever met. Although chafing a bit at the restrictions...

Rich, handsome, darling of the ton, the hope of ambitious mothers and despair of his sisters, the Marquis of Alverstoke at 37 sees no reason to put himself out for anyone. Until a distant connection, ignorant of his selfishness, applies to him for help. Plunged into one drama after another by the large and irrepressible Merriville family, Alverstoke is surprised...

A special look for the books featuring his iconic character, George Smiley. After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to...

‘Sophie Irwin is an exciting and original voice. She's a must-buy author for me.’ Taylor Jenkins Reid ‘A delicious Regency romp for fans of Bridgerton.’ Red ‘Scandal, art and romance – this is the best Regency romp set in Bath since Persuasion!’ Good Housekeeping A lifetime of duty Widowed at just seven-and-twenty from her marriage of convenience, Eliza, now Countess...

Jean Rhys's unique prequel to Jane Eyre, a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature. Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent...

The new paperback series- Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster 'I had got an idea that everyone here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn't care for, to please people they didn't love; that they never learned to be sincere - and, what's as...

Vile Bodies is Evelyn Waugh's brilliant skewering of the Roaring Twenties, now available in a wonderful new hardback edition. The Bright Young Things of 1920s Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade. Whether it is promiscuity, dancing, cocktail parties, or sports cars, a vivid assortment...

A must-have new edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, featuring a cover illustrated by Alison Bechdel, the New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, and a new foreword by Patricia Lockwood. A Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Edition Every summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland's idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect...

Grass's landmark novel in a stunning new translation and with a new foreword by the author The Tin Drum With a new foreword by the author On his third birthday, Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents and wielding his tin drum, Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of...

Ernest Hemingway's iconic first novel, published in 1926, tracks the Lost Generation of the 1920s from the nightclubs of Paris to the bullfighting arenas of Spain. The Sun Also Rises is both a tragic love story and a searing group portrait of hapless American expatriates drinking, dancing, and chasing their illusions in post-World War I Europe. The man at its...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. A London lawyer is drawn into a series of strange occurrences concerning his old friend Henry Jekyll and the...

A fine exclusive edition of one of literature’s most beloved stories. Featuring a laser-cut jacket on a textured book with foil stamping, all titles in this series will be first editions. No more than 10,000 copies will be printed, and each will be individually numbered from 1 to 10,000. I wish the spring was here now," said Mary. "I want...

Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter A (for "adultery"). Containing a number...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. The Scarlet Letter 'Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.' A tale of sin, punishment, and atonement, The Scarlet Letter exposes the moral rigidity of a 17th-century Puritan New England community when faced with the...

The classic story of a dangerous love triangle set in an 1890s Paris opera house. Rumoured to be haunted, the Palais Garnier opera house in nineteenth-century Paris is the setting for this story of a dangerous love triangle involving a young Swedish soprano, her mysterious “Phantom” tutor, and her childhood friend. When Carlotta, the lead soprano, takes ill and Christine...

A fine exclusive edition of one of literature’s most beloved stories. Featuring a laser-cut jacket on a textured book with foil stamping, all titles in this series will be first editions. No more than 10,000 copies will be printed, and each will be individually numbered from 1 to 10,000. It was one of those spring days which possesses so much...

The Great Gatsby is a dazzling social satire, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece and a milestone in twentieth-century literature, now beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.'...

HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics. Seeking escape from their unfulfilling marriages and monotonous lives in 1920s England, two women become transfixed by an advertisement to rent a medieval Italian castle for the month of April. Lotty Wilkins, who feels stifled by her solicitor husband, and pious Rose Arbuthnot, discontented in her relationship, are joined...

A brand new look for Wodehouse in Penguin, alongside the 120th anniversary publication of his very first novel, The Pothunters. 'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, "Do trousers matter?"' 'The mood will pass, sir.' Aunt Dahlia has tasked Bertie with purloining an antique cow creamer from Totleigh Towers. In order to do so, Jeeves hatches a scheme whereby...

An immortal story of friendship between two boys—the daring, mischievous, and loyal Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Read this 19th-century childhood adventure story that confronts the reality of racism in America. 'There comes a time in every boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.' Impish, daring young Tom Sawyer is a...

A fine exclusive edition of one of literature’s most beloved stories. Featuring a laser-cut jacket on a textured book with foil stamping, all titles in this series will be first editions. No more than 10,000 copies will be printed, and each will be individually numbered from 1 to 10,000. It was a perfect day, with a bright sun and a...

One of America's Favourite Books, PBS's The Great American Read Nobel Prize-winning author - This classic of 20th-century literature chronicles the spiritual evolution of a man living in India at the time of the Buddha—a tale that has inspired generations of readers. Here is a fresh translation of the classic Hermann Hesse novel, from Sherab Chödzin Kohn—a gifted translator and...

The beloved and bestselling novelist Joanna Trollope’s contemporary reworking of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility launches The Austen Project and is already one of the most talked about books of the year. When sisters Elinor and Marianne lose their father and their beloved home, Norland Park, all in a matter of weeks, the shock impacts them in very different ways....

The best satire of journalism ever written, now in a wonderful new hardback edition. Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of The Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. But I am not like other boys! I always tell the truth. The story of Pinocchio has remained one of the best-loved children's tales for over a century. However, the original 1883 novel about the adventures of the mischievous marionette on his quest to become a real boy...

The classic story of three ordinary children who go on a very big adventure with Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. Come Away! Come Away! The Darling children are tucked up in bed when Peter Pan bursts into their nursery. Peter and his mischievous fairy Tinker Bell entice Wendy and her brothers to fly away with them to...

A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf's pioneering novel about a time-travelling sixteenth-century nobleman who wakes up in the body of a woman, with a new foreword by Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. "A brilliant book that teaches you so much about identity and love—all these fundamental questions that we ask ourselves." -...

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it. To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, following the death of their father. As the years pass, Alexandra rises heroically...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. Oliver Twist has asked for more! Fleeing the workhouse, Oliver finds himself taken under the wing of the Artful Dodger and caught up with a group of pickpockets in London. As he tries to free himself from their clutches, he becomes immersed in the seedy underbelly of the...

Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. In Oliver Twist, Dickens graphically conjures up the capital's underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and...

Travel to the Old West with Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. Willa Cather’s novels brought the life of American settlers on the Great Plains to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness during a time when the lands west of the Mississippi were undergoing rapid transformation. My Ántonia, considered by many scholars to be her first masterpiece, tells the story of...

An enthralling exploration of the human experience, from the author of To The Lighthouse. On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax....

New edition of the Penguin Essential about the events of one June day in 1923... Mrs Dalloway tells the story of Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, on a June morning in 1923. She is preparing for a party she is giving that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers and observing life, her thoughts...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours’ Rejecting the conventional narratives of the time, Middlemarch shows a realistic portrayal of Victorian village life. Peopling this ground-breaking work...

A novel from the million copy bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada. Heartbreak, headlines and Hermès – welcome to Brooke's new world… Brooke and Julian live a happy life in New York – she's the breadwinner working two jobs and he's the struggling musician husband. Then Julian is discovered by a Sony exec and becomes an overnight success –...

A dreamlike, frozen dystopia from one of the twentieth century's most unique writers. No one knows why the ice has come, and no one can stop it. Every day it creeps further across the earth, covering the land in snow and freezing everything in its path. Through this bleached, devastated world, one man pursues the silver-haired girl he loves, as...

From the acclaimed translators of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov comes this superb translation of the short fiction of Nikolai Gogol, the nineteenth-century Russian master. Collected here are Gogol's finest tales—stories that combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city dweller—allowing readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. Dubliners captures the essence of early 20th century Dublin through its fifteen compelling stories. From a child grappling with a priest's death to a young woman contemplating a life away from the mundanity of Dublin with her lover, these narratives vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary Dubliners. With...

New edition of the Penguin Essential featuring fifteen brilliantly compelling stories about ordinary lives. 'Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.' From a child grappling with the death...

The most famous vampire story ever written, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) has enthralled generations of readers as completely as Count Dracula enthrals his victims. Though Stoker did not invent vampires—and in fact based his character's life-in-death on extensive research into European folklore—his novel elevated the nocturnal monster to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies which flourishes to...

Rediscover a dread of Dracula in this handsome new Vintage Classics edition. Within the pages of this book can be found one of the most terrifying creatures in all of literature. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH O'CONNOR Rediscover a dread of Dracula in this beautifully designed new Vintage Classics edition. This classic of horror writing is composed of diary entries,...

Depicting decadence and moral corruption in pre-revolutionary France, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Two aristocrats embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, the Vicomte is also...

This classic and much-loved novel about the French Revolution offers deep social commentary and an intriguing cast of characters. One of the best-selling novels of all time, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities recounts the story of Alexandre Manette, a French physician who is released from a long imprisonment on the eve of the French Revolution. As he sets...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Phileas Fogg was one of those mathematically exact people, who, never hurried and always ready, are economical of their steps and their motions. He never made one stride too many, always going by the shortest route. He did not give an idle look. He did not allow himself...

These classic stories of Pooh Bear and his friends from Hundred Acre Wood will warm your heart. Since his first appearance in the 1920s, Winnie-the-Pooh has charmed readers with his kindness toward the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood, making him one of the most beloved animal characters in world literature. This volume includes both A. A. Milne's original...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death.' Adventurous and spirited in tone, The Three Musketeers is considered one of the greatest historical French novels. When Athos, Porthos, and Aramis befriend a young and determined country boy, d'Artagnan, together they confront the scheming King's Minister, Cardinal...

Revel in the magic of a Christmas tradition. The Nutcracker features the full text of Alexandre Dumas's The History of a Nutcracker, the story that inspired the classic ballet. Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 vintage drawings from the nineteenth century, this beautifully designed book kindles the spirit of the holidays through its tale of an enchanted nutcracker made human...

Hope. Justice. Vengeance. You won't want to miss this classic tale! Best-selling author Alexandre Dumas—who also wrote The Three Musketeers—tells this heartbreaking yet heroic tale of Edmond Dantès, who takes revenge on the men responsible for his unjust fourteen-year imprisonment, keeping him from the woman he loved and the life he was supposed to live. The Count of Monte Cristo...

Number one bestselling author Conn Iggulden takes on the story of the mighty Kublai Khan. An epic tale of a great and heroic mind; his action-packed rule; and how, in conquering one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land, he changed the course of history forever. A scholar who conquered an empire larger than those of Alexander or Caesar. A warrior who...

In a country at war, a secret inheritance reveals a dark conspiracy … On a sunlit afternoon in seventeenth-century Dorset, a young girl falls in love with a stranger. But when her Puritan brother tries to force her into an unbearable marriage, she flees, taking with her only the gift left to her by her unknown father: a gold pendant...

Celebrate Christmas in true Wonderland style with this special festive edition of Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There. With a foiled festive cover and a Christmas letter from Lewis Carroll as a foreword, this limited edition gift book is the perfect gift for Alice fans, and a must-have for every collector's bookshelf. In a collectable, keepsake size, ideal...

"How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories." Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories This second volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction, selected by the critic Sharon Cameron, contains 'Family Happiness', 'The Devil', and The Kreutzer...

A new edition of Orwell's timeless dystopian classic, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor Since its first publication in 1949, Orwell's devastating exposé of the totalitarian mind has established itself as the most influential political satire of the modern age. Winston Smith's doomed rebellion against the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, and a world corrupted by technology and...

One of the most widely read novels of all time, Les Miserables was the crowning literary achievement of Victor Hugo's career. An enormous melodrama set against the background of political upheaval in France following the rule of Napoleon I, the novel tells the story of the peasant Jean Valjean—unjustly imprisoned and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realised police detective...

A new edition of Orwell's end-of-tether third novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor First published in 1936, and drawing on Orwell's own experiences of working in a Hampstead bookshop, Keep the Aspidistra Flying tracks the career of Gordon Comstock ('nearly 30 and moth-eaten already'), a struggling poet who tries to rebel against the conventions of middle-class English...

"How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories" Sharon Cameron in her preface to Hadji Murad and Other Stories This, the third volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction, concentrates on his later stories, including one of his greatest, Hadji Murad. In the...

A new edition of Orwell's elegiac fourth novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor First published in 1939 and dominated by the shadow of the Second World War, Coming Up For Air finds fat, middle-aged and unhappily-married George Bowling trying to revisit the world of his Edwardian childhood in rural Oxfordshire. He attempts to reconnect with the certainties...

The beautiful illusion, when reading Tolstoy, is that one is looking directly at the world, as opposed to a depiction – Andrew O'Hagan from his preface to Childhood, Boyhood and Youth Published in 1852, when he was just twenty-four, Childhood was Tolstoy's first published work, and the first of a trilogy of stories that evoke the upbringing and traditional education...

A new edition of Orwell's debut novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D. J. Taylor First published in 1934, and a bitter souvenir of Orwell's time as a servant of the British Raj, Burmese Days follows the slow decline of John Flory, as he tries to steer a path between the bores of the Kyauktada club, the machinations of...

First published in 1878, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the tragic story of aristocrat Anna Karenina and her ill-fated affair with the cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Although passionately in love, the couple finds their romance doomed by the sexual mores of their time and place, and the double standards that apply to men and women. The tale's panoramic sweep and...

A new edition of Orwell's savage satire of the Soviet Revolution, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D.J. Taylor First published in 1945, just as the allied forces had begun to parcel up the post-war world, Orwell's satire of the Soviet Revolution was instantly acclaimed as a Cold War classic. Set in the English countryside in the early years of...

One 'golden afternoon' in Oxford, in July 1862, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson accompanied three young sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith, on a boating trip. To keep the children amused, Dodgson began to tell a tale about an inquisitive youngster called Alice and her escapades in an underground world. Dodgson's story, later revised and illustrated by John Tenniel, would go...

An elegant edition of one of the best-loved stories in children's literature, complete and unabridged with over 30 full colour illustrations from Júlia Sardà - illustrator of Beetle Boy and The Clockwork Sparrow. Júlia's hauntingly magical pictures breathe new life into the famous tale of a bored little girl who finds herself falling into a world of bizarre creatures and...

A new edition of Orwell's starkly realistic second novel, introduced and annotated by his biographer, D. J. Taylor First published in 1935, when Orwell was struggling to establish himself as a writer, A Clergyman's Daughter tells the story of twenty-something Dorothy Hare, whose mundane life in a Suffolk rectory is thrown out of kilter by an amnesiac episode that sets...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but like every body else it must be in my own way. When the Dashwood family are forced into more modest circumstances, sisters Marianne and Elinor also find themselves suddenly entangled in matters of the heart. Passionate...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Young Charlotte Heywood arrives in Sanditon, a newly established seaside resort, with the Parkers: patrons and enthusiastic promoters of the town. Just as the town seeks to reinvent itself as a fashionable destination, Charlotte Heywood attempts to begin anew amongst its residents. As she begins to settle into...

Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky's disturbing and groundbreaking novella, appears in this new annotated edition with an Introduction by Charles Guignon and Kevin Aho. An analogue of Guignon's widely praised Introduction to his 1993 edition of The Grand Inquisitor, the editors' Introduction places the underground man in the context of European modernity. It analyses his inner dynamics in light of...

In a publishing career that spanned less than a decade, Jane Austen revolutionised the literary romance, using it as a stage from which to address issues of gender politics and class-consciousness rarely expressed in her day. The novels included in this beautiful leatherbound collection — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan...

Generally agreed to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century— and possibly any other— Proust's masterpiece is here presented in the latest revision to the classic Scott Moncrieff translation. On the surface, In Search of Lost Time is a traditional Bildungsroman describing the narrator's journey of self-discovery. This huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself… Beautiful, rich, self-assured and witty, Emma Woodhouse delights in matchmaking those around her, with no apparent care for her own...

The exquisite illustrations of Marjolein Bastin meet timeless text in this elegant special edition of an English masterpiece. The Marjolein Bastin Classics Series is a chance to rediscover classic literature in collectible, luxuriously illustrated volumes. For the first time ever, the internationally celebrated artwork of Marjolein Bastin graces the pages of a timeless classic, Emma. Beyond bringing these stories to...

A master of deductive reasoning who can solve the most difficult crimes by spotting obscure clues overlooked by others, dilettante sleuth Sherlock Holmes was the hero of sixty stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. He even rose from the dead after Doyle tried to dispatch him in his twenty-fourth adventure, and readers protested. Here, in...