Penguin Classics: Arts & Culture

The Odyssey by Homer is a monumental epic that has enthralled readers for centuries with its rich tapestry of adventure and human struggle. It chronicles the perilous journey of Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, as he strives to return home after the fall of Troy. During this ten-year odyssey, Odysseus confronts myriad dangers, both natural and supernatural, that test...

"The Illiad" is the culmination of a long-standing oral tradition. The oral technique enabled a master bard like Homer to develop what may historically have been an event of minor importance into a fully fledged epic. So, out of a single episode in the legendary Trojan War - Achilles' withdrawal from the fighting and his return to kill the Trojan...

The story centres on the critical events in four days of the 10th and final year of the war between the Greeks and Trojans. It describes how the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilleus sets in motion a tragic sequence of events, which leads to Achilleus' killing of Hektor and determines the ultimate fate of Troy. But Homer's theme is not...

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles. A Penguin Classic Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation. "Sing to me of the...

One of Williams' best-loved plays, this emotional rollercoaster tells the tale of the iconic Blanche DuBois and her demise by Stanley Kowalski. Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of...

Together, the poetry of Hesiod and Theognis offers a superb introduction to the life and thought of ancient Greece. Hesiod's Theogony (c. 725 BCE) is a powerful creation myth: an epic, bloody tale of dark forces, sex, and violence, tracing the history of the world from primeval Chaos to the establishment of Zeus as supreme king of the gods. In...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Over the course of six years, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters...

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the...

One of the great masterworks of English literature, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. 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. In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king to ensure his ambitions come true. But he soon learns the meaning of terror – killing once, he must kill again and again, and the dead return...

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 as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose'—to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton, and...

Winner of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Harold Morton Landon Translation Award "The best translation of a work of ancient literature that I read this year" - Emily Wilson The first female translator of the epic into English verse in over sixty years, Stephanie McCarter addresses accuracy in translation and its representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and...

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 emancipation and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful Song of Myself and I Sing the Body...

Truman Capote began writing when he was eight and became one of America's most versatile and gifted authors. A Capote Reader contains much of his published work: his fiction, including "Breakfast at Tiffany's", as well as his prolific output of short stories. Also included are travel sketches in which he evokes places from Tangiers to Brooklyn, and portraits of his...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.

Dorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of her age in her writing. The decadent 1920s and 1930s in New York were a time of great experiment and daring for women. For the rich, life seemed a continual party, but the excesses took their emotional toll. With a biting wit and perceptive insight, Dorothy Parker examines...

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a pioneering work that laid the groundwork for modern feminism and the enduring struggle for gender equality. Written in 1792 by the trailblazing philosopher and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, this seminal treatise is a compelling call to arms for the emancipation and education of women. In an era marked by the revolutionary fervour...

Robin Kirkpatrick's superb translation of the most famous work of Italian literature, in a one-volume edition. The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced...

The Aeneid by Virgil, inspired by Homer and an inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil chose as his hero Aeneas, the legendary survivor of the fall of Troy and father of the Roman race. In telling a story of dispossession and defeat, love and war, he portrayed human...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of...

The Essays by Michel Montaigne is a timeless collection of musings that delve deep into the human condition, exploring a vast array of themes with unparalleled originality. Without adhering to a strict narrative, Montaigne's essays meander through topics as diverse as personal introspection, philosophical contemplation, and societal critique. His writing is deeply rooted in personal experience, as he reflects on...

Penguin Classics relaunch. That proud, impassioned soul, so ungovernable now that she has felt the sting of injustice. Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking and horrific of all the Greek tragedies. Dominating the play is Medea herself, a towering and powerful figure who demonstrates Euripides'...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself'

In Paradise Lost, Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. Yet, by placing a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Do I wish to keep up with the times? No. My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. The great American poet, novelist, and environmental activist argues for a life lived...

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's Tyger, Coleridge's Khubla Khan and Shelley's Ozymandias alongside verse from less...

An anthology of some of the greatest poetry in the English language. Poetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. The Penguin Book of English Song draws together a great variety of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) that has reached a wider audience through the magic of music. Richard Stokes's rich anthology...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. In the Duke's absence from Vienna, his strict deputy Angelo revives an ancient law forbidding sex outside marriage. The young Claudio, whose fiancée is pregnant, is condemned to death by the law. His sister Isabella, soon to become a nun, pleads with Lord...

Published in cooperation with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, this volume presents the songs with music, and annotations on their original sources and meaning. The definitive collection of folk music—one of the great English popular art forms. One of the great English popular art forms, the folk song can be painful, satirical, erotic, dramatic, rueful or funny. This...

A new collection of Pushkin's great narrative and lyric verse, translated by Antony Wood WINNER OF THE READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2020 Alexander Pushkin established what we know as Russian literature. This collection includes his strongly personal lyric verse, which springs spontaneously from his everyday life – his numerous loves, his exile, his hectic life in St Petersburg – while the...

Guide to Greece is an extremely comprehensive guidebook for tourists, concentrating on buildings, tombs, and statues. It includes a wealth of information on the mythological, religious, and historical background to the monuments described. This book is so informative that it may be called the foundation of classical archaeology, and this ancient Baedeker is still used as a guide to classical...

An award-winning collection from one of America's most distinguished twentieth-century poets. Blessing the Boats draws together poems from across Lucille Clifton's career, showcasing the stunning simplicity and grace with which she addressed the whole of human experience—birth, death, children, family, illness, sexuality, and injustice in antebellum and contemporary America. Hers is a poetry that is passionate and wise, not afraid...

Colin Burrow's engaging (even amusing) introduction asks what the term metaphysical means and includes A Very Short History of Metaphysical Poetry from Donne to Rochester. Spanning the Elizabethan age to the Restoration and beyond, Metaphysical Poetry sought to describe a time of startling progress, scientific discovery, unrivalled exploration and deep religious uncertainty. This compelling collection of the best and most...

First Penguin volume Of best Japanese haiku Vivid translations Now a global poetry, the haiku was originally a Japanese verse form that flourished from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Although renowned for its brevity, usually running over three lines in seventeen syllables, and by its use of natural imagery to make Zen-like observations about reality, in fact, the haiku is...

An enchanting collection of the very best of Russian poetry, edited by acclaimed translator Robert Chandler. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, poetry's pre-eminence in Russia was unchallenged, with Pushkin and his contemporaries ushering in the 'Golden Age' of Russian literature. Although prose briefly gained the high ground, poetry again became dominant with the 'Silver Age', which held...

The comprehensive guide to a deeply human tradition of memory, mourning and consolation. Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalised by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. It...

A major new anthology of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work, edited by Jack Donovan and Cian Duffy. Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the leading English Romantics and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. His major works include the long visionary poems Prometheus Unbound and Adonais, an elegy on the death of John Keats. His...

A new departure in Penguin Classics – a book containing one of the greatest of all Renaissance woodcut sequences – Holbein's bravura danse macabre. One of Holbein's first great triumphs, The Dance of Death is an incomparable sequence of tiny woodcuts showing the folly of human greed and pride, with each image packed with drama, wit and horror as a...

Masterful versions of Ibsen's two great verse plays by one of our greatest living poets, Geoffrey Hill. These two masterly and contrasting verse dramas by Ibsen made his reputation as a playwright. The fantastical adventures of the irrepressible Peer Gynt—poet, idler, procrastinator, seducer—draw on Norwegian folklore to conjure up mountains, kidnappings, shipwrecks, and trolls in an exuberant celebration of life;...

An important new selection of First World War poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy and Jane Potter. This new selection brings together the poetry of three of the most distinctive and moving voices to emerge from the First World War. Here are the controlled passion and rich metaphors of Wilfred Owen's celebrated verses such as Anthem for Doomed Youth and Strange...

A collection of controversial and galvanising essays on literature, culture, and politics from Matthew Arnold, one of the greatest Victorian thinkers. 'One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class' Poet, education reformer, social theorist, and...

Daring essays on democracy, history and the nation state by one of China's leading twentieth-century intellectuals. The power, anger and fluency of Liang Qichao's writings make him one of the towering figures in modern Chinese literature. He saw his great, almost unmanageable task as an attempt to write China into the new era - to provide an ancient country, devastated...

An ingenious exploration of the meaning of literature, from one of Italy's most beloved writers. 'If the world is increasingly senseless, all we can do is try to give it a style.' The difference between life and literature; the good intentions of holiday reading; the avant-garde; the fate of the novel; the fantastical; the art of translation - these are...

An exciting new selection of poems exploring faith, the divine and doubt, written by poets across the world from antiquity to the present Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is...

One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as 'Composed Upon Westminster...

Published for the centenary of his birth, a gathering of lucid, intensely lyrical poetry from one of the twentieth century's pre-eminent literary voices. be courageous when reason fails you be courageous in the final reckoning it is the only thing that counts Zbigniew Herbert was one of the best-known and most-translated poets of post-war Poland, opposed alike to Communism, Fascism,...

A collection of three of the sharpest Restoration comedies. The three plays collected in this volume demonstrate Sheridan's unerring ability to create unrivalled comedy out of ingenious plots, witty repartee, farcical situations and flamboyant characters. And while he never overtly moralises, Sheridan uses brilliant comedy to deflate hypocrisy and satirise the manners of his age. In The Rivals, Captain Absolute...

A light revision of our definitive collection, translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite. Poetry remains a living part of the culture of Japan today. The clichés of everyday speech are often to be traced to famous ancient poems, and the traditional forms of poetry are widely known and loved. This congenial attitude comes from a poetical...

Poems: 1968-2020 presents a new selection of Nikki Giovanni's poetry, spanning from 1968 to the present day. For more than fifty years, Nikki Giovanni's poetry has dazzled and inspired readers. Emerging from the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she quickly became one of the most celebrated and controversial poets of the era. Now considered a living legend, this...

The dazzling essays of the beloved, subversive Chinese writer Wang Xiaobo, a continual bestseller in China, now in English for the first time. Wang Xiaobo made his name as a novelist, but his essays, too, have become ongoing bestsellers in China since their publication in the 1990s. Bringing together his thoughts on reading, talking, and silence during the Cultural Revolution;...

These three plays focus on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling and exposing lies. In Ghosts, Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he respected and the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. Ibsen's most provocative drama, it strips away the surface of a middle-class family to...

Sophocles' innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother's lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but the objectivity and humanity of Sophocles' version provides a new perspective. Depicting the...

A magnificent new translation of The Odyssey by best-selling author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. With his Odyssey, best-selling author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has created a momentous new work, hailed by classicists and poets alike—a translation to stand with those of E. V. Rieu and Robert Fagles. Setting aside the streamlining, modernizing approach of many recent translations, Mendelsohn artfully reproduces...

A new selection of John Donne's endlessly innovative and fascinating verse, from the witty conceit of 'The Flea' to the instense spirituality of his divine poems. Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, John Donne (1572-1631) was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan age. A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in...

Vasari (1511-1574) was himself a painter, but he is really remembered for these biographies which begin with Cimabue and Giotto in the late 13th century and trace the developments in Italian art down to the golden epoch of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian. Lives of the Artists also conveys much about the author himself and his abilities as a critic inspired...

This exhilarating collection of non-fiction sees one of the greatest twentieth-century writers meditating on the small moments that make up a life. How did I so unwittingly transform the joy of living into the great luxury of being alive? Between 1967 and 1977, Clarice Lispector wrote weekly dispatches from her desk in Rio for the Jornal do Brasil. Already famous...

A new collection of some of Cicero's greatest and most stirring speeches, translated by Siobhan McElduff. Cicero (106-43BC) was the most brilliant orator in Classical history. Even one of the men who authorised his assassination, the Emperor Octavian, admitted to his grandson that Cicero was—'an eloquent man, my boy, eloquent and a lover of his country'. This new selection of...

A new verse translation of one of the foundational ancient Greek works by the award-winning poet Alicia Stallings. The ancient Greeks revered Hesiod, believing he had beaten Homer in a singing contest, and that after his dead body was thrown to sea it was brought back by dolphins. His Works and Days is one of the most important early works...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series—beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. The Tower was W. B. Yeats's first major collection of poetry as Nobel Laureate after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923. It is considered to be one of his most influential collections. The title refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. The Survivor presents a selection of poetry from the author of If This is a Man and The Periodic Table. "Back, away from here, drowned people, go. I haven't stolen anyone's place."

C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of remembered passions, imagined monologues, and dramatic retellings of his native Alexandria's ancient past. Figures from antiquity speak with telling interruptions from the author in such poems as Anna Comnena and You did not understand, while...

Fifty new books at €1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. 'I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided . . .' By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece The Great Hunger, some of the key poems by the...

Member of Parliament, tutor to Oliver Cromwell's ward, satirist and friend of John Milton, Andrew Marvell was one of the most interesting and important poets of the seventeenth century. The Complete Poems demonstrates his unique skill and immense diversity to the full, and includes lyrical love-poetry, religious works and biting satire. From the passionately erotic To his Coy Mistress, to...

The Japanese philosopher and aesthete's definitive, hugely influential exposition of his philosophy of folkcrafts, setting out the hallmarks of Japanese design as we know it today - anonymity, quality, simplicity and honesty - and, of course, wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection. Our lives are filled with objects. Everyday things used in everyday settings, they are our constant companions. As such,...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber 'Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! - and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing by the watermelons?' Profane and prophetic verses about sex, death, revolution...

Michael Hamburger's distinguished translation of a selection of poems by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is now recognised as one of Europe's supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of...

Browning was one of the greatest of English poets, whose intense and original imagination enabled him to transform any subject he chose—whether everyday or sublime—into startling, memorable verse. In his work, he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy, and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. Selected...

Part of a series of new editions of Lawrence's works From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets. This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some of his...

A fascinating account of the time of the Vikings and the feuds of the Orkney Isles. Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend, and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still part...

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 the most significant English works on the theme of utopia, is the tale of William Guest, a Victorian who wakes one morning to find...

Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was born in AD 21. He served both as a cavalry officer in Germania and as a procurator, and he combined this public service with a deep interest in science. Natural History is Pliny's sole surviving work, and in it, he records the sum total of Roman scientific knowledge in the first...

In 1818, when he was in his mid-thirties, Stendhal met and fell passionately in love with the beautiful Mathilde Dembowski. She, however, was quick to make it clear that she did not return his affections, and in his despair, he turned to the written word to exorcise his love and explain his feelings. The result is an intensely personal dissection...

Italian Journey 1786-1788 is Goethe's famous account of his time and travels in Italy. In 1786, already recognised as the leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe embarked on a journey to Italy. This journey was both a personal and artistic quest, aiming to provide relief from his responsibilities and the pains of unrequited love. As he visited...

The final volume in the new Penguin Ibsen series: superb modern translations of four of Ibsen's greatest plays. In these four unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the complex nature of truth, the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the terrible pull that the past exerts over the present. In The Wild Duck, an idealist destroys a family by exposing...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Sadder than salad. From apples to artichokes, these glittering, fragmented, painterly portraits of food by the avant-garde pioneer Gertrude Stein are redolent of sex, laughter, and the joy of everyday life.

An insight into the splendour, squalor and energy of everyday Roman life. Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires, he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member...

A new translation by Alan H. Sommerstein of four of Aeschylus' most celebrated plays. Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the final defeat of Persia in the...

A beautiful, skilfully crafted work of chivalric romance. Written by an unknown author in the twelfth century, this powerful tale of murder and revenge reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, transforming centuries-old legend into a masterpiece of chivalric drama. Siegfried, a great prince of the Netherlands, wins the hand of the beautiful princess Kriemhild of Burgundy by...

A collection of Bacon's vibrant, intelligent essays covering subjects ranging from ambition to the vicissitude of things. One of the major political figures of his time, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) served in the court of Elizabeth I and ultimately became Lord Chancellor under James I in 1617. A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosophy, and...

The Annals of Imperial Rome recounts the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity, Tacitus describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies, and murders...