Penguin Classics

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...

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days they are destined to remain there—a hundred stories of love, adventure, and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than...

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. The small incidents of life become moments of inner revelation in the luminous writing of Clarice Lispector. A woman contemplating a vase of roses after a nervous breakdown; a tangled mother-daughter relationship; a man's abandonment of...

The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works contains The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer. Against a tradition of devotional writings which focused on knowing God through Christ's Passion and his humanity, these texts describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. These...

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. Georges Simenon's brilliant pipe-smoking detective, Jules Maigret, is one of the most beloved literary creations of the twentieth century. In this adventure, an officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret's methods when a call from...

A haunting, dreamlike portrayal of the encroaching horror of the Holocaust onto a genteel MittelEuropean resort town. A masterpiece ... the greatest novel of the Holocaust - The Guardian Badenheim 1939, a resort town near the forests of Vienna, is preparing for the arts festival of the summer season. The hotel workers and local tradespeople rush to prepare the small...

Dreamlike Welsh tales from the thirteenth century Drawing on myth, folklore and history, the stories of The Mabinogion passed from generations of storytellers before they were written down in the thirteenth century in the form we know today. Set in dual realms of the forests and valleys of Wales and the shadowy otherworld, the tales are permeated by a dreamlike...

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. Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and...

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. Karen Blixen, author of the acclaimed memoir Out of Africa, was also a master of the short story form. Her tales offer luminous meditations on rebirth and redemption, and on the mystery and unexpectedness of...

When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict, and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money—and murder....

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. The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London's streets in...

Although written over 400 years after Alexander's death, Arrian's The Campaigns of Alexander is our best source of knowledge of the man and his deeds. Arrian had himself been a military commander, and his record of the exploits of the world's greatest conqueror reveals sympathy for his subject, without the adulation or contempt which so often mar other histories of...

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. In this inspirational, allegorical guide, Al Mustafa the prophet delivers spiritual yet practical homilies on the work of living—covering beauty, truth, possessions, sorrow, joy, death, and more. Translated into more than fifty languages and among the...

"Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." To this "one very simple principle" the whole of Mill's essay On Liberty is dedicated. While many of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, from Adam Smith to Godwin and Thoreau, had celebrated liberty, it was Mill who organised the idea into a philosophy, and put it into the...

These stories from the middle period of Chekhov's career show him exploring complex, ambiguous, and often extreme emotions. Influenced by his own experiences as a doctor, Ward No. 6, set in a mental hospital, is a savage indictment of the medical profession. The Black Monk, portraying an academic who has strange hallucinations, explores ideas of genius and insanity. In Murder,...

Penguin Classics relaunch When country-girl Grace Melbury returns home from her middle-class school, she feels she has risen above her suitor, the simple woodsman Giles Winterborne. Though marriage had been discussed between her and Giles, Grace finds herself captivated by Dr Edred Fitzpiers, a sophisticated newcomer to the area—a relationship that is encouraged by her socially ambitious father. Hardy's novel...

Penguin Classics relaunch. The Return of the Native was written towards the beginning of Hardy's career as a novelist and can be considered one of his most representative works. In this novel, Hardy's tragic vision is powerfully and narrowly focused on Egdon Heath and the men and women who live on it. Set against the backdrop of the Heath and...

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. A novella regarded by Edith Wharton as one of her very best, Summer tells the tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams set against the backdrop of a lush summer in rural Massachusetts. A sensation on...

Sentimental Education begins with the hero, Frederic Moreau, leaving Paris and returning to the provinces and his mother. Part love story, part historical novel and satire, it tells of how Moreau is driven by passion for an unattainable older woman. His 'sentimental education' turns out to be more of an anxious quest than a happy one, echoing Flaubert's own life...

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. Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But...

This edition includes a list of suggestions for further reading, a glossary of important philosophical words and phrases, and notes. Exploring the question of what exactly makes good people good, Protagoras and Meno are two of the most enjoyable and accessible of all of Plato's dialogues. Widely regarded as his finest dramatic work, the Protagoras, set during the golden age...

A new translation of one of Plato's major dialogues, popular because of its subject matter: love. Phaedrus is widely recognised as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction, further reading, and...

The first-person chronicle of a legendary journalist at the flashpoint of the Russian Revolution. Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed's eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he provides a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized...

A surreal work of science fiction from one of Japan's most brilliant novelists. In anticipation of a coming nuclear apocalypse, Mole has converted a huge underground quarry into an ark. While searching for his crew, he falls for the tricks of a wily insect dealer and his friends. In the surreal drama that ensues, the ark is invaded by first...

The Secret Pilgrim is the final novel featuring Smiley, John le Carré's most enduring character, and it is a gripping feat of narrative brilliance. The Cold War is over, and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth—perhaps the...

The Ruined Map is a hardboiled detective story that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the psychological suspense of Dostoevsky. Mr Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these, he...

Rarely has emotional turbulence been so delicately conveyed – The New York Times With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her...

The Castle is Kafka's last great, unfinished novel— the book that hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. The Castle tells the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and...

The Box Man by Kobo Abe is an existential and entertaining masterpiece. "This is the record of a box man." The streets of Tokyo have been seeing a strange phenomenon recently—people who have decided to live their lives in a box on the street. Behind their cut-out eyeholes, they sit and watch from behind their four cardboard walls. Our nameless...

Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the...

Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes and bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex and personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4,000...

Secret Rendezvous is a Kafkaesque marvel and a biting satire of bureaucracy, medicine, and modern life. In Tokyo, in the middle of the night, an uncalled-for ambulance arrives to spirit away a man's wife, though she is perfectly healthy. He sets out on an epic journey to find her, navigating the labyrinthine corridors of a strange and enormous hospital. Days...

Russell Hoban's masterpiece, a post-apocalyptic vision of humanity stripped back to its essentials. O what we ben! And what we come to... Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilisation, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.

The Cancer Journals is a brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer. — Jackie Kay, New Statesman I would never have chosen this path, but I am very glad to be who I am, here. The Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic, and invigorating account of the experience of breast...

Since the original, prewar translation, there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic, and lucid Proust, creating one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, Penguin makes...

Since the original, prewar translation, there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic, and lucid Proust, creating one of the greatest, most enjoyable reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is...

A mesmerizing novel from one of the most important writers working today, winner of the alternative Nobel Prize. Francis Sancher, a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others, is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Rivière au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. No one is particularly surprised since Sancher, a secretive and...

An epic novel of love, war, and revolution from Mikhail Sholokhov, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the most important Russian masterpieces of the 20th century, And Quiet Flows the Don is an epic novel depicting the lives and struggles of Don Cossacks during the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Civil War. The story...

The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity, and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him. Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his newfound employment to further...

The new paperback series—Penguin English Library "I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine ... I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth,...

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima is an introspective and vividly descriptive exploration of a young man's struggle with his concealed identity in post-war Japan. The protagonist, Kochan, a Japanese teenager, grapples with the awakening of his homosexual and sadistic desires in an acutely homophobic and conservative society. Each night, Kochan is haunted by intense fantasies in which he...

Maurice by E.M. Forster is a deeply moving and intensely personal novel that traces the life and emotional journey of Maurice Hall, a young man from a privileged background. Maurice grows up with a keen sense of his societal role but finds himself increasingly drawn to relationships with other men, something that challenges the norms and expectations of early 20th-century...

A new translation by Helen Constantine of de Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity. Published in 1782, just years before the French Revolution, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. At its centre are two aristocrats, former lovers, who embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement...

At the age of forty-one, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) underwent a profound spiritual crisis, from which he emerged believing that he had encountered death itself. These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, his subsequent preoccupation with mortality. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question —...

"The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat.'" - The New York Times On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns, and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome...

Having got rid of their human master, the animals in this political fable look forward to a life of freedom and plenty. But as a clever, ruthless elite takes control, the other animals find themselves hopelessly ensnared in the same old way. Animal Farm by George Orwell is a powerful allegory that explores the dynamics of power and corruption, leaving...

A masterfully rendered volume of Chekhov's stories from famed translators Pevear and Volokhonsky. Chekhov's genius left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their superb renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories. These stories, which span the full arc of his...

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a seminal work that delves into the fundamental principles of political right and social organization. This thought-provoking book starts with the powerful declaration, "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains," setting the stage for an exploration of the tension between individual liberty and societal obligations. In an era marked by...

Launching a major new paperback series: Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 'I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!' she exclaimed. 'Nor will I for a minute.' Hardy's powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working...

This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting...

Virginia Woolf's playful mock biography of a chameleonic historical figure, written for her intimate friend Vita Sackville-West. Orlando has always been an outsider... His longing for passion, adventure, and fulfilment takes him out of his own time. Chasing a dream through the centuries, he bounds from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to the modern world. Will he find happiness with...

Maigret at the Coroner's sees Maigret grappling with the American justice system on a trip to Arizona. The FBI man was convinced, in short, that Maigret was a big shot in his own country but that here, in the United States, he was incapable of figuring out anything. The more Cole watched him thinking things over, the more it amused...

Maigret at Picratt's delves into the sordid world of Montmartre nightclubs in this new translation. Through the half-open door, Dr. Pasquier could be seen putting his overcoat back on and replacing his instruments in his bag. On the white goatskin rug at the foot of the untouched bed, a body was stretched out—black satin dress, chalk white arm, auburn hair....

A new translation of this devastating tale of a young woman whose new life in Paris is tragically cut short, part of the Maigret series. Maigret and the Dead Girl follows Maigret and fellow inspector Lognon as they clash in their investigations into the murder of an unknown young woman in Paris. Maigret endeavours to piece together the story of...

A new translation in the Penguin Maigret series: Madame Maigret's Friend sees Madame Maigret take the lead in this disturbing investigation. When he got to his door, he was surprised not to hear any noise in the kitchen and not to smell any food. He went in, crossed the dining room, where the table had not been laid, and at...

Launching a major new paperback series: Penguin English Library The Penguin English Library Edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It...

A major new translation of Voltaire's fast-paced, globe-trotting satire - an irresistible holiday read. Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that all is for the best. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to...

With Robinson Crusoe, Defoe wrote what is regarded as the first English novel, and created one of the most popular and enduring myths in literature. Written in an age of exploration and enterprise, it has been variously interpreted as an embodiment of British imperialist values, as a portrayal of 'natural man', or as a moral fable. But above all, it...

The Prose Edda is the most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature and our most extensive source for Norse mythology. Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, it tells ancient stories of the Norse creation epic and recounts the battles that follow as gods, giants, dwarves, and elves struggle for survival. It also preserves...

A superb translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening, strange and visionary short fiction. After Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed. This fiction included not only The Castle and The Trial but...

The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin is a groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire. When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. However, a century after her death,...

A new translation by David Raeburn, with introduction and notes by Pat Easterling 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...

Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now in Penguin Classics. 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 influential for writers and artists...

Beautifully designed, 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. Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth — four little women enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. The charming story of the...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, this edition of Treasure Island is beautifully 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. The story of Treasure Island grew out of a map that led to imaginary treasure, devised during a holiday in Scotland...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectable editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage....

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. I will not read it; I should never sleep again A doctor performs an experiment on a young woman that goes horribly wrong, and a series of increasingly strange events follow—sinister woodland rituals, disappearances, suicides... Viewed as immoral and decadent on first publication in 1894, Machen's weird...

The plays in this volume, each written a decade apart, demonstrate different sides of Henrik Ibsen's genius, but all deal with themes of alienation from society and the breaking down of convention. A Doll's House portrays a woman questioning her duty to her husband and seeking to escape from the stifling confines of her marriage—a theme that shocked contemporary audiences...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night. Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash, the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. 'To that flash of semi-vision can be traced a full half of the horror which has ever since haunted us' An expedition to Antarctica goes horribly wrong as a group of explorers stumbles upon some mysterious ancient ruins, with devastating consequences. At the Mountains of Madness ranks...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. 'I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.' Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth—four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored by generations. Readers have rooted...

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...

Regarded as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges, and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. He watches and records the activities of the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia, the sadistic Tiberius, and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first...

Major new collection of Clarice Lispector's short stories for the first time in English. The publication of Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories, eighty-five in all, is a major literary event. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend— from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives...

The bestselling 1988 collection of short stories exploring the inner lives of men and women, ambiguity and unease in relationships, and the cruelty we inflict on one another. A young woman anxiously waits for her date on a street corner in New York City; he sits in a pizza parlour across the street, watching her discomfort. A middle-aged woman returns...

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a...

A beautifully designed clothbound edition of Shirley Jackson's chilling tale of power and fear. Hunting for evidence of the occult, Dr Montague invites three participants to Hill House: Theodora, his lovely assistant; Luke, set to inherit the estate; and Eleanor, a fragile young woman with a troubled past. As The House takes hold, Jackson plumbs the depths of the human...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Why I Am so Clever Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Anecdotes of the Cynics It's you who are the dogs... These tales capture the wit and wisdom of the Cynics, exploring their unique philosophical perspectives through engaging anecdotes.

Winner of the National Book Award "The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II." —The New Republic “A screaming comes across the sky...” A few months after the Germans’ secret V-2 rocket bombs begin falling on London, British Intelligence discovers that a map of the city pinpointing the sexual conquests of one Lieutenant Tyrone...