Penguin Classics

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...

Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny, and self-destruction, presented in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Anna Karenina seems to have everything—beauty, wealth, popularity, and an adored son. However, she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalises society and family alike, and soon brings jealousy...

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." - Haruki Murakami The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century. No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in...

This introduction covers the writing of The State and Revolution, the 1927 revolution itself, Marxist influences on Lenin, and what Lenin aimed to cover. It delves into the style of the book, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the furore over the book's publication. It also examines the implications for general political theory, the book's fate from the 1920s to...

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's timeless tale of love and loneliness is now widely available in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his plane vanished over the Mediterranean Sea during a reconnaissance mission. Nearly eighty years later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of...

The definitive collection of tales of the supernatural, edited by Michael Newton. 'The ghost is the most enduring figure in supernatural fiction. He is absolutely indestructible... He changes with the styles in fiction but he never goes out of fashion. He is the really permanent citizen of the earth, for mortals, at best, are but transients' - Dorothy Scarborough This...

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;...

Existential science fiction with a family secret at its heart Fourth Galaxy, 4 November 2052 — in the blackness of space, a figure in blue overalls tumbles over and over as it drifts towards the planet Badr-al-Budur. No space suit, no helmet, no oxygen. He can't be alive, can he? But he is. First Navigator Fremder Gorn is the only...

New to Classics, a wide-ranging survey of the Jewish mystical tradition. The Torah is both hidden and revealed. There is a secret meaning to the holy Torah that is not written down explicitly or explained in it. This selection offers a comprehensive survey of the Kabbalah, the body of writings in the Jewish mystical tradition. It features texts from a...

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...

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...

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...

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, published as a beautiful Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time Alec Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying...

This second of two parts concentrates on Descartes' work on the nature and limits of human knowledge and the methods by which we can hope to acquire knowledge. It also includes the first seven chapters of The World and a selection of Descartes' correspondence and replies to his critics. The first volume (0-14-04470-1) focuses on Descartes' Meditations.

The definitive portrait of the real Socrates Rich in drama and humour, they include the controversial Ion, a debate on poetic inspiration; Laches, in which Socrates seeks to define bravery; and Euthydemus, which considers the relationship between philosophy and politics. Together, these dialogues provide a definitive portrait of the real Socrates and raise issues still keenly debated by philosophers, forming...

The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price is a classic Cold War thriller where a crashed plane becomes a case for a civil servant turned detective. A missing plane resurfaces—and so do long-submerged secrets. An RAF Dakota, presumed lost at sea during World War Two, has just been discovered at the bottom of a drained lake over twenty years later. The...

A murderer targets British historians of the First World War in this 1970s classic. Paul Mitchell spends his days researching the carnage of the First World War in the silence of the library. But his peace is shattered by an unexpected visit from a man with a fragment of a German trench map—and a lot of questions. Why does Dr...

A revelatory and richly varied collection of Korea's greatest short stories. This eclectic, moving and wonderfully enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic twentieth century, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between North and South and the rapid, disorienting urbanisation of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short...

A bold mix of realism, allegory, adventure, and progressive politics, this collection features Jack London's most profound and moving literary works. The Call of the Wild, London's elemental masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog during the Klondike Gold Rush. White Fang,...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics — irresistible, mini editions of short works by the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. In this haunting collection, the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore stalk the page. Of Ghosts and Goblins by Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, draws on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in...

A beautiful boxed set of six of Dickens's greatest works for the Dickens anniversary year. 2012 is the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest and most important novelists, Charles Dickens. To celebrate, we're publishing six of his works in this exclusive and sumptuous boxed set of lavish, clothbound editions, designed by Penguin's own award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith....

The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated autobiography, The Prime of Life, recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure. First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in her twenties, thirties, and forties. Beginning as a recent graduate from the Sorbonne teaching...

A chilling new collection of Henry James's short stories exploring the uncanny, edited by Susie Boyt. In The Turn of the Screw, one of the most famous ghost stories of all time, a governess becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. But are the children really in danger - and if so,...

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 Finger explores a myriad of bizarre and compelling vignettes. "He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on the dresser, a few drops of blood gathering around the white bone."...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. She felt a cozy solidarity with the big company of the voluntary dead. Wise-cracking and heartbreaking, these tales of women on the edge by the legendary wit Dorothy Parker show the darkness beneath the surface of...

First paperback publication of the essential tales drawn from the acclaimed new translation. This is the essential one-volume edition of Tales from 1,001 Nights, drawn from the acclaimed landmark translation published in three volumes by Penguin Classics in 2008. It contains 'Aladdin', 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves', 'Sindbad the Sailor', and many others of the most enjoyable and beloved...

A stirring novel of idealist loyalty and sibling love, by one of East Germany's most important writers. 1960. The border between East and West Germany has closed. For Elisabeth, a young painter, the GDR is her generation's chance to build an egalitarian socialist future. For her brother Uli, it is a place of stricture and oppression. Separating them is the...

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...

A lively and enchanting collection of much-loved tales, new to Penguin Classics. Mystery and excitement abound in this lively collection of fairy tales, folklore, and legends, which celebrate Scotland's enormously rich oral tradition. This anthology offers a carefully chosen combination of old favourites such as Tam Lin, Thomas Rymer, and Adam Bell, as well as more modern stories by master...

This revised edition has been completely re-set with an updated index and a new preface. Isaiah Berlin witnessed the excesses of the Russian Revolution as a child, and in becoming one of the key liberal intellects of the last century, some of his most important contributions were on the subject of Russia and the concept of freedom. In the ten...

Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida is a unique collection that brings together acknowledged masterpieces from classic authors such as Chekhov and Gogol, alongside a rich selection from less familiar writers. From the reign of the Tsars in the early 19th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long held a central...

A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. Regarded as one of the sacred texts of liberalism, his great work On Liberty argues lucidly that any democracy risks becoming a 'tyranny of opinion' in which minority views are...

First complete translation into English of Maxims and Reflections. Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills. Goethe was probably the last true 'Renaissance Man'. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar's court, where he...

A selection of Lafcadio Hearn's brilliantly entertaining and eerie ghost stories, regarded as major classics in Japan. In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living, and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms...

First written down in the eighth century AD, these early Irish stories depict a far older world, part myth, part legend, and part history. Rich with magic and achingly beautiful, they speak of a land of heroic battles, intense love, and warrior ideals, in which the otherworld is explored and men mingle freely with the gods. From the vivid adventures...

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.

A gripping novel that ultimately questions our capacity for moral strength and the depths of human integrity. It was I who removed de P- this morning. With these chilling words, Victor Haldin shatters the solitary, industrious existence of Razumov, his fellow student at St Petersburg University. Razumov aims to overcome the denial of his noble birth by a brilliant career...

A savage indictment of British society at the turn of the century, from the author of Mrs. Dalloway. The Years is the story of three generations of the Pargiter family - their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs - mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London's streets during the first decades of the twentieth century. A work of fluid...

When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called upon to investigate. The mystery deepens and suspicion falls more widely as it emerges that the dead woman was at the centre of a tangled web of relationships: with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the...

A hardback series for le Carre collectors 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 last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs...

A tale of princely jealousy and vengeance, The Saga of the Volsungs has been an inspiration for Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien. Based on Viking Age poems, The Saga of the Volsungs combines mythology, legend, and sheer human drama. At its heart are the heroic deeds of Sigurd the dragon slayer, who acquires magical knowledge from one of Odin's Valkyries. Yet...

New to Penguin Classics In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Teheran to Oxiana—the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. The Road to Oxiana offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures,...

Michael Hulse's new translation perfectly conveys the unsettling beauty of the original and is accompanied by an introduction on Rilke's life and the biographical and literary influences on the Notebooks. This edition also includes suggested further reading, a chronology, and notes. While his old furniture rots in storage, Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris, with little...

Eusebius is regarded as the historian of Christian antiquity. Eusebius's account is the only surviving historical record of the Church during its crucial first 300 years. Bishop Eusebius, a learned scholar who lived most of his life in Caesarea in Palestine, broke new ground in writing the The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine and provided a model...

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...

When Benjamin Button's father arrives at the hospital, he is surprised and ashamed to find his new baby boy is a weathered, aged man, to all appearances no younger than seventy years old. As time goes by, young Benjamin comes to no longer require a cane, his hair ceases to be grey, his limbs become less frail, his wrinkles less...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. I saw him taking a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies all fell off him, and, as they were in the very act of falling, there issued ... a monstrous creature of the beetle type. Eminent politician Paul Lessingham is the toast of Westminster, but...

The first great German novel - an extraordinary recreation of the horrors of the Thirty Years War, written by a veteran of the conflict. First published in 1668, The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus tells the picaresque, brilliantly described adventures of a boy swept up in the Thirty Years War and the terrible things that he experiences. Some of it is...

Coming from a society where women were barred from serious writing and teaching, Julian, an anchorite of the great medieval city of Norwich, nevertheless uses her womanliness and the English vernacular of the day to describe a series of revelations which she received from God in the year 1373. She identifies the female nature of Christ's suffering and the motherhood...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Conspiracies and intrigue are rife in the court of Henry VIII as a Duke is executed for treason, having been tricked by the Cardinal. And when the King falls in love with Anne Bullen and decides to divorce his wife, he causes an...

A fantastically unique work of science fiction that has fascinated generations of readers with its clever blend of social satire and mathematical theory. A work that still poses provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth—its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The...

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics, and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly separate states — the first, an experience inspired by fear and awe; the second, an expression of pleasure and...

This new translation, the first to be based on the latest critical edition of Ibsen's works, offers the best version available in English. Four of Ibsen's most important plays in superb modern translations, part of the new Penguin Ibsen series. With her assertion that she is 'first and foremost a human being', Nora Helmer sent shockwaves throughout Europe when she...

A superb translation of one of the greatest nineteenth-century poems—the libretto to Wagner's Ring cycle. The scale and grandeur of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung has no precedent and no successor. It preoccupied Wagner for much of his adult life and revolutionised the nature of opera, the orchestra, the demands on singers, and on the audience itself. The four...

A collection of political speeches from the greatest orator of Rome Amid the corruption and power struggles of the collapse of the Roman Republic, Cicero (106-43BC) produced some of the most stirring and eloquent speeches in history. A statesman and lawyer, he was one of the only outsiders to penetrate the aristocratic circles that controlled the Roman state, and became...

Selected Poetry by Goethe marks the first verse translation of Goethe's poetry to be featured in Penguin Classics. This new translation replaces Luke's own 1964 prose translation, which has remained in print continuously, with life sales reaching 43,000 copies.

New to the Penguin Pocket Hardbacks series - books that have changed the history of thought, in sumptuous, clothbound editions. In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism, setting off on a...

Composed for recitation at festivals, these 33 songs were written in honour of the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon. They recount the key episodes in the lives of the gods and dramatise the moments when they first appear before mortals. Together, they offer a vivid picture of the Greek view of the relationship between the divine and...

Regarded as the founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus (AD 204-270) was the last great philosopher of antiquity, producing works that proved in many ways a precursor to Renaissance thought. Plotinus was convinced of the existence of a state of supreme perfection and argued powerfully that it was necessary to guide the human soul towards this state. Here he outlines his compelling...

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...

A selection of Baudelaire's explicit and unsettling poems The poems of Charles Baudelaire are filled with explicit and unsettling imagery, depicting with intensity everyday subjects ignored by French literary conventions of his time. Tableaux parisiens portrays the brutal life of Paris's thieves, drunkards, and prostitutes amid the debris of factories and poorhouses. In love poems such as Le Beau Navire,...

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned...

In the fourth of the Palliser stories, Trollope follows Phineas Finn's return to the dangerous world of Westminster politics. When his political rival is murdered, Phineas is thrown under suspicion and eventually finds himself standing trial at the Old Bailey. The situation is complicated by the presence of two women in his life: his old flame Lady Laura, whose estranged...

A chilling, stylish piece of LA noir After the war, cynical veteran Dix Steele has moved to L.A., a city terrified by a strangler preying on young women. Bumping into an old friend, now a detective working on the case, Dix is thrilled by closely following the progress of the police. Meeting his new neighbour, sultry and beautiful actress Laurel...

This revised edition features a new introduction by Robin Seager, putting the lives in the context of Plutarch's biography and literary career, discussing and comparing the individual lives, and analysing Plutarch's approach to his subject matter. Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of...

Ten tales of loss and longing, from one of Japan's greatest writers. Bringing together Yukio Mishima's finest stories, this selection showcases his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. A moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a mother lost in mourning; a night of infidelity; and a young lieutenant who ends his life....

A major new translation by Dominic Baker-Smith of More's perennially popular Latin text. Utopia is Thomas More's work of philosophical fiction, imagining the island of the title, on which thousands live in peace and harmony. Through dialogue and correspondence between Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. It is the seventh year of the Trojan War. The Greek army is camped outside Troy and Achilles — their military hero — refuses to fight. Inside the city, Troilus, the Trojan King's son, falls in love with Cressida, whose father has defected...

This is the Classics edition of one of the greatest works created by any culture, and overwhelmingly the most influential of all Tibetan Buddhist texts in the West. The most graceful English translation of this masterpiece of world literature—prepared with the participation of the Dalai Lama and eminent contemporary masters of this tradition appointed by the Dalai Lama. One of...

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman, Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later, she began to receive an...

Writing in the eleventh century, Khayyam was one of the most accomplished masters of the new and increasingly popular ruba'i, or two-line stanza, that had been adopted by poets to help them shake off the artifice of conventional court poetry and express their personal feelings with wit and clarity. Khayyam ranges in his stanzas through the most fundamental aspects of...

Penguin Classics relaunch The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and Franklin piece together a puzzling series...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. In need of money, the fat and foolish Falstaff devises a scheme to seduce two married women and steal their husbands' wealth. By talking to each other, however, the wives soon discover his plan and begin to plot their own revenge. Relentlessly inventive,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A noble but impoverished Venetian asks a friend, Antonio, for a loan to impress an heiress. His friend agrees, but is forced to borrow the sum from a cynical Jewish moneylender, Shylock, and signs a chilling contract to honour the debt with a...

'The most moving lines literature has achieved' – Jorge Luis Borges. In The Divine Comedy & Paradise, having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory, Dante ascends to Heaven, continuing his soul's search for God, guided by his beloved Beatrice. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise, he grows in understanding, until he...

Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory — a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into the depths of the earth. As he travels through the first seven levels, Dante observes the sinners who are waiting for their release into Paradise, and...

Keats' poetic genius was first seen in 1816 when he published the first of a series of great works. He was variously hailed as an important poetical figure, the natural heir to the Romantic throne and, like Shelley before him, criticised for his politics. In his short life, he proved to be one of the greatest and most original thinkers...