Penguin Classics

A collection of Kafka's greatest stories, including his famous tale of alienation, now in Penguin Black Classics. This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement,...

This Penguin Classics edition of Louisa May Alcott's inspiring tale of sisterhood, Little Women, is edited with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. One of the best-loved books of all time. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, and spoiled Amy face the hard lessons of poverty and growing...

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is a seminal work that offers a profound and personal exploration of race relations in America. Structured as two poignant letters, Baldwin addresses his 14-year-old nephew on the one hand, and on the other, an open letter to his fellow countrymen. Through these missives, Baldwin intimately reflects on his experiences growing up in...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing a countess on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of his beloved's affections. With the arrival of...

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...

Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, in a stunning new cover look for his great works. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a penetrating examination of power and control. 'Who controls the past controls the future—who controls the present controls the past.' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the...

We are in Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of James Baldwin's novel is Tish, nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover, Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win...

Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen. How can we cope when life's events seem beyond our control? These words of consolation and inspiration from the three great Stoic philosophers—Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius—offer ancient wisdom on how to face life's adversities and live well in the world. GREAT...

The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle is one of the most significant works in the history of Western philosophy. In this seminal text, Aristotle embarks on a detailed and nuanced exploration of human morality, virtue, and happiness. The work explores the nature of ethical thought, delving into the question of how men can achieve a good and fulfilling life. Aristotle's treatise...

Illustrated throughout, The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents specially curated comic book anthologies of the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy. A Penguin Classics Marvel Collection Edition The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel...

Xenophon's fascinating defence of Socratic thought. After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought,...

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...

My all-time favourite collection of poems . . . Gibran's poetry always roots me in my humanity. --Rupi Kaur, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Home Body This stunning new hardcover edition features a full linen case, copper stamping, turquoise gilded edges, and coloured endpapers. It is one of the...

The most original and illuminating study of the subject New Yorker How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design, and the media have changed our vision forever. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this...

First new English translation since 1959 by acclaimed translator Robin Buss. When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girl hidden within it, he has been...

In 1914, Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee farm. Drawn to the exquisite beauty of Africa, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation failed. A poignant farewell to her beloved farm, Out of Africa describes her friendships with the local people, her dedication to the landscape and wildlife, and her great love...

Sartre paid tribute to him in his obituary notice: 'Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our cultural domain, nor to represent, in his own way, the history of France and of this century.' The Rebel is described as 'one of the great humanist manifestos' by The Times and earned Albert Camus the Nobel Prize...

The notorious dark, modern-day fable of New York from this cult master, new to Penguin Modern Classics. Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers, and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits...

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...

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne is a pioneering science fiction classic that tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock. He discovers a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript, revealing a cipher written in runes. This cipher tells of an entrance to another world—a world hidden beneath our own. In Jules Verne's...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together, the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There, two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are...

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is a ground-breaking work that meticulously examines the adverse effects of indiscriminate pesticide use on the environment, focusing especially on the devastating impact on wildlife. Carson's illustrative narrative moves through various landscapes and ecosystems, demonstrating how chemical substances not only linger in the soil and water but also infiltrate the food chain, ultimately affecting all forms...

Selected Poems by Rumi is a mesmerising collection of profound and richly textured verses that delves into the depths of the human experience. This compilation showcases the unparalleled brilliance of Jelaluddin Rumi, a thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar, and the founder of the Whirling Dervishes. Rumi's poetry transcends time, inviting readers on a spiritual journey that explores the universal themes...

An extraordinary, uncompromising and consoling celebration of a life – through childhood, faith, family, love, friendship, pain and loss – written as its author was facing her own mortality. Gillian Rose was a star academic, acclaimed as one of the most dazzling and original thinkers of her time. Told that she had incurable cancer, she found a new way to...

Orwell's peerless satire, in Penguin Clothbound Classics for the first time. When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take...

Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living...

A beautifully designed new Clothbound Classic of le Carré's masterpiece, published to celebrate the novel's 50th anniversary. A mole, implanted by Moscow Centre, has infiltrated the highest ranks of the British Intelligence Service, almost destroying it in the process. And so former spymaster George Smiley has been brought out of retirement in order to hunt down the traitor at the...

First published in 1843 under a pseudonym, Fear and Trembling is written in a quasi-dialogue form in which different facets of Kierkegaard's thought are presented to the reader. Without disclosing his own beliefs, Kierkegaard confronts the reader with various ethical and religious attitudes, but leaves the responsibility of choice open. This new edition provides a chronology of the author's life...

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. The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body — this classic horror story pits detective against...

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. In Search of Lost Time is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to...

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. Regarded as one of world literature's foremost novelists, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short stories are also some of the best ever written. White Nights tells of love and loss on the streets of St. Petersburg. A Nasty...

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul...

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...

A deep, complex examination of the crucial philosophical questions of human existence, from one of the world's most renowned novelists, now in the beautifully designed Penguin Clothbound series. The Brothers Karamazov states, "The mystery of human existence lies not in staying alive, but in finding something to live for." The murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of...

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...

One of Freud's central achievements was to demonstrate how unacceptable thoughts and feelings are repressed into the unconscious, from where they continue to exert a decisive influence over our lives. This volume contains a key statement about evidence for the unconscious, and how it works, as well as major essays on all the fundamentals of mental functioning. Freud explores how...

The Trouble With Being Born by E. M. Cioran is a deeply introspective and profoundly philosophical exploration of the human condition. The book navigates the bleak and often darkly comic territories of existence, examining fundamental questions such as birth, death, the concept of God, the relentless passage of time, the complexity of human relationships, and the daily struggle to find...

Nobody in Western civilisation had ever tried to do what Montaigne set out to do. In a vivid, contemporary style, he moves swiftly from thought to thought, often digressing from an idea only to return, having caught up with it elsewhere. In these essays, Montaigne lays out for his contemporaries and for us his plan for how a man might...

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...

The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of Classical Athens. In tracing these events through four dialogues, Plato also developed his own philosophy, based on Socrates' manifesto for a life guided by self-responsibility. Euthyphro finds Socrates outside the court-house, debating the nature of piety, while The...

Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E.M. Forster's earliest and most celebrated works. Forster's social comedy is a witty observation of the English middle classes as they holiday abroad in Florence. One of these tourists is Lucy Honeychurch, a young girl whose heart is awakened by her experiences in Italy.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank. A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife's suicide; a witness to a young girl's ruin; a writer who stretches out on a gravestone and listens...

Notes of a Native Son is a seminal work of social and cultural criticism by James Baldwin, one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the twentieth century. First published in 1955, this powerful collection of essays captures Baldwin's reflections on the intricate dynamics of race and identity during the formative years of the civil rights movement. Written when Baldwin was...

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon is a striking exploration into the complexities of racism and dehumanisation. Fanon, a psychiatrist and philosopher from Martinique, delves into the black psyche in a predominately white world, examining how internalised racism and colonialism have devastating effects on the identities and minds of black individuals. This seminal work emerges through a powerful narrative...

The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes, changed the face of the twentieth century beyond recognition. A rousing call to arms whose influence is still felt today, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto is edited with an introduction by Gareth Stedman-Jones in Penguin Classics. Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes,...

In le Carré's first post-Cold War novel, a night manager at a Cairo hotel helps British Intelligence penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers. At the start of it all, Jonathan Pine is merely the night manager at a luxury hotel. But when a single attempt to pass on information to the British authorities—about an international businessman at the...

A new selection of seven of Dostoyevsky's best short stories, translated by Ronald Meyer. The Gambler and Other Stories is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's collection of one novella and six short stories reflecting his own life. Indeed, The Gambler, a story of a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian General, was written under a strict deadline so he...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. "Of course, no one would want to say anything about a girl like this that's missing..." Malice, paranoia, and creeping dread lie beneath the surface of ordinary American life in these chilling miniature masterworks of unease....

In this novel, Antoine Roquentin, an introspective historian, records the disturbing shifts in his perceptions and his struggle to restore meaning to life in a continuing present and without lies. This is Sartre's first published novel and his first extended essay on existential philosophy.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is an excoriating condemnation of the...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible. Science and fiction interweave delightfully in these playful Cosmicomic short stories.

The most celebrated historical work in the English language Spanning thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of the greatest narratives in European Literature. David Womersley's masterly selection and bridging commentary enables the reader to acquire a general sense...

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon is a profoundly influential text that delves into the pervasive impacts of colonisation and the relentless drive for liberation. Set against the backdrop of the Algerian struggle for independence from French colonial rule, the book dissects the psychological, cultural, and political effects of colonialism on both the oppressed and the oppressor. Published...

From the peasant revolts to the Great European Witch Hunt—the crushing of occult traditions and women's reproductive freedom in the transition to capitalism. A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late...

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...

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...

Illustrated throughout, The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents specially curated comic book anthologies of the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy. A Penguin Classics Marvel Collection Edition Collects Fantastic Four #52-53 (1966); Jungle Action #6-21 (1973-1976). It is impossible to imagine American popular...

One of the greatest philosophical works of all time, in a new translation for the twenty-first century. Widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a succinct yet wide-ranging exploration of language and logic, science and mysticism, which has inspired generations of thinkers, artists and poets. In a series...

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...

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 four greatest novels by the Brontë sisters, in a stunning box set designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Jane Eyre | Wuthering Heights | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Villette 2016, the bicentennial of Charlotte's birth, will be the big anniversary year for the Brontë sisters. To celebrate, we're publishing their four greatest works in this boxed set of lavish,...

New to Classics, The Rule of St Benedict is one of the most important written works in the shaping of Western society. Founder of a monastery at Monte Cassino, between Rome and Naples, in the sixth century, St Benedict intended his Rule to be a practical guide to Christian monastic life. Based on the key precepts of humility, obedience, and...

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...

Woman Hating is Andrea Dworkin's seminal debut which argued that a deep-rooted hatred of women has reigned in society for centuries—and still governs us today. 'This book is an action, a political action where revolution is the goal.' Andrea Dworkin's blazing, prophetic debut argued that a deep-rooted hatred of women has been ingrained in society for centuries—and still governs us...

Jay Rubin's translation of Soseki's cherished novel, new to Penguin Classics. One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour...

Engaged to the ambitious and self-serving Adolphus Crosbie, Lily Dale is devastated when he jilts her for the aristocratic Lady Alexandrina. Although crushed by his faithlessness, Lily still believes she is bound to her unworthy former fiancé for life and therefore condemned to remain single after his betrayal. When a more deserving suitor pays his addresses, she is unable to...

Mad, lascivious, sadistic and ridiculous, the provincial schoolteacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucinatory fantasies about acts of savagery and degradation, yet to everyone else he is an upstanding member of society. A dark classic of Russia's silver age, this blackly funny novel recounts a schoolteacher's descent into sadism, arson and murder. As he pursues the idea of marrying...

This poem has been called 'the Qu'ran of the Persian language'. Begun in 1262 AD, Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or 'spiritual couplets', is thought to be the longest single-authored 'mystical' poem ever written. As the spiritual masterpiece of the Persian Sufi tradition, it teaches how to progress to the ultimate goal of the Sufi path - union with God. Jalaloddin Rumi was...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. The Thirty-Nine Steps 'My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.' Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But...

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles (496-406 BC) to create a powerful trilogy about mankind's struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realise he has committed and who then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. With profound insights into the human condition, it is...

In The Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, its spirit of struggle and regeneration is eternal.

New translation by Alicia Stallings, with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius is a poem that blends scientific inquiry and philosophical exploration with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour, Lucretius seeks to show humanity that there is nothing to fear in death, as the soul is mortal and the...

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde is part of the Penguin Classics relaunch. Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. This collection includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband,...

'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...

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories, and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of...

Enter Borges' timeless worlds, where the ideal and the abstract challenge reality; where philosophical paradoxes and endless possibilities abound, and wisps of dream and magic are layered in eternal reoccurrence. To read Labyrinths is to glide through time, space, mythology and philosophy, as Borges' characters struggle towards devastating discovery. His essays and brief tantalising parables explore the enigmas of time,...

"The perfect balance of tightness and colloquialism... likely to be the best modern version of Dante." - Bernard O'Donoghue Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno: The Divine Comedy I depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins....

In 1831, Tocqueville set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him nine months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville's study of the strengths and weaknesses of an evolving democratic society remains a key point of reference...