Penguin Classics

A devastating tale of misfortune, betrayal and the weakness of family ties, newly translated for the Maigret series. Instead of the detail filling itself in and becoming clearer, it seemed to escape him. The face of the man in the ill-fitting coat just misted up so that it hardly looked human. In theory, this mental portrait was good enough, but...

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...

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 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...

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...

MAMista is a dramatic departure for Len Deighton, taking readers to the jungles of Spanish Guyana where Marxist revolutionaries are fighting for their lives. Deep in Marxist Guerrilla territory, a hopeless war is being fought. The Berlin Wall is demolished. Marx is dead. Try telling that to Ramon and his desperate men hiding in the jungle, cradling their AK 47s,...

A hard-nosed criminal lawyer gets caught up in a murder in a classic LA thriller. If America is a lunatic asylum, then California is the Violent Ward. Mickey Murphy is a criminal lawyer with an office in LA's downtown low-rent district, an ex-wife who bleeds him for money, and 'clients who would plead the Fifth Amendment if they could count...

A new translation of this novel in which Maigret's leave in the Dordogne is disrupted by some sinister happenings. He recalled his travelling companion's agitated sleep—was it really sleep—his sighs, and his sobbing. Then two dangling legs in their patent leather boots and hand-knitted socks... A lacklustre face. Glazed eyes. And Maigret was not surprised to see a grey beard...

Exiled from Paris, Maigret discovers some disturbing secrets in a sleepy coastal town. A short, sprightly man appeared in the doorway, looked left and right, and went back into the passage. A moment later, the improbable happened. The little man reappeared, bent over, clinging to a long mass that he now started dragging through the mud. It must have been...

Imperious, clever, mysterious—Maigret meets his match in the alluring form of Felicie. In his mind's eye, he would see that slim figure in the striking clothes, those wide eyes the colour of forget-me-not, the pert nose, and especially the hat: that giddy, crimson bonnet perched on the top of her head with a bronze-green feather shaped like a blade stuck...

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...

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 wonderfully enjoyable storehouse of ancient Chinese history and legends, which also has an important role in understanding 21st-century China. The Most Venerable Book (also known as The Book of History) is one of the Five Classics. For many centuries, it was a central work for anyone wishing to work for the Imperial administration, with its prestige stemming from the...

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...

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...

A rich new selection of Buddhist writings, representing the full range of historical periods, geographical origins and literary styles. While Buddhism has no central text such as the Bible or the Koran, there is a powerful body of scripture from across Asia that encompasses the dharma, or the teachings of Buddha. This rich anthology brings together works from a broad...

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 rich and exquisite anthology that illuminates Japanese travel over a thousand years Shortlisted for the NSW Translation Prize Discover a realm of travel writing undreamed of in the West - a richly literary tradition extending through a thousand years and more, whose individual works together weave a dense and beautiful brocade of repeated patterns and motifs, tones and textures....

From: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Jeremy Bentham) From: A System of Logic (J.S. Mill) Bentham (J.S. Mill) Coleridge (J.S. Mill) Whewell on Moral Philosophy (J.S. Mill) Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill)

A unique new volume illuminating the philosophy of the ancient Greek and Roman Cynics From their founding in the fifth century BC and for over 800 years, the Cynic philosophers sought to cure humanity of greed and vice with their proposal of living simply. They guaranteed happiness to their adherents through freedom of speech, poverty, self-sufficiency and physical hardiness. In...

A key work of ancient Chinese philosophy is brought back to life in Ian Johnston's compelling, definitive translation. Very little is known about Master Mo, or the school he founded. However, the book containing his philosophical ideas has survived centuries of neglect and is today recognised as a fundamental work of ancient Chinese philosophy. The book contains sections explaining the...

The first collection of its kind—a compendium of source texts on yoga, translated, introduced, and edited by two of the foremost yoga scholars in the world. Despite the immense popularity of yoga today, there is surprisingly little knowledge of its roots amongst practitioners. Roots of Yoga collects together, for the first time, the core teachings of yoga in the words...

Since its first publication in 1762, Of the Social Contract has shaped political thinking. Viewed by some as a revolutionary statement of democratic freedoms and by others as a precursor of tyranny, it has guided and inspired activists from the. 'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that...

The first new translation in over 400 years of one of the great works of the Renaissance — an African diplomat's guide to Africa. In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the Mediterranean. Brought before Pope Leo X, he was persuaded to convert to Christianity, in the process taking the name...

The Apocryphal Gospels offers a new translation of the oldest non-canonical Christian gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas. In the early years of Christianity, several groups produced 'hidden' or 'apocryphal' gospels, providing alternative versions of the story of Christ. Sometimes these texts complemented the four canonical gospels, sometimes they subverted them,...

A selection of Cicero's philosophical writings on 'the good life', in a lively new translation by Thomas Habinek In the first century BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these philosophical treatises on such diverse topics as friendship, religion, death, fate and scientific inquiry. A pragmatist at heart, Cicero's philosophies were frequently personal and ethical,...

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...

Potent and vividly emotional, Simone de Beauvoir's captivating novel questions freedom and individual responsibility in the face of brutality. 'These carefree faces, on which we allowed our smiles to spread, were for others the mask of tragedy.' Jean Blomart, patriot leader against the German forces of occupation, waits throughout an endless night for his wounded lover, Hélène, to die. Told...

Fast-paced and hard-boiled, this Harlem Detectives novel follows a pile of stolen money—or it would if anyone could find it... Alberta Wright drops dead on the street during a sermon by the charismatic con man Sweet Prophet. Her partner rushes home to avoid the cops, only to find her apartment looted by someone looking for her stash of cash. But...

From the author of The Lonely Londoners, a short story collection of life in mid-century Trinidad and London, told with Selvon's unique wit and poetic sensibility. With equal humour, sorrow and joy, the master storyteller brings together two worlds and turns his pen to life in Trinidad and London. Sharing tales of gossip and rivalry between village washerwomen, toiling canecutters...

The Gothic novel, which flourished from about 1765 until 1825, revels in the horrible and the supernatural, in suspense and exotic settings. This volume, with its erudite introduction by Mario Praz, presents three of the most celebrated Gothic novels: The Castle of Otranto, published pseudonymously in 1765, is one of the first of the genre and the most truly Gothic...

A richly varied anthology of Spanish short stories, curated by celebrated translator Margaret Jull Costa. This exciting new collection celebrates the Spanish short story, from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable work being written today. Featuring over fifty stories selected by revered translator Margaret Jull Costa, it blends hidden gems and old favourites, surprising new voices...

A major celebration of the French short story across the twentieth century. The Penguin Book of French Short Stories: 2 takes the reader through the tumultuous twentieth century in the company of writers including Simone de Beauvoir and Maryse Condé, Patrick Modiano and Virginie Despentes, covering world wars, revolutions, and the horrors of the motorway service station. Along the way,...

A major celebration of the French short story, spanning three centuries. The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. The first volume spans 400 years, taking the reader from the sixteenth century to the 'golden age' of the fin...

A richly varied anthology showcases a teeming, strange, magical world, about to be brought to an end by the catastrophe of 1914. The quarter century or so before the outbreak of the First World War saw an extraordinary boom in the popularity and quality of short stories in Britain. Fuelled by a large new magazine readership and vigorous competition to...

The first novel from one of Italy's most innovative writers of the 20th century. 'The seething cauldron of life, the infinite stratification of reality, the inextricable tangle of knowledge are what Gadda wants to depict.' – Italo Calvino At the height of Fascist rule in Italy, and following the death of his mother, Carlo Emilio Gadda began work on his...

A selection of short stories from the American master, new to the Penguin English Library. One of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century, O. Henry's comic eye and unique, playful approach to the rough material of life's realities are unmatched. These stories, which range from the cattle-lands of Texas to the bars of New York, highlight the...

One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also an accomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelve of his finest short stories, many of which feature characters from his epic series of novels, the Comédie Humaine. Compelling tales of acute social and psychological insight, they fully demonstrate the mastery of suspense and revelation that were the hallmarks of...

Selected Short Fiction by Charles Dickens presents a collection of witty and amusing short pieces where Dickens is liberated from the more formal and sustained demands of the novel. Here, he experiments with a diverse range of fictional techniques. In his tales of the supernatural, Dickens creates frighteningly believable, spine-tingling stories of prophetic dreams and visions, along with more fantastical...

Novels, Tales, Journeys by Alexander Pushkin features the renowned author's masterpieces in prose, translated by the award-winning Pevear and Volokhonsky. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin, is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic narratives of love, obsession, and betrayal to lively comic tales, and from satirical epistolary tales to imaginative...

A breakneck comic tour-de-force set in 1980s Hollywood, about one man's quest to get his hands on a box of bawdy love letters. Elliot Weiner is a historian with a passion for Morris dancing and Warren Harding, 'the shallowest President in history'. After Weiner receives a research grant to write a book on Harding's tumultuous life, he gets wind 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. Often described as the father of the modern short story, there is perhaps no other writer more closely associated with the form than Guy de Maupassant. Included here is his most famous story, Boule de...

A story of the Jews in Eastern Europe in the 19th century through the eyes of a gentile peasant girl, from one of the greatest writers of Holocaust fiction. The teenage Katerina flees her abusive home in a poor, Christian village in the 1880s, finding work and shelter in the home of a Jewish family. In the warmth of their...

The bestselling classic about three generations of a deaf family in modern America, by the author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Two young deaf people, Abel and Janice, leave their punitive school and begin their life as a married couple 'Outside' — in the unwelcoming world of the hearing. A misunderstanding about the payment plan on a...

A deliciously deranged thriller about supernatural vengeance and postwar guilt, by one of Austria's most celebrated writers. Alexander Jessiersky, Austrian aristocrat and shipping magnate, finds the Nazis distasteful. However, in war and in business, distaste can lead to negligence. When Jessiersky's board of directors sends his mysterious neighbour, Count Luna, to a concentration camp on trumped-up charges in order to...

Comic Sagas and Tales brings together the finest comic stories from medieval Iceland. With feuding families and moments of grotesque violence, the sagas see such classic mythological figures as murdered fathers, disguised beggars, corrupt chieftains, and avenging sons do battle with axes, words, and cunning. Icelandic literary culture was one of the richest and most important in the medieval world....

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. Sam Selvon is now widely considered to be one of the greatest chroniclers of the West Indian emigrant experience. His evocation of voice, of place, of longing, defined for many the experience of a generation. Describing...

The epic 1968 Malian novel that scandalised a generation, by the first African winner of the Prix Renaudot. Envisioned as a criticism of and insider's guide to African history, this dark, pugnacious epic, spanning the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, recounts the fate of the imaginary empire of Nakem. With its acerbic pen portraits of the dynasty of devious, asp-wielding...

A magical, substantially true narrative of piracy, zoology, anthropology, danger and adventure in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, Pacific and East Indies The first great English-language travel book, A New Voyage Round the World (1697) is an incomparably vivid, chaotic and fascinating account by the pirate, explorer and naturalist William Dampier of his many adventures. The world he describes sprawls all the...

A new and original anthology that introduces the use of rhetoric in the classical world, from Aristotle to Cicero and beyond Classical rhetoric is one of the earliest versions of what is today known as media studies. It was absolutely crucial to life in the ancient world, whether in the courtroom, the legislature or on ceremonial occasions, and was described...

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 remarkably powerful yet simple tale of the struggle and triumph of innocence reviled, which Balzac considered his remarkable tour de force. In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all the studies of human society that he had written; he regarded the book as a remarkable tour de force. An essentially simple...

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. With warmth, tenderness, and quiet wit, Oscar Wilde's fables and fairy tales have moved and delighted for generations. In far-off kingdoms and ocean realms, in the company of giants and nightingales, Wilde speaks of heartbreak and redemption,...

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...

The earliest of the four Hindu religious scriptures known as the Vedas, and the first extensive composition to survive in any Indo-European language, The Rig Veda (c. 1200–900 BC) is a collection of over 1,000 individual Sanskrit hymns. A work of intricate beauty, it provides a unique insight into early Indian mythology, religion, and culture. This selection of 108 of...

A powerful, poignant novel about three half-sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country. With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two half-sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age....

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories is Jhumpa Lahiri's rich and varied selection of the greatest Italian writing of the twentieth century, now available as a Penguin Classics paperback. This landmark collection brings together forty writers, reflecting over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end...

Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorise it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate hero Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters. The Life and Opinions...

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. On sea, on land, at the edges of the colonial experience, Joseph Conrad's short stories offer a glimpse of the violence, the kindness, and the mystery at humanity's heart. The Lagoon tells of love and its...

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...

Part of a series of new editions of D.H. Lawrence's most famous novels, stories and poems. These three novellas display D. H. Lawrence's brilliant and insightful evocation of human relationships - both tender and cruel - and the devastating results of war. In The Fox, two young women living on a small farm during the First World War find their...

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 End 'They didn't seem to take much interest in my private parts which to tell the truth were nothing to write home about, I didn't take much interest in them myself.' From the master of...

The Crazy Kill is a classic thriller from the Harlem Detective series, where love, jealousy, and many-peopled mayhem abound. Big Joe Pullen is dead, and his wake is becoming increasingly boozy. During the wake, the opium-addicted Reverend Short falls out of a window while trying to see a thief fleeing the robbed store opposite. Remarkably, his life is saved when...

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...

In his introduction, Ronald Blythe places the novel in the context of Henry James's literary career and discusses his depiction of women and themes of money and change. Making her debut in London society, Nanda Brookenham is being groomed for the marriage market. Thrust suddenly into the superficial and immoral circle that surrounds her mother, the innocent but independent-minded young...

A fascinating study of Athenian political machinery, containing invaluable insights into Athenian democracy. Probably written by a student of Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution is both a history and an analysis of Athens' political machinery between the seventh and fourth centuries BC. It stands as a model of democracy at a time when city-states lived under differing kinds of government. 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. 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...

Tales from the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio is bawdy and moving, hilarious and reflective. These stories offer the very best of Boccaccio's Decameron in a brilliant, playful new translation. This hugely enjoyable volume collects the best stories of Boccaccio's masterwork in a fresh, accessible new translation by Peter Hainsworth. It includes such celebrated, thought-provoking tales as Isabella and the Pot...

Sketches by Boz collected a rich and strange mixture of reportage, observation, fancy and fiction centred on the metropolis. It was Dickens's first book, published when he was twenty-four, and in it, we find him walking the London streets, in theatres, pawnshops, law-courts, prisons, along the Thames, and on the omnibus, missing nothing, recording and transforming urban and suburban life...

First time in Black Classics for Lawrence—previously in PMC. Lawrence was one of the great short story writers of the 20th century. This new collection of ten stories shows the variety of Lawrence's achievement. The works develop from early realism towards myth and fairy tale, murder and ghost stories.

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...

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...

The definitive 25th-anniversary edition of Burroughs's legendary second novel. Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma. It serves as both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel. It is Burroughs' only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico...