Penguin Classics

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...

A masterful translation of Suetonius' renowned biographies of the twelve Caesars, by the award-winning historian and The Rest Is History podcaster Tom Holland The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, and to rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars...

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...

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents 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. This collection includes The Avengers #1-4, 9, 16, 26, 28, 44, 57, 58, 71, 74, and 83. It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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....

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 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...

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. 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...

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...

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...

A guidebook to melancholia or depression, and a masterly, all-encompassing examination of the human condition. The Anatomy of Melancholy is the vast and only work by Robert Burton, the seventeenth-century English priest and scholar. It 'opens and cuts up' the condition of melancholy, or depression, as we know it today, and in doing so explores a dizzying range of additional...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft, capturing the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series...

An enchanting clothbound edition of the essential tales drawn from the acclaimed translation of The Arabian Nights. 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. Every night for three years, the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with...

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...

Influential writings on the possibility of synthesising Greek thought and Christian faith. Composed during a critical time in the evolution of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and the Christian faith. Writing with great rhetorical brilliance, Eckhart combines the neoplatonic...

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...

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

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

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

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...

Poet, pattern-designer, environmentalist and maker of fine books, William Morris (1834–96) was also a committed socialist and visionary writer, obsessively concerned with the struggle to achieve a perfect society on earth. News from Nowhere, one of the most significant English works on the theme of utopia, is the tale of William Guest, a Victorian who wakes one morning to find...

Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty—even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In his Meditations of 1641, and in the Objections and Replies that were included with the original publication, he set out to dismantle and then reconstruct the idea of the individual self and its existence. In doing so, Descartes...

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...

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

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

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...

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart, and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating and ultimately disabling questions. Christianity, with its code...

A witty introduction to the mind of Goethe, a classic in a new translation for the first time in 150 years. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the world's most celebrated poet, novelist, critic, and thinker, and this is the best way of knowing him. Today, his name is echoed as that of a 'great man' alongside Plato, Montaigne, and Shakespeare....

The heartbreaking story of two orphans fighting for survival at the end of World War Two, published in English for the first time. In the dying days of the War, Seita and Setsuko must fend for themselves. Firebombs have obliterated their home in Kobe, leaving them searching for shelter and scrambling to survive in the depths of the countryside. But,...

The new paperback series - Penguin English Library Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family...

The bestselling novel by cult writer Wang Xiaobo, a satire of the Cultural Revolution, in its first full English translation. ‘Life is but a slow, drawn-out process of getting your balls crushed.’ Twenty-one-year-old Wang Er, stationed in a remote mountain commune, spends his days herding oxen, napping, and dreaming of losing his virginity. His dreams come true in the shape...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. Still as the night was, the mysterious population of the distant moonlit woods was not yet lulled to rest The aim of a good ghost story is to make the blood freeze, pleasurably, and this M. R. James achieves to perfection in these wonderful stories. His most...

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.

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. Dorothy Parker was the most talked-about woman of the decadent 1920s, notorious as a hard-drinking bad girl with a talent for endlessly quotable one-liners. In the stories collected here, she brilliantly captures the spirit of...

A dreamlike, chimerical masterpiece from a lost pre-war Europe—critically acclaimed and rightly revered. Baron Bagge, a cavalry officer stationed in Eastern Europe during the First World War, receives orders to ride into a platoon of Russian machine guns. But instead of meeting certain death, he and his brigade pass, unscathed, into a bizarrely peaceful land where festivities are in full...

A new selection and translation of the best of de Maupassant's short stories. Set in the Paris of society women, prostitutes, and small-minded bourgeoisie, as well as the isolated villages of rural Normandy that de Maupassant knew as a child, the thirty-three tales in this volume are among the most darkly humorous and brilliant short stories in nineteenth-century literature. They...

While walking in the Swiss Alps, two English travellers fall into a space-warp, and suddenly find themselves in another world. In many ways the same as our own— even down to the characters that inhabit it—this new planet is still somehow radically different, for the two walkers are now upon a Utopian Earth controlled by a single World Government. Here,...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. 'It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.' After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with...

The cult classic from one of France's most stylish writers Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that...

One of the most important essays on religious tolerance and freedom of thought. In 1762, Jean Calas, a merchant from Toulouse, was executed after being falsely accused of killing his son. As it became clear that Calas was, in fact, persecuted for being a Protestant, Voltaire began a campaign to get his sentence overturned. In the process, he made the...

First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness, and religious experience, and together form a triumphant conclusion to Flaubert's literary career. With elegant simplicity, A Simple Heart relates the story of Felicite - an uneducated serving-woman who retains her Catholic faith despite a life of desolation and loss. Inspired by a stained-glass window...

A hardboiled story of abduction and murder in the Los Angeles hills. Private Detective Lew Archer doesn't believe in coincidences... A forest fire has mysteriously broken out in the hills above southern California. Meanwhile, Lew Archer has been asked by a desperate mother to find her six-year-old son. Instead, he discovers the boy's wealthy father, murdered, and buried in a...

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

An updated translation of this risqué and comic account of three travellers. The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encountering courtesans, priestesses, con men, brothel-keepers, and...

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

One of Poland's most significant twentieth-century epics, by the 1924 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the village of Lipce, scandal, romance, and drama crackle in every hearth. Boryna, a widower and the village's wealthiest farmer, has taken the young and beautiful Jagusia as his bride - but she only has eyes for his impetuous son Antek. Over...

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

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is G. K. Chesterton's wild and whimsical debut novel, set in a future embattled London. London, 1984. Democracy has given up the ghost. England's ruler is randomly selected, and this year it's Auberon Quin, a clerk with an odd sense of humour. Quin mandates that each borough of London become an independent neo-medievalist state, complete...

Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser...

The famous Gothic novel from Ann Radcliffe. From the first moment Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young nobleman, sets eyes on the veiled figure of Ellena, he is captivated by her enigmatic beauty and grace. But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her confessor to come between them. Schedoni, previously a leading figure...