Classics

A splendid new translation of an extraordinary work of modern literature—featuring facing-page commentary by Kafka’s acclaimed biographerIn 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zürau aphorisms,...

G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is a thrilling novel of deception, subterfuge, double-crossing and secret identities, and this Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont.The Central Anarchist Council...

'We go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves' -- Jeanette WintersonBeatrice and Benedick both claim they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each harbours secret feelings for the other, the pair begin...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes...

'Unable to rely on heaven, we look to Shakespeare as a contemporary conscience' -- Peter Conrad Coriolanus, a famed warrior turned politician, is driven from Rome as a traitor when he arrogantly speaks out against popular rule and loses the good...

The two-part tale of King Henry IV, rewritten with new language for the twenty-first century. Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays follow the exploits of King Henry IV after usurping the crown from his cousin Richard II. Featuring some of Shakespeare's most...

'The magic in The Tempest is real ... It contains a great many unanswered questions' Margaret AtwoodA storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as a ship carrying the royal family is wrecked. Miraculously, all on...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes...

Inspired by Homer's Iliad and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare's play explores heroism, love and betrayal against the backdrop of the Trojan War. This Penguin Shakespeare edition is edited by R. A. Foakes with an introduction by...

'Language is his power. His characters are precisely the words they speak' -- A. S. ByattA young man is condemned to death for breaking a law forbidding sex outside marriage. When his sister pleads with the Lord Angelo to save him, he offers her a...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. In the hope of saving her brother's life, should a woman submit to rape? Should the law be respected when its administrator is corrupt?...

Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure is a fearless exploration of the hypocrisy of Victorian society, edited with an introduction by Dennis Taylor in Penguin Classics.Jude Fawley's hopes of an education at Christminster university are...

Learn how to think like a physicist from a Nobel laureate and "one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century" (New York Review of Books) with these six classic and beloved lessons It was Richard Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of...

The action of the play occurs in an English industrial city, where a young girl commits suicide and an eminently respectable British family is subject to a routine inquiry in connection with the death. An inspector calls to interrogate the family, and...

A smart, funny classic about a young and beautiful American woman who moves to Paris determined to live life to the fullest.The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the...

'And when I shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars.'This collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, including both old favourites and lesser-known pieces, shows him at his dazzling best.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black...

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it’s sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything...

This remorseless cat-and-mouse thriller revolving around a sadistic killer freshly released from jail and the terrified family he pursues in order to get his hands on a fortune is a classic slice of Southern Gothic crime. Two young children hold the...

A mutilated cadaver spells trouble for the legendarily laconic detective in one of Simenon's finest outings for Inspector Maigret. A baffling case. A mysterious inheritance. It starts when a man's arm is fished out of Paris's Canal Saint-Martin. Then...

A rollercoaster of a crime novel, Himes' effervescent caper sees two detectives engage in a fast-paced attempt to retrieve the money stolen from the good people of Harlem by a ruthless conman. A con-man is swindling the poor folk of Harlem out of...