Classics

Rene Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In his Discourse on Method he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty...

'After all that - how, you might wonder, could one not become a fatalist?' Lermontov's hero, Pechorin, is a young army officer posted to the Caucasus, where his adventures - amorous and reckless - do nothing to alleviate his boredom and cynicism...

One swallow does not make a summer; neither does one day. Similarly neither can one day, or a brief space of time, make a man blessed and happy Previously published as Ethics, Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics addresses the question of how to live well...

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Pevear and Volokhonsky...

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Charlotte Bronte's masterpieceWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAGGIE O'FARRELLAs an orphan, Jane's childhood is full of trouble, but her stubborn independence and sense of self help her to steer through the miseries inflicted...

'Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death.'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,...

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His...

Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess' original text of A Clockwork Orange, with a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviewsEdited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by...

E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel is an innovative and effusive treatise on a literary form that, at the time of publication, had only recently begun to enjoy serious academic consideration. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction...

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War.The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead...

Middlesex is the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides—the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and...

Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862. The controversial portrait of Bazarov, the energetic, cynical, and self-assured `nihilist' who...

Soon to be a major motion picture from Paramount Pictures starring John Lithgow, Jason Clarke, and Amy Seimetz. Sometimes...dead is better The house looks right, feels right to Dr Louis Creed. Rambling, old and comfortable. A place where the...

The One State is the perfect society, ruled over by the enlightened Benefactor. It is a city made almost entirely of glass, where surveillance is universal and life runs according to algorithmic rules to ensure perfect happiness. And D-503, the Builder,...

A stunningly powerful novel of humanity's will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.An International Bestseller  • "This is a shattering work by a literary master.”—Boston GlobeA city is hit by an...

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human   The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept...

Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction by Paul Bailey in Penguin Modern Classics.In her magnificent...

In what remains one of his most seminal papers, Freud considers the incompatibility of civilisation and individual happiness, and the tensions between the claims of society and the individual. We all know that living in civilised groups means sacrificing...

A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creationThis collection of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that...

Walter Mitty is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. But he has dreams - vivid, extraordinary day dreams - in which the life he leads is one of excitement and even adventure, in which he - a weary, put upon middle-aged man - is the hero of his own...