Classics

Crossley-Holland—the widely acclaimed translator of Old English texts—introduces the Anglo-Saxons through their chronicles, laws, letters, charters, and poetry, with many of the greatest surviving poems printed in their entirety.About the...

At a time when constitutional issues are assuming a greater importance in public life than they have held for perhaps 25 years, it seems a particularly apt moment to re-publish Walter Bagehot's classic analysis of the constitution. Major changes to the...

Loosely based on the author's own experiences, The Riddle of the Sands takes readers back to the early days of the twentieth century, when Britain shared a tense rivalry with the Kaiser's Germany. Tempted by the idea of duck shooting, Carruthers is lured...

This selection of writings from the sixth and seventh century AD provides a powerful insight into the early history of the Christian Church in England and Ireland. From Bede's Life of Cuthbert and Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow to the...

A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf's The Waves is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in Penguin Modern Classics. More than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, The Waves conveys the full complexity and richness of...

‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that,...

Discover an American masterpiece. This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor has earned the admiration of readers all over the globe. William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming...

Orwell’s brilliantly bleak future vision of totalitarianism is arguably the greatest of all literary dystopias, contriving to look back to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s whilst simultaneously predicting with uncanny accuracy the worst excesses...

In the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions,...

Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a...

A beautiful hardback edition to mark the 80th anniversary of one of the best-loved novels ever written. A gothic tale of love, secrets and jealousy. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SARAH PERRY 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century,...

"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With...

A discrete advertisement in The Times, addressed to "those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine," is the prelude to a revelatory month for four very different women. High above a bay on the Italian Riviera stands the medieval castle San Salvatore...

The Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel - the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived in its entirety.It tells the story of Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic result in his...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection.A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas and one of the best-loved comic novels of all time, Cold Comfort Farm by...

A classic of fantastic literature, Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet is the occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, published with an introduction by Ali Smith in Penguin Modern Classics.One of the first things ninety-two-year-old Marian Leatherby...

A missing plane resurfaces – and so do long-submerged secrets… An RAF Dakota, presumed lost at sea during World War Two, has just been discovered at the bottom of a drained lake over twenty years later – complete with the skeletal...

James Bond, the secret service’s most lethal agent, is a marked man. Deep inside the Soviet Union, a plot is taking shape. Under the fiendish Colonel Rosa Klebb, the Russian counter-intelligence organisation SMERSH are laying a trap that will not...

Who stole George Matthews’ life? ‘Doctor, I think I’m losing my mind…’. When a wealthy young man turns up at respected psychiatrist Dr George Matthews’ office uttering these words, it changes his safe existence...

To catch a criminal, he must become one. Jonathan Pine, night manager of a luxury Swiss hotel, has a secret. He knows that the guest he awaits, billionaire trader Richard Roper, is ‘the worst man in the world.’ And he knows why. Pine will do...