Classics

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen and the White Rabbit all make their appearances, and are now familiar figures in writing, conversation and idiom. So too are Carroll's delightful verses such as The Walrus and the...

A Christmas Carol is the most famous, heart-warming and chilling festive story of them all. In these pages we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is synonymous with greed and parsimony: 'Every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should...

The Little Prince is a modern fable, and for readers far and wide both the title and the work have exerted a pull far in excess of the book’s brevity. Written and published first by Antoine de St-Exupéry in 1943, only a year before his plane...

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.” —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable FeastErnest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s remains...

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage seriesFor wise-cracking Private Eye Philip Marlowe, murder is all in a day's work...There are no streets meaner than those of L.A.'s underworld - but luckily one detective has more than his fair share of...

A quartet of indomitable women gather on the shores of the Mediterranean determined to transform their fortunes in Von Arnim’s light, enchanting character study written with exquisite poise and tenderness. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BRENDA BOWENMrs...

The poems of two of China’s most influential classical poets: Tu Fu, called “China’s Shakespeare” (BBC), and Li Po, the subject of Ha Jin’s The Banished Immortal and “China’s most beloved poet”...

Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady – the...

Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry—known in twelfth-century Provençal as "the gay science." This extensive collection of prose and verse offers a...

Two of the most important Buddhist tracts from JapanA Penguin ClassicBoth of these works on life’s fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each represents a different worldview. In Essays in Idleness, his lively and...

Herman Hesse's classic novel has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers. In this story of a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate...

A pioneering work of young adult fiction, The Outsiders charts the entanglements two rival gangs in 1960s Oklahoma. A searing story of loyalty, trust, friendship and betrayal, Hinton’s remarkable, rebellious novel – written when she was only 17 –...

A fiercely authentic, critically acclaimed and award-winning modern classic.'Speak up for yourself - we want to know what you have to say.'From my first day at Merryweather High, I know this is a lie.Nobody will even talk to me, let alone listen - all...

'The Mona Lisa of literature' T. S. EliotIn Shakespeare's verbally dazzling and eternally enigmatic exploration of conscience, madness and the nature of humanity, a young prince meets his father's ghost in the middle of the night, who accuses his own...

Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas...

Timaeus and Critias is a Socratic dialogue in two parts. A response to an account of an ideal state told by Socrates, it begins with Timaeus’s theoretical exposition of the cosmos and his story describing the creation of the universe, from its very...

Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I's court favourites, is the object of many ladies' attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any thoughts of marriage. Having obtained an ambassadorial...

Gillian Cross's brilliant retellings and Neil Packer's clever illustrations bring to life Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, two of the greatest stories ever told. When first published Walker's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey attracted attention both for...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Howards End by E. M. Forster'The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can''Only connect.' is the idea at the heart of...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful version of himself, who abuses and victimizes the...