Classics

'Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.'Virginia Woolf's delightful biography of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, which asks what it means to be human - and to be...

The New York Times Bestseller J.R.R. Tolkien's Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a definitive collection of stories and essays ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring,...

The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of...

'I shall imagine myself as if I had no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses at all'Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty – even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In...

'War is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to our will'Writing at the time of Napoleon's greatest campaigns, Prussian soldier and writer Carl von Clausewitz created this landmark treatise on the art of warfare, which presented war as part...

Here is a lively, readable, and accurate verse translation of the six best plays by one of the most influential of all classical Latin writers—the only tragic playwright from ancient Rome whose work survives. Tutor to the emperor Nero, Seneca lived...

Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy - a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he...

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony'...

'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial'Fearful that Caesar will become a tyrant, his friends plot to assassinate him in order to save Rome. But the conspirators' high...

Camus’s masterpiece on the effects of isolation, claustrophobia and moral recklessness in an Algerian village ravaged by the plague weaves an extraordinary tapestry of life governed by fear. Humane, haunting and timeless, The Plague is a chilling,...

The master of horror manga brings the world's greatest horror novel—Frankenstein—back to life.Junji Ito meets Mary Shelley! The master of horror manga bends all his skill into bringing the anguished and solitary monster—and the fouler beast who created...

As I Lay Dying is a 1930 Southern Gothic novel by American author William Faulkner. Faulkner's fifth novel, it is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th-century literature.The title derives from Book XI of Homer's Odyssey (William Marris's...

'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life'Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen...

Netochka Nezvanova - a 'Nameless Nobody' - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, Efimov, a failed musician who believes he is a neglected genius. The young girl is strangely drawn to this drunken ruin of a man, who exploits her and...

Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life.'A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away'Willy Loman is...

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series, with Henry V and The Merchant of Venice as its inaugral volumes, presents a newly-edited...

Set amidst the snobbery and society of the interwar British aristocracy, The Pursuit of Love mines Nancy Mitford’s own larger-than-life experiences for an exquisitely funny comedy of manners and frothy coming-of-age tale. One of the funniest,...

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth has it ALL and in a super cool instagrammable/TikTokable cover! Yes, it’s got the goods to back up your next favorite social media book! Multiple heroines to root for, scary, macabre and a twinkle of...

A witty introduction to the mind of Goethe, in a new translation for the first time in 150 yearsA Penguin ClassicBy the end of the nineteenth century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the world's most celebrated poet, novelist, critic and thinker. Today...

Athens and Sparta, the mighty city states of ancient Greece, locked together in a quarter century of conflict: the Peloponnesian War. Alexias the Athenian was born, passed through childhood and grew to manhood in those troubled years, that desperate and...