Classics

A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society, the Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Demaria, Jr. Gulliver's...

Eusebius's account is the only surviving historical record of the Church during its crucial first 300 years.Bishop Eusebius, a learned scholar who lived most of his life in Caesarea in Palestine, broke new ground in writing the History and provided a...

The first book by the author of the classic philosophical text Beyond Good and Evil. The youthful faults of this work were exposed by the author himself in the brilliant Attempt at a Self-Criticism, which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the...

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. THE CONSOLATION was written...

“A magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” —Margaret Atwood. “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison.A classic...

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Arrested in Cologne for remarking that the Fuhrer looked sweaty, nineteen-year-old Sanna has fled to Frankfurt. But her troubles are far from over. Her best friend Gerti has fallen for a Jewish...

"No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader."—Randall Jarrell   The one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's...

Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksThe Time Machine is the great, gleeful anarchist novel of the 1890s. It is both a thrilling adventure story and a satire on religion, evolution and human hopes. With this book, Wells invented an...

Brookner’s evocative, Booker Prize-winning tale of a doggedly single romantic novelist staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva is a surprising and unique meditation on finding happiness in your own company.   Winner of the Booker...

The beloved story of an orphaned girl living in the Swiss Alps is now available in an unabridged, illustrated cloth hardcover edition in Union Square and Co.’s Children's Signature Clothbound Classics series.When Heidi’s parents die and she...

Dulcie Mainwearing is always helping others, but never looks out for herself – especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn’t prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin,...

In November 1929, Christopher Isherwood - determined to become a 'permanent foreigner' - packed a rucksack and two suitcases and left England on a one-way ticket for Berlin. With incredible candour and wit, Isherwood recalls the decadence of Berlin's...

“Comyns’ novel is deranged in ways that shouldn’t be disclosed.” —Ben Marcus.This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room...

Candide is an innocent young nobleman who leads an idyllic, sheltered life and has adopted the optimistic mindset promoted by his tutor Dr Pangloss. But after committing an indiscretion and being expelled from his family home, Candide finds himself on a...

With Waugh's trademark combination of tragedy, satire and piercing social observation, A Handful of Dust is a masterful portrait of the breakdown of a marriage as the lady of the manor forsakes her husband for a shallow socialite in interwar England...

Joris-Karl Huysmans' shocking novel of an innocent's descent into a world of depraved, blasphemous rituals.Durtal, a shy, censorious man, is writing a biography of Gilles de Rais, the monstrous fifteenth-century child-murderer thought to be the original...

Discover our collectable Puffin Clothbound Classic edition of David Copperfield. Puffin Clothbound Classics are stunning collectable gift editions of some of the best-loved classics in the world - including this irresistible 175th anniversary edition of...

Desiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his...

Dean Corde is a man of position and authority at a Chicago university. He accompanies his wife to Bucharest where her mother, a celebrated figure, lies dying in a state hospital. As he tries to help her grapple with an unfeeling bureaucracy, news filters...