Classics

Hildegard, the "Sybil of the Rhine," was a Benedictine nun and one of the most prolific and original women writers of the Middle Ages. Arranged thematically, this new edition of her work brings together selections from her visionary trilogy, her treatise...

In Persian myth, it is said that Akbar the Great built a palace which he filled with newborns, attended only by mutes, in order to learn whether language is innate or aquired. As the children grew into their silent and difficult world, this palace became...

Plutarch’s vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of their remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta’s leaders and...

Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is one of the most important philosophical works of the nineteenth century, the basic statement of one important stream of post-Kantian thought. It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest...

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...

An utterly unforgettable novel that portrays a vast internal emptiness by using the cool, haunting voice of a young woman in Scotland lost in the profound anomie of her generation—from “one of the most talented, original and interesting...

A passionate but unsentimental depiction of conflict between classes, sexes and generations.Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his...

The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath—essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet's life and work."A genuine literary event.... Plath's journals contain marvels of discovery." —The New York...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America—and a master of American fiction—we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. "An...

Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its...

Things: A Story of the Sixties is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of 'things'. Perec's first novel won the Prix Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation...

Having spent some time in Rome, Antonio - the handsomest young man in Catania - returns to his native town with the reputation of being a playboy and with a long list of amorous adventures behind him. To please his father, Antonio agrees to marry the...

“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...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. A young writer leaves the city to complete her manuscript in a small coastal town, but finds herself writing about the lives of its inhabitants instead – their occupation with memory and...

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...