Classics

Virginia Woolf’s fantastical novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who lives for three centuries and transitions into a woman, with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado.The long-lived protagonist of Orlando begins as a passionate teenage...

Stefan's Zweig's posthumously-published Journey into the Past (Widerstand der Wirklichkeit) is a beautiful meditation on the effect of time on passion-one of the most intense and compelling works from a master of the novella form. Published by Pushkin...

'it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well developed human beings'Mill's four essays, 'On Liberty', 'Utilitarianism', 'Considerations on Representative Government', and 'The Subjection of Women' examine the most...

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead...

George Orwell is a difficult author to summarize. He was a would-be revolutionary who went to Eton, a political writer who abhorred dogma, a socialist who thrived on his image as a loner, and a member of the Imperial Indian Police who chronicled the...

"The greatest historian that ever lived." Such was Macaulay's assessment of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) and his history of the Peloponnesian War, the momentous struggle between Athens and Sparta that lasted for twenty-seven years from 431 to 404 BC,...

The most beloved Iranian novel of the twentieth century.“God forbid, I’ve fallen in love with Layli!” So begins the farce of our narrator’s life, one spent in a large extended Iranian family lorded over by the blustering, paranoid...

Perfect for fans of fairy tales, and it just so happens to be written by the indelible Oscar Wilde. This is a collection of his short works that brings the depth of human feeling to fantastical stories and settings.Introducing Little Clothbound Classics:...

Stunning new edition of the standalone novella from Proust’s great masterpiece – an intoxicatingly witty story of infatuation and jealousyThis landmark new translation commemorates a century since the monumental masterpiece was first...

Filled with striking, river-like sentences and plenty of humour, the opening volume of Proust’s modernist masterpiece covers the Narrator’s childhood in Combray – including perhaps the most famous cake-eating scene in the history of...

Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her hunchback uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it.But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend to it, a change comes over her and her life. She meets and befriends a...

GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015The irresistibly collectible box set of all 80 Little Black ClassicsIn celebration of Penguin's 80th birthday, this box set of the 80 books in the Little Black Classics series showcases the many wonderful and varied...

Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments...

First published in 1859, Oblomov is an indisputable classic of Russian literature, comparable in its stature to such masterpieces as Gogol's Dead Souls, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. The book centres on the figure of Ilya...

Homer’s great epic The Odyssey—one of Western literature’s most enduring and important works—translated by Richmond Lattimore A classic for the ages, The Odyssey recounts Odysseus’ journey home after the...

"Perhaps the best book by the foremost stylist of his generation" (New York Times), J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey collects two works of fiction about the Glass family originally published in The New Yorker."Everything everybody does is...

The famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s two masterworks—The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova—in one volumeA Penguin ClassicAs a philosopher, he wedded classical methods of inquiry to a Christian faith. As an autobiographer, he...

Translated from the Danish by Walter Lowrie, David Swenson, and Alexander DruThe Danish philosopher Kierkegaard is one of the master thinkers of the modern age, a defining influence on existentialism and on twentieth-century theology, and this...