Classics

In this excellent English translation of The Analects, or Sayings, of Confucius, readers will find a rich distillation of the timeless precepts of one of history's most influential teachers and social theorists. A Chinese philosopher who lived c. 551 to...

Duc Jean des Esseintes, the wealthy last survivor of a once-powerful family, has retreated from his bourgeois life in Paris. Overwhelmed by the absurdities and grotesqueries of human affairs, he dwells in an isolated villa, spending his days in...

The Bhagavad Gita is an early epic poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna, the manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, the dialogue sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to...

A heartbreaking portrayal of a woman faced by an impossible choice in the pursuit of happiness When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her...

‘Patience, Firmness, and Perseverance were my only weapons.’ Agnes Grey (1847) was Anne Bronte’s first novel and a poignant account of her own experience as a struggling governess, obliged to earn her living in one of the few ways open to an educated...

The Greek statesman Polybius (c.200–118 BC) wrote his account of the relentless growth of the Roman Empire in order to help his fellow countrymen understand how their world came to be dominated by Rome. Opening with the Punic War in 264 BC, he vividly...

Two famous, firsthand accounts of the holy war in the Middle Ages translated by Caroline SmithOriginally composed in Old French, the two chronicles brought together here offer some of the most vivid and reliable accounts of the Crusades from a Western...

'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a...

Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus...

J.M. Barrie's classic tale of the "boy who would not grow up"Peter Pan originally appeared as a baby living a magical life among birds and fairies in J.M. Barrie’s sequence of stories, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. His later role as flying boy hero...

'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly...

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler,...

The re-dipping of dishes was a small matter, but the emotional texture of married life is made up of small matters. This one had become invested with a fatal quality. Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham,...

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION. 'Du Maurier is mistress of the sleight of hand in fiction . . . brilliantly, marvellously chilling' MAGGIE O'FARRELL'Moody and unnerving' GILLIAN FLYNN'Sinuous and undeniably feral' JULIE...

DISCOVER THE DU MAURIER DARK ROMANCE COLLECTION. 'Feared and hated by friend and foe. The King's General in the West. The man I love.' On her eighteenth birthday, Honor Harris meets Sir Richard Grenvile - proud, reckless, and utterly captivating - and...

One of the greatest of the classical Greek dramas, based on the Greek legend of the Titan demi-god who, against the will of Zeus, stole fire from the gods for the benefit of man. His terrible punishment by Zeus, and his continuing defiance of Zeus in the...

This volume of Euripides' plays offers new translations of the three great war plays Trojan Women, Hecuba, and Andromache, in which the sufferings of Troy's survivors are harrowingly depicted. With unparalleled intensity, Euripides—whom...

Published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, It Can't Happen Here is a chilling cautionary tale by one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, which is still startlingly relevant almost a century later. Charting the rise to power...

Following a populist presidential candidate’s unsettling rise to power, Lewis’s masterful cautionary tale about the spread of fascism in the United States reverberates eerily in view of recent history. It was astonishing. Utterly astonishing...