Classics

Elevating a picaresque farce into a hilarious literary gem, Waugh’s anarchic debut novel is a biting satire on 1920s society that places a disgraced Oxford student in an ill-advised teaching position at an obscure Welsh school. Just work, good...

A witty, moving philosophical novel, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums is a journey of self-discovery through the lens of Zen Buddhist thought. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas. Following the explosive energy of...

Horace (65-8 B.C.) is one of the most important and brilliant poets of the Augustan Age of Latin literature whose influence on European literature is unparalleled. Steeped in allusion to contemporary affairs, Horace's verse is best read in terms of his...

Exuberantly mocking the vices and pretensions of his Roman contemporaries, Horace's Satiresare stuffed full of comic vignettes, moral insights, and his pervasive humanity. Boasting famous episodes such as the fable of the town mouse and the country mouse...

The novel is set in the town of Sampilong which is under the conjugal dictatorship of Donya Leona and Don Severo Grande. They control the wealth and power in the town and use the institutions of politics, Church and law for their own ends. The townsfolk...

Two Ayn Rand classics--Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead--together for the first time in a boxed set. Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus: a...

New translation of Frigate Pallada by Ivan Goncharov, written in 1854–1856 and based on a diary that he kept as a secretary for Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin during his 1852–1854 on board of the ship. In the autumn of 1852, Ivan Goncharov, then...

Gustav Hackendahl's will is law. Known as 'Iron Gustav', he runs his family and his Berlin carriage business with stern, unyielding discipline. But his children have wills of their own, and soon they slip from his control - some to better lives, some...

The most important works of Edmund Burke, the greatest political thinker of the past three centuries, are gathered here in one comprehensive volume. Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of...

'No matter which way you look at us, you'll find that we're in all respects; Remarkably wasp-like in our habits, in every aspect of our lives.'Aristophanes is the only surviving representative of Greek Old Comedy, an exuberant form of festival drama...

Aristophanes is the only surviving representative of Greek Old Comedy, an exuberant form of festival drama which flourished in Athens during the fifth century BC. One of the most original playwrights in the entire Western tradition, his comedies are...

“A lacerating story of loss and of seeking, written in prose that is charged with emotion but is always held under impeccable control.”—Kansas City Star.Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American...

Winner of the Yomiuri Prize and recipient of the 2022-23 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation. Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa—Japan’s Italo Calvino—in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who...

'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...' Wilde's supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society.Introducing Little Black...

"I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!' From the supreme artist of the short story, three disturbing tales of supernatural hallucinations, hysterical obsession and moral decay. One of 46 new...

'All those excessive, useless regrets...' A collection of nostalgic, erotic poetry from one of the greatest Greek poets to have ever lived. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge...

Restoration-era poet, playwright and novelist Aphra Behn was the first truly professional woman writer in English, and Oroonoko is her sophisticated and insightful condemnation of slavery. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by...

Showing more flashes of dark humour than readers of Cormac McCarthy may be used to, Suttree is a semi-autobiographical novel rich in eccentric characterisation that tells the story of the eponymous outcast living on a disintegrating houseboat. Suttree...

A lyrical tour of life as a young working-class man born into the first days of the 20th century, Caliban Shrieks is a lost masterpiece of 1930s British literature.WITH NEW INTRODUCTIONS BY ANDREW McMILLAN AND JACK CHADWICK.Caliban Shrieks’...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and...