Classics

A brilliant and impassioned biography of one of the founding fathers of humanism, from one of its greatest defenders in the 20th century.Written during the Second World War, Zweig's typically passionate and readable biography of Michel de Montaigne, is...

Published in 1940 on the day Paris fell to Nazi Germany, Stein's delicious and witty account on her life in France is at once an unforgettable historical vignette of the City of Light and a highly entertaining cultural portrait of the French nation...

A spectacular display of this key European writer's early work. This dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as...

After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium,...

Aeschylus II contains “The Oresteia,” translated by Richmond Lattimore, and fragments of “Proteus,” translated by Mark Griffith.   Many years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new...

One of the supreme masterpieces of world literature, the Homeric saga of the shipwrecks, wanderings, and homecoming of the master tactician Odysseus encompasses a virtual inventory of the themes and attitudes that have shaped Western culture. The tale of...

In every century since the renaissance, English speakers have felt compelled to possess a translation written especially for their own time of this great epic poem, the earliest and most central literary text of Western culture. That need has been...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. ‘I’m not the sort of husband you dream of when you’re walking alone along the avenue in the evening, am I? And it would be a disaster, wouldn’t it?’ How does love die?...

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Best known for his existentialist novel The Outsider, set in French-occupied Algeria, Albert Camus was profoundly influenced by the landscapes, towns and traditions of his youth. Selected here...

This iconic, fantastical short story from the acclaimed author of Norwegian Wood and 1Q84 about a man who joins forces with a giant frog to save Tokyo is presented in an exquisite hardback edition, translated by Jay Rubin...

Mary Shelley’s Gothic horror gets yet another edition, this one in time for Guillermo del Toro’s film adaptation. Revisit this classic that has haunted readers for over a century.Mary Shelley’s classic of gothic horror—a...

Fall at Once is a steamy, small-town, romantic comedy with a swoony single-dad firefighter who may just be too hot to handle...I’m in Cozy Creek for two reasons: To get over my breakup and help my grandmother run her bakery.I am...

One of Thailand’s best-known and most highly regarded novels, portraying the romance of a young Thai man and a married older woman.‘In that tranquil and apparently very ordinary picture, I see everything unfolding. Every scene, every part,...

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Byron's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by important...

'It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.' As Joris -Karl Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no...

The Flowers of Evil, which T.S. Eliot called the greatest example of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian love, its linking of sexuality and death, its...

In time for the centennial of his birth, the Noble Prize winner’s moving final novel Deeply insightful, Saul Bellow’s moving last novel is a journey through love and memory, an elegy to friendship, and a poignant meditation on death. Told in...

“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable...

"Akutagawa displays an insightful and keenly creative intelligence in prose so lucid its sophistication is hardly visible." —Chris Power, The Guardian.Japan's master storyteller Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892 - 1927) wrote more than 150 short...

Who but the Marquis de Sade would write not of the pain, tragedy, and joy of love but of its crimes? Murder, seduction, and incest are among the cruel rewards for selfless love in his stories—tragedy, despair, and death the inevitable outcome...