Classics

A sizzling drama of desire, avarice and deception set in the American Deep South, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is published in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to...

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex. Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results. The diffident and much put-upon...

Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner. The novel asks...

Eduard and Charlotte are an aristocratic couple who live a harmonious but idle life in their estate. But the peace of their existence is thrown into chaos when two visitors - Eduard's friend the Captain and Charlotte's passionate young ward Ottilie -...

Goethe's account of his passage through Italy from 1786 to 1788 is a great travel chronicle as well as a candid self-portrait of a genius in the grip of spiritual crisis.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic...

"I can promise to be candid, not, however, to be impartial."A selection of the most insightful maxims and reflections from one of Germany's greatest ever thinkers.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black...

One of Voltaire's earliest tales, Zadig is set in the exotic East and is told in the comic spirit of Candide; L'Ingenu, written after Candide, is a darker tale in which an American Indian records his impressions of France

Inspired by Voltaire's two-year stay in England (1726-8), this is one of the key works of the Enlightment. Exactly contemporary with Gulliver's Travels and The Beggar's Opera, Voltaire's controversial pronouncements on politics, philosophy, religion, and...

Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants' greed,...

'Did she know and if she knew would she speak?' The story of an unsolved literary mystery that explores what James referred to as "troubled artistic consciousness" Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black...

"An ass, clothed in the skin of a lion..."Aesop's animal fables are some of the earliest stories ever told, thought to have been composed by a slave in Greek antiquity and giving glimpses of a world that is harsh, pitiless and yet also eerily familiar...

In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practically every philosopher over the past two hundred years has been murdered - 'insomuch, that if a man calls himself a...

A gathering of the best maritime fiction from the last two hundred tales of adventure, shipwrecks, storms at sea, creatures from the deep, and voyages that test human limits on the wild and limitless waters. Classic adventures stories by Joseph...

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined...

Famously banned for indecency, Lawrence’s final novel is one of the most notorious and passionate love stories in literature.Constance Reid, Lady Chatterley, is a young woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds...

Get swept away in this otherworldly adventure to Moominvalley through treacherous yet beautiful landscapes.Tove Jansson takes us on a beautifully illustrated and delightfully quirky journey through Moominvalley, perfectly capturing the experience and its...

A tale of Moomin Valley sees Toffle driven from his home by the frightening noises of the forest. Too shy, at first, to approach the many colourful Moomin characters he passes along the way, he gains confidence by discovering a scared and lonely Miffle...

In her last, most profound and poignant Moomin story, Jansson explores themes of loss, legacy and hope. The Moomins have left their beloved Moominvalley but as winter draws near Snufkin, Mymble, Toft and others move into the Moominhouse to await the...

Soon to be MOOMINVALLEY, a MAJOR ANIMATED SERIES on SKY ONE starring Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike!'They can't have moved away without saying a word!' Winter is coming, and the Fillyjonk, the Hemulen, Toft, and Mymble, are all waiting in Moominvalley...

Moominpappa’s decision to pursue a new, more meaningful life as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island spells adventure for the entire family in this heartwarming tale of loneliness, courage and the sacrifices we make for those we love. Soon...