Classics

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...

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...

Soon to be MOOMINVALLEY, a MAJOR ANIMATED SERIES on SKY ONE starring Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike! If you found a tiny golden dragon with green paws, would you know what to do with it? Moomintroll thinks he does, but when he takes his new-found pet...

Tove Jansson’s mercurial creations were always destined to embrace the theatrical life and, in Moominsummer Madness, a floating theatre plays a key part in their wonderfully wistful and bizarre story. The fourth installment in the Moomin saga is...

Soon to be MOOMINVALLEY, a MAJOR ANIMATED SERIES on SKY ONE starring Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike! Here at last is Moominpappa's promised life story - from the days when he was abandoned in a newspaper parcel on the doorstep of a Moomin orphanage, to...

Soon to be MOOMINVALLEY, a MAJOR ANIMATED SERIES on SKY ONE starring Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike! 'They seem to grow in wisdom and delight every time I read them' - Philip Pullman Poor little chap! He had been turned into a very strange animal...

Soon to be MOOMINVALLEY, a MAJOR ANIMATED SERIES on SKY ONE starring Taron Egerton and Rosamund Pike! A comet is speeding towards Earth and nobody in Moominvalley knows what to do!Will it destroy everything and everyone? Moomintroll decides to find out...

B.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. It offers a scholarly critique of Hindu...

Musil's limpid, psychological evocation of adolescent sexuality and its often sadistic eroticism which anticipates the carnage of both World Wars. As the nineteenth century draws to an end, young Törless is sent to a military boarding school for...

Translated by Antony M. Ludovici. With an Introduction by Ray Furness. The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous utterances of the prophet...