Classics

A sensitive and moving portrait of a Victorian town, captured at a transitional period in English society, Cranford first appeared serially in Charles Dickens's magazine Household Words from 1851 to 1853, and in book form in 1853. Author Elizabeth...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Pamela Knights, Department of English Studies, Durham University. Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor is an historical novel of high adventure set in the South West of England during the turbulent time of Monmouth's...

'Every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at the very name of "Doone"'John Ridd, an unsophisticated farmer, falls in love with the beautiful and aristocratic Lorna Doone, kidnapped as a child by the outlaw Doones on Exmoor. Ridd's...

In 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war, to the 'war to end all wars'. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experiences came his early masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms.In an unforgettable depiction of...

WITH A FOREWORD BY PATRICK HEMINGWAY AND AN INTRODUCTION BY SEAN HEMINGWAYIn 1918 Ernest Hemingway went to war. He volunteered for ambulance service in Italy, was wounded and twice decorated. Out of his experience came A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway's...

'The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude'When 'The Awakening' was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign...

This is the first paperback edition to bring out in one volume Kate Chopin's extraordinary novel The Awakening (1899), along with the complete text of her two collections of short stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), and twelve...

In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for participating in a socialist discussion group. The novel he wrote after his release, based on notes he smuggled out, not only brought him fame, but also founded...

Bringing into harsh focus the daily struggle for existence in a Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is translated by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics.This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions...

The Eternal Husband and Other Stories brings together five of Dostoevsky’s short masterpieces rendered into English by two of the most celebrated Dostoevsky translators of our time. Filled with many of the themes and concerns central to his great novels,...

The Penguin English Library edition of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James'She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her'When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought...

With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Reading. Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An...

Regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between money and happiness, The Portrait of a Lady contains an introduction by Philip Horne in Penguin Classics. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited...

Featuring huge names from across the literary spectrum - including Leigh Bardugo, Lucy Foley and Val McDermid - this irresistible collection of short mysteries reimagines Agatha Christie's seminal sleuth through a dozen different pairs of eyes.   A...

Soon to be a BritBox limited series written and directed by Hugh Laurie!   A dying man’s bewildering last words pull an inquisitive young man and his beautiful companion into a dangerous web of lethal secrets in Agatha Christie’s classic mystery, Why...

In this "gorgeous translation" (The New York Times), one of our most fearless and original poets provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia. Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said...

The work of Shakespeare is virtually infinite' -- Jorge Luis BorgesA jealous king, convinced that his wife has been unfaithful and is having another man's baby, imprisons her and puts her on trial. The child is abandoned to die, but when she is found and...

A goblin with no body and a monster with no face. A resourceful samurai and a faithful daughter. A spirit of the moon and a dragon king.This collection of 15 traditional Japanese folktales transports readers to a time of adventure and enchantment. Drawn...

This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury...

Masterfully atmospheric and chilling to the core, Hill’s pitch-perfect horror story about a mysterious woman all dressed in black who haunts an English village surrounded by marshes and sea fog is a gloriously ghostly read. Arthur Kipps, a...