Classics

Bursting with energy and playful wit, Northanger Abbey tells the story of Catherine Morland and the gothic romances that fill her head and cloud her judgement. A shimmering example of Jane Austen’s supreme craft, this is an enduring English classic...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to...

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction...

'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia WoolfJane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot, no...

A powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom, from the youngest of the Brontë sistersGilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and remains one of Sherlock Holmes's greatest and most popular adventures.Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have...

A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray’s masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a...

“There it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon.” A Penguin Classic One of Steinbeck’s most taught works, The Pearl is the story of the Mexican diver Kino, whose discovery of a magnificent pearl from the Gulf beds means the promise of a...

E.M. Forster’s beloved novel of forbidden love, culture clash, and the confines of Edwardian society Visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his...

E. M. Forster’s meticulously observed drama of class warfare exploring the conflict inherent within English society—the inspiration for the award-winning two-part play The Inheritance, now on Broadway“Only connect…” A chance acquaintance brings...

The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadA consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer...

Dickens’ famous bildungsroman contains some of his most memorable characters, from redoubtable Betsey Trotwood and impecunious Mr. Micawber to slippery Uriah Heep and brooding Steerforth. At its centre is the eponymous hero, who takes the reader on an...

A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society, the Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Demaria, Jr. Gulliver's...

Vivid, powerful and absorbing, this is a first-person account of one of the most startling military episodes in history: the overthrow of Montezuma's doomed Aztec Empire by the ruthless Hernan Cortes and his band of adventurers. Bernal Díaz del Castillo,...

One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his...

'A roaring tale ... remains as vivid and exciting today as it was on publication in 1697' -- GuardianThe pirate and adventurer William Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, and took notes wherever he went. This is his frank, vivid account of his...

On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: 'I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west,...

On 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring tale of war, which was recorded in the oldest extant...

'Many people are not in the least disturbed at the harm that befalls them, provided they can see their enemies’ downfall first’   In a series of pithy, amusing vignettes, Aesop created a vivid cast of characters to demonstrate different aspects of human...

An enchanting story that has inspired generations of writers, including Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination...