Must Read Classics

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil...

Albinus - rich, married middle-aged and respectable - is an art critic and aspiring filmmaker who lusts after the coquettish young cinema usherette Margot. Gradually he seduces her and convinces himself he is irresistible to her, but Margot has other...

'The most magnificent novel ever written' Sigmund FreudThe murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for...

'The most magnificent novel ever written' Sigmund FreudThe murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for...

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky...

One of Dahl’s most purely terrifying novels, this delightfully dark tale of a clandestine conference of witches and the boy and his grandma who foil their wicked plans remains a perennial favourite. Pulling out all the most grotesque stops and refusing...

"Welcome, my little friends! Welcome to the factory!” For Charlie Bucket, life isn’t very easy. He and his mother and father live in a very small house with Charlie’s four grandparents who all share one bed between them. There isn’t much to eat besides...

Roald Dahl's much-loved Matilda, now in a stunning large paperback format with Quentin Blake's original illustrations in full colour. Matilda Wormwood's father thinks she's a little scab. Matilda's mother spends all afternoon playing bingo. And Matilda's...

Occasionally, as he told his stories, my father would stride up and down waving his arms and waggling his fingers. But mostly he would sit close to me on the edge of my bunk and speak very softly. "The Big Friendly Giant makes his magic powers out of the...

A classic sci-fi dystopia that started out as a parody of H.G. Wells’s Utopian novels, Brave New World is a savage critique of the fallacy of the perfect state, the vogue for genetic engineering and the idea of the noble savage.  Far in the future,...

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at CanterburyThis selection of Carroll's works includes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, both containing the...

Alice’s collected adventures in the blazingly surreal Wonderland constitute nothing less than the beginning of modern fiction for children. Populated by a cast of unforgettable characters from the White Rabbit to the Queen of Hearts, as well as an...

Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish...

A milestone in the history of popular theology, 'The Screwtape Letters' is an iconic classic on spiritual warfare and the power of the devil. This profound and striking narrative takes the form of a series of letters from Screwtape, a devil high in the...

As a quartet of wide-eyed evacuees encounter wicked witches and saintly lions, Lewis guides the reader expertly through the brilliantly imagined world of Narnia, entered through a wardrobe door.    A beautiful paperback edition of The Lion, the Witch...

A beautiful paperback edition of The Magician's Nephew, book one in the classic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. This edition is complete with cover and interior art by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.On a daring quest to save a life,...

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Henry Miller's first novel Tropic of Canceris one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century -- new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey EminTropic of...

To celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings, a sumptuous full-colour art book containing the complete collection of almost 200 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien. As he wrote The Lord of the Rings,...

California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons...

When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf...