Must Read Classics

The disturbing post-apocalyptic novel The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, author of The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes and dramatised on BBC Radio 4. David Strorm's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.At...

An immaculate portrait of adolescent love from one of our most beloved novelists.'One of the last century's greatest woman writers' GuardianWhen sixteen-year-old Portia is orphaned, she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself'Passionate, poetic and revolutionary, Jane Eyre is a novel of naked emotional power...

Introduction and Notes by Norman Vance, Professor of English, University of Sussex.Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain'I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git around it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?'The original Great American Novel, an...

'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life'Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen...

Shrewd, enchanting and extremely funny, Bulgakov’s seminal masterpiece is one of the most sparkling critiques of totalitarianism ever produced. Ingeniously intertwining narratives, from remorse-ridden Pontius Pilate to a persecuted writer in Stalinist...

A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens' greatest historical novel, traces the private lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysm of the French Revolution and the Terror. Dickens based his historical detail on Carlyle's great work - The French...

'The prose . . . is so gloriously funny you can relish the book over and over again.' -- The Times (five best comic novels)'If you haven't read PG Wodehouse in a hot bath with a snifter of whiskey and ideally a rubber duck for company, you haven't lived...

Widely regarded as one of Edith Wharton's greatest achievements, The Age of Innocence is not only subtly satirical, but also a sometimes dark and disturbing comedy of manners in its exploration of the 'eternal triangle' of love.Set against the backdrop...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray'Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?'No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and...

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War.The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead...

Continuing the story of The Hobbit, this three-volume boxed set of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, features striking black covers based on Tolkien's own design, the definitive text, and three maps including a detailed map of...

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become...

The third of Dostoevsky's five major novels, Devils (1871-2), also known as The Possessed, is at once a powerful political tract and a profound study of atheism, depicting the disarray that follows the appearance of a band of modish radicals in a small...

Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs. Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this...

Inspired by Dostoevsky's own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially successful version of himself, who abuses and victimizes the...

Set on the Nebraska prairie where Willa Cather (1873–1947) grew up, this powerful early novel tells the story of the young Alexandra Bergson, whose dying father leaves her in charge of the family and of the lands they have struggled to farm. In...