Must Read Classics

It is 1880: after visiting his mistress in the London suburbs, Colonel Pargiter returns home to his children and his dying wife. In a series of snapshots we meet all the Pargiter siblings: twenty-year-old Eleanor, whose concern is to help the poor; her...

From his childhood on the wild, windswept shores of Cornwall and his college days at Cambridge to his life as a lawyer in London and a fateful journey to the Mediterranean, Jacob Flanders's story is told by the women in his life, whether through his...

(Available after February 30th, 2022)As Katherine Hilbery is helping her mother write the biography of her grandfather, a famous man of letters buried in Poets' Corner, she becomes engaged to William Rodney, a budding writer with an exaggerated opinion...

George, a disillusioned academic, and Martha, his caustic wife, have just come home from a faculty party. When a handsome young professor and his mousy wife stop by for a nightcap, an innocent night of fun and games quickly turns dark and dangerous...

Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately...

Gillian Cross's brilliant retellings and Neil Packer's clever illustrations bring to life Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, two of the greatest stories ever told. When first published Walker's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey attracted attention both for...

Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'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,...

Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

'Tom was a glittering hero once more - the pet of the old, and the envy of the young...There were some that believed he would be President yet, if he escaped hanging.'In this enduring and internationally popular novel, Mark ogaincombines social satire...