Must Read Classics

Tolstoy's passionate and iconoclastic writings—on issues of faith, immortality, freedom, violence, and morality—reflect his intellectual search for truth and a religion firmly grounded in reality. The selection includes 'A Confession,' 'Religion and...

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the...

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of...

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...

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...

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...

Composed for recitation at festivals, these 33 songs were written in honour of the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon. They recount the key episodes in the lives of the gods, and dramatise the moments when they first appear before mortals...

Gold! - his own gold - brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!Falsely accused of theft, Silas Marner is cut off from his community but finds refuge in the village of Raveloe, where he is eyed with distant suspicion. Like a spider...

'When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin.' With a bewildering blend of the everyday and the fantastical, Kafka thus begins his most famous short story, The Metamorphosis. A...

'All children, except one, grow up.' It was Friday night. Mr and Mrs Darling were dining out. Nana had been tied up in the backyard.The poor dog was barking, for she could smell danger. And she was right - this was the night that Peter Pan would take the...

As endlessly entertaining as it is scathing in its political insight, Orwell’s classic lays bare the failures of Communism through the fable of the revolutionary animals of Manor Farm, who get rid of their obnoxious master Mr Jones in order to establish...

(Available after November 30th, 2022)Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Holly Golightly is a glittering...