Must Read Classics

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony'...

With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of 'Poetry Review'.Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg...

The second novel by Donna Tartt,  bestselling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize),  The Little Friend  is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi,...

J.R.R. Tolkien’s grand masterwork in a new hardcover illustrated with the art created by Tolkien himself as he envisioned Middle-earthOne Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.In...

"Upon the whole, he added nothing to his own happiness by all the dangers, the fatigues, and the perpetual anxiety which he had incurred in the pursuit of unlimited power," - Suetonius on Julius Caesar. "Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob,...

Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I's court favourites, is the object of many ladies' attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any thoughts of marriage. Having obtained an ambassadorial...

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...

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...

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...

'They lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.'Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a...

Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the World's finest literature.Your favourite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colours of these remarkable covers make these...

'A strange, tragic, inspired book ... It is absolutely unafraid' -- E. M. ForsterA party of English people are aboard the Euphrosyne, bound for South America. Among them is a young girl, Rachel Vinrace, innocent and wholly ignorant of the world of...

'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' -- The TimesTolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the...

Part of the Penguin's Clothbound Classics range. A stunning Penguin clothbound edition of Homer's great epic, in E. V. Rieu's classic translation. The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without...

The Jane Austen brand is well established. Satire, love, quippy dialogue—and it’s all here in her final novel. It’s the story of Anne and Frederick, once engaged, now meeting again nearly a decade later. Will love win out? Probably...

Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his...

Two small masterpieces in one volume. First, The Double, a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare that foreshadows Kafka and Sartre. A minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger - a man who has his name and his face...

The best translation of Crime and Punishment currently available... An especially faithful re-creation...with a coiled-spring kinetic energy... Don't miss it' -- Washington Post. Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, immured in poverty and...

A beautiful, display-worthy collector’s hardcover of one of the most beloved novels ever written, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. No novel in English has given more pleasure than Pride and Prejudice. Because it is one of the great...

“Marvelous . . . [Vonnegut] wheels out all the complaints about America and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful and lovable.”—The New York TimesIn Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved...