Classics of Literature

Penguin Classics relaunch. In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a...

A new translation of this ever-popular adventure story, featuring an introduction by Brian Aldiss One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition 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...

VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS- Bound to be beautiful A beautiful hardback edition of the most famous anti-war novel ever written, translated by Brian Murdoch. 'A necessary, shattering read' Irish Times In...

Mark Twain's great American masterpiece, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience...

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with...

Jane Austen's finally and arguably most sophisticated novel, in a beautiful new clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound...

One of the greatest novels of Chinese literature The Story of the Stone (c.1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The...

The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known by the title of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. The Story...

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature."-Haruki Murakami The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half...

With a new introduction by Ali Smith WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH Katherine Mansfield's clear, sparkling and perceptive short stories revolutionized the genre, and this collection represents the whole...

Michael Hulse's new translation perfectly conveys the unsettling beauty of the original and is accompanied by an introduction on Rilke's life and the biographical and literary influences on the Notebooks....

A major new translation of a classic of Chinese literature almost completely unknown to the English-speaking world The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that...

The fierce, irreverent novel of aspiration and rebellion that is both a cornerstone of Australian literature and a feminist classic Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant...

This indispensable translation is as close to the original as it is possible to get while at the same time being a clear and fluid rendering of the Russian. 'If...

Mann's semi-autobiographical and sweeping family epic. The book that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature Discover Mann's Nobel Prizewinning semi-autobiographical and sweeping family epic. The Buddenbrook clan is everything...

When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalizes the town of Treby Magna with his decision to stand for Parliament...

The first novel from one of Italy's most innovative writers of the 20th century 'The seething cauldron of life, the infinite stratification of reality, the inextricable tangle of knowledge are...

Another outstandingly wry and funny novel from the inimitable Rosemary Tonks, author of The Bloater Gut-wrenching, ingenious, absolutely hilarious, this is the rediscovered story of woman's desperate quest for freedom....

The Vintage Classics Russians series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history 'The best translation of Crime...

Sylvia Townsend Warner's tale of a Victorian woman's love for her husband's mistress is an extraordinary re-imagining of historical fiction The story of a young English aristocrat, who - cut...

A marvel of psychological insight from one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a...

A lyrical translation of Kafka's first novel - a menacing allegory of modern life Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with...

One of the strangest novels ever written - part daydream, part diatribe and part autobiography - by one of the great eccentrics of English literature The titlular character of Hadrian...

Maigret is called to investigate the stabbing of a young man When a tape recorder is found on a murder victim, Inspector Maigret hopes this will be the clue he...

A visit from an old school-friend leads Maigret to a murderous affair When a long lost friend pays a visit to Maigret's office, he is shocked to learn that the...

Inspector Maigret investigates an attack on a Parisian tramp When a tramp is recovered from the Seine, after being badly beaten, Maigret must delve into the man's personal circumstances to...

Maigret has a visitor who admits his intentions to commit murder but when he goes missing Maigret worries that he himself has become the victim Inspector Maigret is followed home...

A jazz novel, a sermon and a song of praise to the richness of African-American experience From Ralph Ellison - author of the classic novel, Invisible Man - the long-awaited...

Kafka's last great, unfinished novel - the book that hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare The Castle is the story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who...

A new edition of the least well known of Charlotte Bronte's novels, but one of the most fascinating, for its engagement with the 'woman question' and the vivid depiction of...

Penguin Classics relaunch. 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...

Penguin Classics relaunch. Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth...

Penguin Classics relaunch At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break...

Penguin Classics relaunch. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very...

Penguin Classics relaunch When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec...

Penguin Classics relaunch A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful,...

This sparkling collection of Austen's early writings - some penned when she was just eleven years old - is playful, subversive and shot through with wit. Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious...

One of Japan's most treasured novels, new to Penguin Classics Botchan is a modern young man from the Tokyo metropolis, sent to the ultra-traditional Matsuyama district as a Maths teacher...

A reissue with a new introduction by Geoff Dyer Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with...

"Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" First published in...

NADJA is a Surrealist romance, and has come to be known as a book which defined that movement's attitude towards life. With its blend of intimate confession and sense of...

A new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and on Soviet society - first time in Penguin Classics This is Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical story of...

A new selection of seven of Dostoyevsky's best short stories, translated by Ronald Meyer The Gambler and Other Stories is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's collection of one novella and six short stories...

A superb new translation by Judson Rosengrant of Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical trilogy Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age...

Perhaps his most famous work, mile Zola's Ther se Raquin is a dark and gripping story of lust, violence and guilt, set in the gloomy back streets of Paris. This...

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs...