Classics of Literature

Lord Dunsany mixes reality with fantasy in this forgotten collection of modern detective stories. Some are macabre, others have a lighter and more amusing touch, but every story stimulates the...

A romantic, thrilling memoir that has become a French classic 'You will be a great hero, a general, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Ambassador of France!' For his whole life, Romain Gary's fierce,...

The first novel by the great American novelist, now the subject of a major new film starring Jude Law Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial...

Sabato's masterpiece of obsessive love and murder in 1950s Buenos Aires, new to Penguin Modern Classics Sabato's dark, philosophical novel is woven around a violent crime committed by Alejandra, the...

A stunning new series look for one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in Penguin Modern Classics Steinbeck's first major critical and commercial success, TORTILLA FLAT is also...

'We're not Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.' Exiled to a remote and barren corner of Italy for his opposition to Mussolini, Carlo Levi entered a world cut...

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His...

The original 'sex and shopping' novel Au Bonheur des Dames is the glittering Paris department store run by Octave Mouret. He has used charm and drive to become director of...

The exquisite manga adaptation of one of the world's greatest 20th century fiction classics 'My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.' A stranger to society, a stranger...

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...

Gaskell's only historical novel Elizabeth Gaskell's only historical novel, Sylvia's Lovers, is set in 1790 in the seaside town of Monkshaven (Whitby) where press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men...

The definitive collection of George Orwell's timeless political writing This comprehensive collection brings together the best of George Orwell's powerful political essays and journalism with his timeless satire on totalitarianism,...

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....

Potent and vividly emotional, Simone de Beauvoir's captivating novel questions freedom and individual responsibility in the face of brutality 'These carefree faces, on which we allowed our smiles to spread,...

One man's fight for revenge against a corrupt justice system. Kleist's influential German novella has been newly translated by the renowned Michael Hofmann. 'I finished it in one sitting. Probably...

VINTAGE VOYAGES- A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind Greene takes us on a wild, unconventional and enlightening voyage with an ordinary, retired...

Ernest Hemingway's last novel written before his death and his most autobiographical Hemingway's last major novel, set in the Gulf Stream islands, captures the struggles of adult personal relationships in...

Virginia Woolf's most unusual and fantastic creation, a funny, exuberant tale that examines the very nature of sexuality Virginia Woolf's most unusual and fantastic creation, a funny, exuberant tale that...

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. _________________ A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set...

A rich historical novel about the aftermath of betrayal, from the Booker prize-winner 'What was freedom, she thought, other than the right to exercise one's choices?' Isabel Osmond, a spirited,...

Reissue of one of the best-known novels of the 20th century - the controversial story of Humbert Humbert who falls in love with twelve year old Lolita 'You can always...

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...

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...

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...

During a much-needed holiday Maigret pulls a prank on colleague Janvier When Maigret's holiday plans go awry he and his wife spend their vacation in Paris, on the condition that...

Part of a series of new editions of DH Lawrence's most famous novels, stories and poems Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable...

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...

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class...

Penguin Classics relaunch During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances-...

Penguin Classics relaunch. The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was...

A funny and charming novel about four women in Italy, introduced by Salley Vickers A notice in The Times addressed to 'Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine' advertises a 'small...

To read this extraordinary book is to gain a unique insight into the compelling nature of organized, industrialized violence. Michael Hofmann's superlative translation retains all the coruscating vitality of the...

A brand new imprint from Penguin Classics Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing...

New translation and new to Penguin Classics This is Bulgakov's surreal tale of a Moscow doctor who befriends a stray dog and performs on it a human transplant - with...

One of the great works of 19th century Realism, and one of Zola's best-known novels Set in the taverns of Paris, this is perhaps the first classical tragedy of working-class...

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...

An updated translation of this risque and comic account of three travellers The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient...

A collection of Chekhov's latest and haunting short stories In the final years of his life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, and also produced...

Hugo's Gothic tale of Quasimodo In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a...

Maupassant's story of a man whose ideals are corrupted by the world Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his friends as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as...

Scott's invigorating tale of Rob Roy and the battle between the English and the Scotts When young Francis Osbaldistone discovers that his vicious and scheming cousin Rashleigh has designs both...

One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels and the one she thought her best One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance...

Dickens' experimental and thrilling short stories This witty and amusing collection of short pieces shows Dickens liberated from the more formal and sustained demands of the novel and experimenting with...

A collection of fifteen stories, evoking the voices and lives that teem in Joyce's vision of his native city EDITED BY HANS WALTER GABLER WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY SCARLETT BARON AND...

'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show' Dickens's epic, exuberant...

Sue Bridehead, his last heroine, is an extaordinarily complex woman - an English Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty...

Fairy tales, ghost stories, detective fiction and comedies of manners - the stories collected in this volume made Oscar Wilde's name as a writer of fiction, showing breathtaking dexterity in...

'The classic literal-metaphorical journey' Guardian A classic meditation on artistic creation and the quest for spiritual transcendence from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Siddhartha In the aftermath of the Great...