Essays, Anthologies, Letters & Prose

Suppose a Sentence is a critical and personal reflection on the art of the sentence in literature. It is both an experiment in the attentive form of the essay -...

Boldly combining the highly personal with the brilliantly scholarly, In the Dark Room explores the question of how memory works emotionally and culturally. It is narrated through the prism of...

What do you do with death and dying when they can no longer be pushed to the outer limits of your lived experience or dismissed from your conscious mind? How...

The internet is no longer new, it is part of our everyday lives, and as a commonplace, we rarely take time to contemplate what we have made together. In these...

"An intellectually vivid and curious collection that refuses to find simple answers to its complex questions."-NPR Books We Love "T his book is a rare comfort, a companion . ....

'We're mysterious aliens in the crowd. We jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can...

There are few writers about whom opinions diverge so widely as Anthony Powell, whose Dance to the Music of Time sequence is one of the most ambitious literary constructions in...

In this posthumous collection of thought-provoking essays-many published here for the first time-Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and bestselling author David McCullough affirms the value of history, how we can be guided...

In this fascinating collection, Jenny Erpenbeck meditates on the disappearance and impermanence of things. Whether recalling the demolition of familiar places, the loss of a friendship, or a change in...

Potent and propulsive, a lyrical meditation on loss and what comes after - TARA WESTOVER For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as...

From the only author ever to have won both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize (Britain's leading prize for non-fiction) comes a dazzling collection of writing, essays, articles...

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza asking each one of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like...

Ovid's moving poems on the torments of love In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth. These deeply moving...

"The best science and nature writing-which these stories represent-reminds us of the wide world and our connection to it, and the multitude of ways we make our place in it,"...

From the critically acclaimed author of Dead Girls ("stylish and inspired"- New York Times Book Review ), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular...

*** Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay**** ****Semi-Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor**** ****Finalist for the New England Book Award**** ****Longlisted for the...

Witty, tender and daring essays from the British David Sedaris 'A lovely writer: supple, stylish and almost effortlessly witty.' Daily Mail 'Made me laugh out loud and then properly cry.'...

'I laughed, I cried and then I laughed again' LENA DUNHAM 'Smart and funny ... reminds me of the best of Nora Ephron' GUARDIAN Writer, actor, and director Desiree Akhavan...

A selection of Michel de Montaigne's most profound, searching essays, in a new translation and stunning hardback edition featuring an introduction by Yiyun Li 'I myself am the subject of...

Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding. Horror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and...

When Brian Dillon was sixteen his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. While he courted exam failure, his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music,...

In 1920, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published Maxim Gorky's Reminiscences of Tolstoy and it was recognized almost immediately as one of the few masterpieces of modern biography. 'It...

The million-copy international bestseller from Korean sensation Taewoan Ha 'Never give up Your every moment is meaningful' In Every Moment Was You , Taewoan Ha reflects on the little things...

The essential works of a master of English prose, reissued in Penguin Classics This selection brings together the best prose writings of the great early nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb, whose...

'One of the most remarkable artists of our age.' MARIO VARGAS LLOSA Borges' first collection of stories (1935). In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense...

A unique collection of stories that spans the centuries and ranges across the entire continent, from Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia through the Sahara to Zimbabwe Gathering a wide range of...

An excellent companion to our edition of H lderlin's Selected Poems and Fragments, this collection of prose and letters introduces the reader to the man behind the art One of...

A key text for the understanding of Victorian politics and England's rural history Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate...

John Locke's compelling argument on how we acquire knowledge In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, John Locke (1632-1704) provides a complete account of how we acquire...

The second volume of essays from this Nobel Prize-winning author In this richly diverse collection of essays, Joseph Brodsky casts a reflective eye on his experiences of early life in...

From the author of Cider with Rosie, a look at a lost age of travel and the English countryside 'They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably...

Penguin Classics relaunch Domesday Book has been described as 'the most valuable piece of antiquity possessed by any nation.' (David Hume) But a complete translation has never been available before...

The definitive Norman Mailer collection, as he writes on Marilyn Monroe, culture, ideology, boxing, Hemingway, politics, sex, celebrity and - of course - Norman Mailer From his early 'A Credo...

An affecting book of essays from this Nobel Prize-winning author Essayist and poet Joseph Brodsky was one of the most penetrating voices of the twentieth century. This prize-winning collection of...

'To talk about one's childhood usually is to tell about one's family, yet in this respect I must confess that for me adults resided in a hazy world, not my...

In this brilliant collection of essays, part of a new series of five Oscar Wilde titles, Wilde wittily portrays the reversal of society's norms In 'The Decay of Lying' Oscar...

A collection of more than forty pieces of Sontag's writing from the last twenty years, new to Penguin Modern Classics Where the Stress Falls is divided into three sections: the...

William Burroughs' work was dedicated to an assault upon language, traditional values and all agents of control. Produced at a time when he was at his most extreme and messianic,...

Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on...

A leading figure in the Indian nationalist movement and a friend of Gandhi, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 Set on a Bengali noble's estate in...

Penguin Classics relaunch Written by Europe's first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels...

A new edition of one of the most popular Icelandic sagas and a masterpiece of Scandinavian literature: a powerful tale of love, hatred and the bonds of friendship. Egil's Saga...

Before publishing the sensuous and scandalous poems of Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) had already earned respect as a forthright and witty critic of art and literature. This...

A fascinating insight into medieval Welsh life Scholar, churchman, diplomat and theologian, Gerald of Wales was one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages and The Journey Through...

An edition of Sterne's gloriously warm-hearted pastiche of travel-writing When Yorick, the roving narrator of Sterne's innovative final novel, sets off for France on a whim, he produces no ordinary...

This volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary character...

In these two closely linked works - a travel book and a biography of its author - we witness a moving encounter between two of the most daring and original...

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) was a writer of breathtaking range and learning, whose works demonstrate a warm and humorous view of human nature. Religio Medici is a fascinating, witty and...