Essays, Anthologies, Letters & Prose

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...

A selection of witty and provocative essays from the father of New Journalism, new to Penguin Modern Classics Gay Talese is the father of American New Journalism, who transformed traditional...

'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,...

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...

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...

One of the key works in the nineteenth-century battle between science and Scripture, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) sought to explain the geological state of the modern Earth by...

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...

In his introduction, J. B. Steane explores the relationship between Nashe and other writers of his age and considers his dedication to the power of language. Written in the late...

Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction that is both informative and imaginative, reliable and entertaining. To the tradition of travel writing Daniel Defoe brings a lifetime's experience as...

In August 1939, a ship flying the Polish flag docked in Buenos Aires. On board was a delegation of businessmen, diplomats and journalists. Days later, the captain received orders to...

"Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class." So begins Vivian Gornick's exploration of how the world...

A WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH 'A treat - one that will propel you on a journey of discovery' Independent 'Like the best kind of selection box' Irish Times...

This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects. Ever since childhood, books have been at the centre...

'Danticat offers an invaluable primer to the Haitian American experience in all its inherited trauma. Arguably she does for the Haitian diaspora what Junot Diaz has done for Dominican Americans'...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES , GUARDIAN , INDEPENDENT , IRISH TIMES , SPECTATOR , TLS , NEW STATESMAN , MAIL ON SUNDAY , I...

Gilmore Girls hit our screens in 2000 and has been our autumn obsession ever since. There's a reason that Vogue calls it ' the quintessential autumn girl show' and that,...

'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...