Penguin Black Spine

A new translation of Marcus Aurelius's pithy and inspirational philosophical notebooks. Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (AD...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's powerful meditation on faith, meaning and morality, The Brothers Karamazov is translated with an introduction and notes by David McDuff in Penguin Classics. When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov...

Penguin Classics relaunch The award-winning new translation of the great Russian novel.Leo Tolstoy (Author) Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Tula province. He studied at the University of...

Traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, an older contemporary of Confucius (551 - 479 BC), it is now thought that the work was compiled in about the fourth century BC. An...

A major anthology of great Japanese short stories, now in Penguin Classics This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the great Japanese short story, from its modern origins in the...

Basho's beautifully-written and closely observed descriptions of his travels in Japan In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When...

One of the greatest works of philosophy, political theory, and literature ever produced, Plato's Republic has shaped Western thought for thousands of years, and remains as relevant today as when...

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double...

"I think this version is terrific. The light enjambed English hexameters are a great success. The effect is properly propulsive." - Prof A D Nuttall, Oxford Ovid's deliciously witty and...

These writings capture the beginnings of the Christian Church The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during...

A new translation of Dostoyevsky's great novel of suffering and sickness Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering, Dostoyevsky set out to create a protagonist with \"a truly beautiful soul\"...

First time this book has been published as a Penguin Classic Ambrosio, the worthy superior of the Capuchins of Madrid, falls to the temptations of Matilda, a fiend-inspired wanton who,...

Robin Kirkpatrick's superb translation of the most famous work of Italian literature, in a one-volume edition The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his...

Elegant and rich Persian poetry Thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar and founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes, Jelaluddin Rumi was also a poet of transcendental power. His inspirational...

Aristotole's examination of the nature of happiness In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets out to examine the nature of happiness. He argues that happiness consists in 'activity of the soul...

Penguin Classics relaunch In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in...

The original Gothic novel On the day of his wedding, Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. His calculating father Manfred fears that his dynasty...

A rich new selection of Buddhist writings, representing the full range of historical periods, geographical origins and literary styles. While Buddhism has no central text such as the Bible or...

A fascinating collection of medieval Arabic travel writing, translated into English by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a...

New to Classics, a wide-ranging survey of the Jewish mystical tradition 'The Torah is both hidden and revealed . there is a secret meaning to the holy Torah that is...

A terrifying vision of scientific progress without moral limits, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein leads the reader on an unsettling journey from the sublime beauty of the Swiss alps to the desolate...

Penguin Classics relaunch. Writing at the time of Napoleon's greatest campaigns, Prussian soldier and writer Carl von Clausewitz created this landmark treatise on the art of warfare, which presented war...

'I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette - There is something preternatural about its power' George Eliot With...

Woolf's innovative modernist novel, in a new Black Classics edition Tracing the lives of a group of friends, this novel follows their development from childhood to middle age. While social...

A new translation by Richard Pevear Young D'Artagnan arrives in Paris to join the King's elite guards, but almost immediately finds he is duelling with some of the very men...

Penguin Classics relaunch. That proud, impassioned soul, so ungovernable now that she has felt the sting of injustice' 'Medea', in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by...

A new translation of Sade's most notorious, shocking and influential novel This horrible but hugely important text has influenced countless individuals throughout history- Flaubert and Baudelaire both read Sade; the...

For the bicentennial of its first publication, Mary Shelley's original 1818 text, introduced by National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon. Mary Shelley's classic novel, presented in its original 1818...

Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and...

An enlightening collection of works by the most eloquent advocate of Stoicism It is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us ... without it no one can lead a...

New translation of one of the central texts of Sanskrit The Bhagavad Gita is an early epic poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna,...

One of the most influential - and best loved - spiritual autobiographies Born in the Castilian town of vila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when...

Either/Or is a brilliant exploration of the conflicts inherent in life between living aesthetically, and living morally In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man...

A selection of Lafcadio Hearn's brilliantly entertaining and eerie ghost stories, regarded as major classics in Japan In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out...

The companion book to Beyond Good and Evil, the three essays included here offer vital insights into Nietzsche's theories of morality and human psychology Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of...

The definitive translation of the world's oldest known epic, now revised in a second edition (2020) and updated with newly discovered material. The definitive translation of the world's oldest known...

A new edition of the acclaimed translation, by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis, of this masterpiece of Persian literature Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical...

A new translation and abridgement of one of the four classical Chinese novels, this is the epic story of the fall of the Han dynasty and rise of the Three...

A superb translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening, strange and visionary short fiction After Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of...

Penguin Classics relaunch Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence...

The Gothic novel, which flourished from about 1765 until 1825, revels in the horrible and the supernatural, in suspense and exotic settings. This volume, with its erudite introduction by Mario...

The first collection of its kind- a compendium of source texts on yoga, translated, introduced and edited by two of the foremost yoga scholars in the world Despite the immense...

Bawdy and moving, hilarious and reflective - these stories offer the very best of Boccaccio's Decameron in a brilliant, playful new translation This hugely enjoyable volume collects the best stories...

In a new translation by Ronald Wilks 'Notes from Underground' (1864) is a study of a single character, 'the real man of the Russian majority', and a revelation of Dostoyevsky's...

A unique new selection, bringing together Akutagawa's undisputed masterpieces and several less well known tales, never before translated into English. Ry nosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan's foremost stylists...

At the age of forty-one, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) underwent a profound spiritual crisis, from which he emerged believing that he had encountered death itself. These seven compelling stories explore, in...

Penguin Classics relaunch The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter...

A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century....