Poetry & Plays

The first collected and annotated edition of Carroll's brilliant, witty poems, edited by Gillian Beer 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote...

'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked' Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This...

W.B. Yeats's Selected Poems is edited with an introduction and notes by Timothy Webb in Penguin Modern Classics. Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats...

For the first time in Penguin Classics, a new translation of Sappho's complete poetry More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west...

'An important book ... William Radice's introduction is excellent' Sunday Times The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and in world literature,...

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...

"the perfect balance of tightness and colloquialism... likely to be the best modern version of Dante." - Bernard O'Donoghue Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil...

New translation of a book that has sold over 100,000 in its previous version A new translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a C10 court lady in Heian Japan. Along...

New translation by Alicia Stallings, with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry...

Deeply sensitive and faithful to the original work, Guy Lee's verse translation is here paralleled by the original Latin text. Haunting and enigmatic, Virgil's Eclogues combined a Greek literary form...

Only widely-available edition of Khayyam's lyrical poetry Revered in eleventh-century Persia as an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Omar Khayyam is now known first and foremost for his Ruba'iyat. The short...

'The most moving lines literature has achieved' Jorge Luis Borges In Paradise, having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory, Dante ascends to Heaven,...

'The most moving lines literature has achieved' Jorge Luis Borges Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory - a...

Dante's descent into the Underworld to find his lost love. Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante plunges to the very depths of Hell and embarks on his arduous journey towards...

The verses have influenced artists from the Renaissance onwards, from Botticelli to Shelley and Tennyson, Andre Gide and Stravinsky. Composed for recitation at festivals, these 33 songs were written in...

A selection of Browning's finest works, including the chilling 'My Last Duchess' and the popular 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' Robert Browning was one of the greatest of English poets,...

Part of a series of new editions of Lawrence's works From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts...

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems...

With an introduction that discusses Blake's life and career, his reputation and the major themes of his work, and explores the relationship between the poetry and the illustrations. Writer and...

A new edition of the finest poems by Tennyson Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous...

A fresh selection of Wordsworth's poetry from the poet's biographer. One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural...

A new selection of John Donne's endlessly innovative and fascinating verse, from the witty conceit of 'The Flea' to the instense spirituality of his divine poems. Regarded by many as...

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 'riotous, insanely readable' new novel from the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE The 'riotous, insanely readable' (Observer) retelling of The Tempest from the 2019 Booker Prize-winning author of THE...

'Frost was the first American poet who could honestly be reckoned a master-poet by world standards' Robert Graves A wonderful collection of Robert Frost's writing No poet is more emblematically...

'Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale... In sublimity and magnitude, it comes closer than anything in our language to the swollen red...

Wilfred Owen was the greatest poet of the First World War - his best work is collected here, published in a new hardback edition to commemorate the end of the...

Now included in UQP's First Nations Classics series with an introduction from Tony Birch, Smoke Encrypted Whispers is a stunning collection of exhilarating poems, urban songlines and ancestral ties that...

Now included in UQP's First Nations Classics series with an introduction from Kirli Saunders, Dreaming in the Urban Areas is an unforgettable work of Indigenous poetry. Lisa Bellear (1961-2006) was...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series- beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets Poems is Wilfred Owen's only volume of poetry, first published posthumously in 1920 and edited by...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A king and his lords form an austere academy, swearing to have no...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Leaving behind both home and beloved, a young man travels to Milan to...

A dazzling collection of poetry by the greatest Latin-American Poet of our time The perfect gift for Valentine's Day Selected Poems contains Neruda's resonant, exploratory, intensely individualistic verse, rooted in...

'Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled' William Blake 'Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Banishing his cousin, Bolingbroke, King Richard II prevents a dispute from turning bloody....

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery In the Duke's absence from Vienna, his strict deputy Angelo revives an ancient...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A popular soldier and newly married man, Othello seems to be in an...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. When young prince Hamlet is...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love....

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery An ageing king makes a capricious decision to divide his realm among his...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery A battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery Two sets of identical twins, separated at sea as children, find themselves in...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne,...

Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now in Penguin Classics At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a...

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...