Penguin Black Classics

This volume includes Family Happiness, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil, and Father Sergius. The four stories are all about love, but they take very different attitudes towards it. Tolstoy knows that his readers have fallen in love and also, often, fallen out of it; they have wanted to kill their loved ones; they have lusted vigorously; or desperately sought the...

The famous Gothic novel from Ann Radcliffe. From the first moment Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young nobleman, sets eyes on the veiled figure of Ellena, he is captivated by her enigmatic beauty and grace. But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her confessor to come between them. Schedoni, previously a leading figure...

The House on the Hill is a devastating novel set in wartime Italy, written by the great twentieth-century author Cesare Pavese, now available in a new translation by Tim Parks. Shortlisted for The Society of Authors Translation Award 2022. In June 1943, Allied aircraft are bombing industrial Turin, and Fascist Italy seems to be on its knees. Corrado, a teacher,...

J.-K. Huysmans's gaudy, shocking, and largely autobiographical novel, The Damned (La-Bas) was quickly condemned and just as quickly achieved cult status. It follows Durtal, a shy, censorious man, who is writing a biography of Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth-century nobleman, child-murderer, and supposed model for "Bluebeard." Bored and disgusted by the vulgarity of everyday life, Durtal seeks spiritual solace by...

The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin is a groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire. When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. However, a century after her death,...

Penguin Classics relaunch Exclusive to Penguin Classics – the definitive text of Shaw's powerful historical drama about Joan of Arc, which led him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – part of the official Bernard Shaw Library. A Penguin Classic With Saint Joan, which distils many of the ideas Shaw had been exploring in earlier works on politics, religion,...

The first of the great Greek tragedians, Aeschylus wrote a large number of plays, of which seven survive. Of the four included in this volume, The Persians is unique in Greek tragedy in having as its subject matter a recent historical event, the defeat of the Persians at the famous battle of Salamis. The other three, Prometheus, The Suppliants and...

The great German poem on the completion of the story of the Holy Grail Composed in the early thirteenth century, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the re-creation and completion of the story left unfinished by its initiator, Chretien de Troyes. It follows Parzival from his boyhood and career as a knight in the court of King Arthur to his ultimate...

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 party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission, he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Angered by the loss of his son in battle, the Earl of Northumberland supports another rebellion against King Henry IV, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Sick and weary, the old King sends out his forces, including the unruly Sir...

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. Disappearances, inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch, a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in The Old Nurse's Story a mysterious child roams...

A major new translation of Goethe's Faust, Part Two - one of the greatest dramatic-poetic works in all of German literature - by award-winning poet and translator David Constantine. In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust...

Between the Acts is Virginia Woolf's final novel, now featured in Penguin Black Classics. Outwardly, it is a novel about life in a country house where a pageant is to be held in the grounds. However, it is also a striking evocation of the English experience in the months leading up to the Second World War. Through dialogue, humour, and...

A fine collection of the greatest French tales about the legend of Arthur. Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chrétien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen Guinevere,...

When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict, and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money—and murder....

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics, and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly separate states — the first, an experience inspired by fear and awe; the second, an expression of pleasure and...

A new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and on Soviet society - first time in Penguin Classics. This is Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical story of a writer who fails to sell his novel and fails to commit suicide. When his play is taken up by the theatre, literary success beckons, but he has reckoned without...

New to Black Classics for this Classic Travel Book, with a new introduction by Jon Lee Anderson. During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire, and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Travelling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicines...

Selected Poetry by Goethe marks the first verse translation of Goethe's poetry to be featured in Penguin Classics. This new translation replaces Luke's own 1964 prose translation, which has remained in print continuously, with life sales reaching 43,000 copies.

The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging...

Engaged to the ambitious and self-serving Adolphus Crosbie, Lily Dale is devastated when he jilts her for the aristocratic Lady Alexandrina. Although crushed by his faithlessness, Lily still believes she is bound to her unworthy former fiancé for life and therefore condemned to remain single after his betrayal. When a more deserving suitor pays his addresses, she is unable to...

The perennially popular book of advice on how to achieve personal and professional success, new to Penguin Classics. Written over 350 years ago, The Pocket Oracle and the Art of Prudence is a charming collection of 300 witty and thought-provoking aphorisms. From the art of being lucky to the healthy use of caution, these elegant maxims were created as a...

The Erotic Poems by Ovid explores the multifaceted nature of sexual desire through a collection of poems that range from passionate declarations of eternal love to light-hearted justifications for promiscuity. In the Amores, Ovid expresses his feelings through a series of elegies dedicated to Corinna, his captivating and elusive mistress. These early poems reveal an intimate and vulnerable side of...

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism—an esoteric system concerned with the search for truth through God—it describes the consequences of the conference of the birds of the world when they meet to begin...

This collection includes many of the famous cases—and great strokes of brilliance—that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue, and evil in such cases as The Speckled Band, in which a terrified woman...

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned...

In the fourth of the Palliser stories, Trollope follows Phineas Finn's return to the dangerous world of Westminster politics. When his political rival is murdered, Phineas is thrown under suspicion and eventually finds himself standing trial at the Old Bailey. The situation is complicated by the presence of two women in his life: his old flame Lady Laura, whose estranged...

A new translation by David Raeburn, with introduction and notes by Pat Easterling Sophocles' innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother's lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. An embittered Roman General returns from war, having captured the Queen of the Goths and her three sons. Sacrificing the eldest in memory of his own sons killed in battle, he provokes the queen's unending hatred. And when she is made empress by...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The jealous King of Sicily becomes convinced that his wife is carrying the child of his best friend. Imprisoned and put on trial, the Queen collapses when the King refuses to accept the divine confirmation of her innocence. The child is abandoned to...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The beautiful but sharp-tongued Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. And as he meets her own caustic words with...

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman, Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later, she began to receive an...

New translation by Alicia Stallings, with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius is a poem that blends scientific inquiry and philosophical exploration with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour, Lucretius seeks to show humanity that there is nothing to fear in death, as the soul is mortal and the...

Golding makes Ovid both dreamy and robust. Here we can listen to the English language as it moves confidently into the highest eloquence - Tom Paulin Bringing together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends, Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant Metamorphoses describes a magical world in which men and women are transformed—often by love—into flowers, trees, animals, stones, and...

The Complete Fables provides a meticulous translation of the entire Aesopian collection of fables. This edition offers readers an insightful introduction that delves into the transmission of fable "stock" from Sanskrit to Aesop. The introduction also examines the precise nature of the animals featured within these fables. It aims to rescue the stories from a long-standing tradition of moralistic interpretation...

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalised its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure...

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly,...

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 enviable position. And yet, when his supposed friend sows doubts in his mind about his wife's fidelity, he is gradually consumed by suspicion. In this powerful tragedy, innocence is corrupted...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Henry IV Part One follows Prince Hal, the son of King Henry IV, as he spends his time in idle pleasure with dissolute friends, among them the roguish Sir John Falstaff. However, when the kingdom is threatened by rebellious forces, Prince Hal must...

A revised edition of a classic translation, with completely new editorial material. Taking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, Gorgias debates perennial questions about the nature of government and those who aspire to public office. Are high moral standards essential, or should we give our preference to the pragmatist who gets things done or negotiates...

René Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In his Discourse on Method, he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty. Drawing on his own work in geometry, optics, astronomy, and physiology, Descartes developed the hypothetical method that characterises modern science, and this...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The King of Britain, enraged by his daughter's disobedience in marrying against his wishes, banishes his new son-in-law. Having fled to Rome, the exiled husband makes a foolish wager with a villain he encounters there—gambling on the fidelity of his abandoned wife. Combining...

A seminal text in the history of modern art, from one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most famous abstract painters of all time, urges the reader to free themselves from art's traditional bonds to material reality. In this radical theoretical work, he calls for a...

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, she flees to the forest of Arden where her exiled father holds court. There, dressed as a boy to avoid discovery, she encounters the man she loves – now a...

A marvel of psychological insight from one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century. This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a family and a hilarious account of addiction and failure. Its helpless hero, notionally undergoing psychiatric help, manages spectacularly to fail to give up smoking, run his business, or make sense...

Penguin Classics relaunch When country-girl Grace Melbury returns home from her middle-class school, she feels she has risen above her suitor, the simple woodsman Giles Winterborne. Though marriage had been discussed between her and Giles, Grace finds herself captivated by Dr Edred Fitzpiers, a sophisticated newcomer to the area—a relationship that is encouraged by her socially ambitious father. Hardy's novel...

Part of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous novels and short stories. Emerging from the grit and stigma of poverty to a life of fairytale privilege under the wing of her aunt, the beautiful and financially ambitious Kate Croy is already romantically involved with promising journalist Merton Densher when they become acquainted with Milly Theale, a...

One of the great novels of the twentieth century, now in a wonderful new cover. The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of Ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they...

In the final years of his life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces. The poignant The Lady with the Little Dog and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage — its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment. In stories...

New edition of Kipling's best-loved book, featuring such unforgettable characters as Mowgli the man-cub, Baloo the bear and Shere Khan the tiger. The story of Mowgli, the man-cub who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters...

Part of the Les Rougon-Macquart series, The Drinking Den explores two branches of a French family traced through several generations. The behaviour of the two families is depicted as being influenced by environmental factors and inherited characteristics, particularly focusing on themes of drunkenness and mental instability.

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a story a day for the ten days they are destined to remain there—a hundred stories of love, adventure, and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than...

The Castle, Kafka's last great, unfinished novel, hangs over the whole modern era like a nightmare. This edition includes a new introduction and notes by John Zilcosky. The Castle tells the story of K., an unwanted Land Surveyor who is never admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, yet cannot return home. As he faces the dualities of...

Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated and must face many dangers, including plague, famine, and imprisonment. They confront a variety of...

Part of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous novels and short stories. When Chadwick Newsome, a young American favoured with fortune and independence, becomes entangled in a liaison dangereux with a Parisian temptress, his overbearing mother deploys her future husband, the elderly, amiable Strether, as an ambassador to engineer his safe return. But seduced by the...

One of the greatest of the Rougon-Macquart series, Zola's prostitute represents the destructiveness of a corrupt and decaying society. Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Théâtre des Variétés. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her...

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he...

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 to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband's gamekeeper...

Among Kipling's most loved works, the Just So Stories have been continually in print since 1902. A relentlessly inventive collection of myths that betray a deep love and respect for the natural world, the Penguin Classics edition of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories is edited with an introduction by Judith Plotz and a general preface by series editor Jan Montefiore....

Jude the Obscure tells the story of Jude Fawley, a stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege. He finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union, it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's fearless...

Hard Times is set in the industrial town of Coketown, where life revolves around hard facts and rigid philosophies. The town is dominated by Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, a school headmaster and embodiment of Utilitarian principles, who feeds both his pupils and family with facts while banning fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence of this education, his obedient...

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 subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire views mankind in...

Peter Carson's new translation of Turgenev's vivid and honest tale of generational conflict. When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by...

Daniel Deronda, George Eliot's last novel, is a richly textured portrait of British society and the Jewish experience within it. As the story opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes. While Gwendolen loses...

Set in one of the new Paris department stores, this poem of modern activity charts the mutual beginnings of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society. At the centre of the novel is Octave Mouret, who rises through charm, drive, and effort to become the director of this mighty shopping emporium. Mouret is a man who is aware of the power...

A lyrical translation of Kafka's first novel - a menacing allegory of modern life. Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into the strange experiences that lie before him as he slowly makes his way into the interior of the great continent. Kafka's first novel (begun...

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival in the local squire's son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur's seductive charm, and they begin to meet in secret. The relationship is to have tragic consequences that reach far beyond the couple themselves, touching not just Adam Bede,...

One of the most beloved translations of all time returns to Penguin Classics - Scott Moncrieff's masterful version of Proust. Remembrance of Things Past: Volume 3 is part of Proust's masterpiece, one of the seminal works of the twentieth century, recording its narrator's experiences as he grows up, falls in love, and lives through the First World War. A profound...

This sparkling collection of Austen's early writings—some penned when she was just eleven years old—is playful, subversive, and shot through with wit. Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious—and often outrageous—early stories, sketches, and pieces of nonsense. Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years old and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into...

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine—Emma—finds her marriage opportunities limited by...

Born in the Castilian town of Avila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when she was twenty-one. Tormented by illness, doubts, and self-recrimination, she gradually came to recognise the power of prayer and contemplation. Her spiritual enlightenment was intensified by many visions and mystical experiences, including the piercing of her heart by a spear of divine...

Rousseau's autobiography provides a unique insight into the mind and life of one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment. Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilised society. In his Confessions, he relives the first...

Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. This work is composed by a monk of St David's in Wales, who later became Bishop of Sherborne in King Alfred's service. Asser worked closely with the king in his efforts to revive religion and learning across the kingdom. This...

A powerful new anthology of feminist voices throughout history and from around the world. The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing selects writing from across time and throughout the world, creating a treasure-trove of the most important feminist thought alongside surprising and delightful fiction, poetry, and diaries, celebrating the multiplicity of feminist voices that have emerged over the centuries. Beginning in...

A major new translation of Ireland's great epic of heroism, magic, bloodshed and betrayal - now in paperback. The Tain Bo Cualinge, centrepiece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's great epic. It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, Queen and King of Connacht, and...

This edition contains a revision of the existing translation, revision of chronology and genealogy, and a new introduction of 4-6000 words, new notes, and a new selection of further reading. A trusted member of the Byzantine establishment, Procopius was the Empire's official chronicler, and his History of the Wars of Justinian proclaimed the strength and wisdom of the Emperor's reign....

The Civil War is Caesar's own account of his struggle with Pompey over the leadership of Republican Rome. A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The Civil War offers a tense and gripping depiction of his conflict with Pompey, which spanned the entire Roman...

A fascinating description of the beginning of the modern world. For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world—a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work, he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome...

The first-person chronicle of a legendary journalist at the flashpoint of the Russian Revolution. Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed's eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he provides a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized...