Penguin Black Classics

First time in Black Classics for Lawrence—previously in PMC. Lawrence was one of the great short story writers of the 20th century. This new collection of ten stories shows the variety of Lawrence's achievement. The works develop from early realism towards myth and fairy tale, murder and ghost stories.

Michael Hamburger's distinguished translation of a selection of poems by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is now recognised as one of Europe's supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of...

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 and Flowers (1923), the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets. This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some of his...

"Ambiguities indeed! One long brain-muddling, soul-bewildering ambiguity (to borrow Mr. Melville's style), like Melchisedeck, without beginning or end—a labyrinth without a clue—an Irish bog without so much as a Jack o' the'lantern to guide the wanderer's footsteps—the dream of a distempered stomach, disordered by a hasty supper on half-cooked pork chops." So judged the New York Herald when Pierre was...

A fascinating account of the time of the Vikings and the feuds of the Orkney Isles. Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend, and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still part...

Schiller's famous treatise on art, politics and society On the Aesthetic Education of Man is one of the most profound works of German philosophy, in which Friedrich Schiller analyses politics, revolution and the history of ideas to define the relationship between beauty and art. Resulting from Schiller's deep disillusionment with the course of the French Revolution and expressed as a...

In 1818, when he was in his mid-thirties, Stendhal met and fell passionately in love with the beautiful Mathilde Dembowski. She, however, was quick to make it clear that she did not return his affections, and in his despair, he turned to the written word to exorcise his love and explain his feelings. The result is an intensely personal dissection...

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart, and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating and ultimately disabling questions. Christianity, with its code...

A wonderful new collection of Henry James's short stories about Americans in Europe. Daisy Miller is one of Henry James's great heroines—a young, independent American travelling in Europe, whose flouting of social conventions has the potential to lead to disaster. Her story is here accompanied by six more tales set among English castles, Swiss hotels, and French ports, all riffing...

The final volume in the new Penguin Ibsen series: superb modern translations of four of Ibsen's greatest plays. In these four unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the complex nature of truth, the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the terrible pull that the past exerts over the present. In The Wild Duck, an idealist destroys a family by exposing...

Black Shack Alley is a semiautobiographical Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique. It features a foreword by the Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau. This Penguin Classic follows in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, as Joseph Zobel's 1950 novel chronicles the coming-of-age of Jose, a young boy dealing with issues of power and identity...

A new selection and translation of the best of de Maupassant's short stories. Set in the Paris of society women, prostitutes, and small-minded bourgeoisie, as well as the isolated villages of rural Normandy that de Maupassant knew as a child, the thirty-three tales in this volume are among the most darkly humorous and brilliant short stories in nineteenth-century literature. They...

A selection from Nietzsche's major philosophical works designed to give an overview of this thought. The literary career of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) spanned less than 20 years but a vast range of subjects. R.J. Hollingdale presents the breadth and depth of Nietzsche's thought. Whether he is addressing conventional western philosophical problems or breaking new ground, Nietzsche is always thought-provoking and...

While walking in the Swiss Alps, two English travellers fall into a space-warp, and suddenly find themselves in another world. In many ways the same as our own— even down to the characters that inhabit it—this new planet is still somehow radically different, for the two walkers are now upon a Utopian Earth controlled by a single World Government. Here,...

Conrad's last great novel, featuring one of his most fascinating heroes, Victory is a psychological thriller, a tragic romance and a commentary on the lies that we tell ourselves. Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on...

One of the most important essays on religious tolerance and freedom of thought. In 1762, Jean Calas, a merchant from Toulouse, was executed after being falsely accused of killing his son. As it became clear that Calas was, in fact, persecuted for being a Protestant, Voltaire began a campaign to get his sentence overturned. In the process, he made the...

First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness, and religious experience, and together form a triumphant conclusion to Flaubert's literary career. With elegant simplicity, A Simple Heart relates the story of Felicite - an uneducated serving-woman who retains her Catholic faith despite a life of desolation and loss. Inspired by a stained-glass window...

An insight into the splendour, squalor and energy of everyday Roman life. Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires, he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member...

An updated translation of this risqué and comic account of three travellers. The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encountering courtesans, priestesses, con men, brothel-keepers, and...

A new translation by Alan H. Sommerstein of four of Aeschylus' most celebrated plays. Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the final defeat of Persia in the...

One of Poland's most significant twentieth-century epics, by the 1924 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the village of Lipce, scandal, romance, and drama crackle in every hearth. Boryna, a widower and the village's wealthiest farmer, has taken the young and beautiful Jagusia as his bride - but she only has eyes for his impetuous son Antek. Over...

New edition The Longest Journey by E M Forster follows the story of Rickie Elliot, a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent, who sets out from Cambridge full of hopes to become a writer. However, when his stories are not successful, he decides instead to marry the beautiful but shallow...

Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser...

The History of Mr Polly tells the story of Mr Polly, an ordinary middle-aged man exhausted by his wife's nagging and his monotonous job as the owner of a regional gentleman's outfitters. Confronted with the looming threat of bankruptcy, Mr Polly decides that the only escape from his frustrating existence is to burn down his shop and take his own...

The Europeans is part of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous novels and short stories. It is one of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous short stories and novels.

New to Classics, with a new introduction by one of the best known Egyptologists of our time. The Book of the Dead is a unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the fifteenth to the fourth century BC. Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles...

One of the most startling literary debuts of all time, now in Penguin Black Classics. As the First World War reaches its final year, an illicit love affair begins between a sixteen-year-old boy and a young woman married to a soldier at the front. They meet secretly in her flat on the outskirts of Paris, in cornfields and on river...

A provocative and astute portrayal of a world caught by the lure of progress. Published in 1886, The Bostonians begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer and showman. When they hear Verena...

The Annals of Imperial Rome recounts the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity, Tacitus describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies, and murders...

First time in Black Classics for this famous Victorian retelling of the stories of Shakespeare's plays - sells 8-10,000/year in its PPC edition. As children, Charles and Mary Lamb took great delight in exploring their benefactor's extensive library; as adults, they began writing children's books together that also appealed to all generations. In Tales from Shakespeare, they wished to bring...

Sketches from a Hunter's Album, Turgenev's first major prose work, is a series of twenty-five sketches that capture the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia, fuelled by his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters—peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers....

Rousseau's final work and meditation After a period of forced exile and solitary wandering brought about by his radical views on religion and politics, Jean-Jacques Rousseau returned to Paris in 1770. Here, in the last two years of his life, he wrote his final work, the Reveries. In this eloquent masterpiece, the great political thinker describes his sense of isolation...

Petersburg by Andrei Bely is a vivid, memorable, and striking story set at the heart of the 1905 Russian revolution. This colourful evocation of Russia's capital during the short, turbulent period of the first socialist revolution is considered Bely's masterpiece. The story follows Nikolai Ableukhov's journey as he is caught up in the revolutionary politics of those seminal days. Exploring...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, must solve a riddle in order to marry the daughter of the King of Antioch, or be put to death. But when the answer reveals a horrific secret, the young man faces his greatest dilemma. Danger and adventure follow...

For the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero, the good life was at once a life of contentment and one of moral virtue, and the two were inescapably intertwined. This volume brings together a wide range of his reflections upon the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness. In essays that are articulate, meditative, and inspirational, Cicero presents...

New edition of one of the most powerful of the Icelandic prose sagas Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems—from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their...

A Russian heir to Charles Dickens, Leskov is one of the great, underrated voices of nineteenth-century Russia. An outsider from the literary establishment of his day, Nikolai Leskov is one of the most unique voices of nineteenth-century Russia, combining a profound religious spirit with a fascination for idiosyncratic characters, lurid crimes, comic absurdity and the joy of pure story. This...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Henry VI Part Two tells the story of Henry VI, who is tricked into marrying Margaret, the lover of the Earl of Suffolk. Suffolk hopes to rule the kingdom through her influence. There is one great obstacle in Suffolk's path, however—the noble Lord...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Conspiracies and intrigue are rife in the court of Henry VIII as a Duke is executed for treason, having been tricked by the Cardinal. And when the King falls in love with Anne Bullen and decides to divorce his wife, he causes an...

When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalises the town of Treby Magna with his decision to stand for Parliament as a Radical. But after the idealistic Felix Holt also returns to the town, the difference between Harold's opportunistic values and Holt's profound beliefs becomes apparent. Forthright, brusque and driven...

Byron's exotic poem on the love life and adventures of Don Juan. Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, beginning with his illicit love affair at the age of sixteen in his native Spain and his subsequent exile to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave,...

In this newly translated classic of spiritual literature, Bernanos considers what it really means to be humble, charitable, and loving. This quiet, imaginative novel is a study of faith in an increasingly hostile world. Through intimate journal entries, the author reveals the private life and struggles of a young, withdrawn, devout, and sickly priest in northern France. Though his beliefs...

Aspects of the Novel is a collection of literary lectures by E.M. Forster, published in 1927. For the purposes of his study, Forster defines the novel as "any fictitious prose work over 50,000 words." Forster's wit and lively, informed originality have made this study of the novel a classic. Avoiding the chronological approach of what he calls "pseudoscholarship," Forster freely...

This collection of Chekhov's finest early writing reveals a young writer mastering the art of the short story. The Steppe, which established his reputation, is the unforgettable tale of a boy's journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through majestic landscapes towards an unknown destiny. Gusev depicts an ocean voyage, where the sea takes on a terrifying, primeval power;...

The greatest classic of Vietnamese literature in a stunning new verse translation. "This manuscript is ancient, priceless, bamboo-rolled, perfumed with musty spices. Sit comfortably by this good light, that you may learn the hard-won lesson that these characters contain." The Song of Kieu is the greatest classic of Vietnamese literature. It tells the story of the beautiful Vuong Thoy Kieu,...

The plays in this volume all contain Aristophanes' trademark bawdy comedy and dazzling verbal agility. In The Birds, two frustrated Athenians join the birds to build the utopian city of 'Much Cuckoo in the Clouds'. The Knights is a venomous satire on Cleon, a prominent Athenian demagogue, while The Assembly Women deals with the battle of the sexes as the...

On Love and Barley by Matsuo Basho presents the work of one of the greatest Japanese poets, a master of haiku. Known not only for his literary genius, Basho was also a Buddhist monk and a lifelong traveller. His poems embody 'karumi', or lightness of touch, and embrace the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each verse beautifully evokes aspects...

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each offers a new translation of the most widely known and popular collection of Japanese poetry. The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above all, love. Dating back to the seventh century, these elegant, precisely observed waka...

In Youth is Pleasure is a gay classic coming-of-age novel and an unforgettable slice of British interwar upper-middle-class life. Orvil Pym does not fit in. A waifish, eccentric, sensitive fifteen-year-old, he hates school and longs to be alone. Spending his Summer holidays in a genteel Surrey hotel with his mysterious father and two brothers who don't understand him, he explores...

Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital. Here, for the first...

A wonderful collection of Housman's much-loved poetry, new to Penguin Classics. A. E. Housman was one of the best-loved poets of his day, whose poems conjure up a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss. They are expressed in simple rhythms, yet show a fine ear for the subtleties of metre and alliteration. His scope...

In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC – AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman...

Plato's example of utopia In The Laws, Plato describes in fascinating detail a comprehensive system of legislation in a small agricultural utopia he named Magnesia. His laws not only govern crime and punishment, but also form a code of conduct for all aspects of life in his ideal state - from education, sport, and religion to sexual behaviour, marriage, and...

When Reverend Josiah Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, is accused of theft, it causes a public scandal, sending shockwaves through the world of Barsetshire. The Crawleys desperately try to remain dignified while they are shunned by society, but the scandal threatens to tear them, and the community, apart. Drawing on his own childhood experience of genteel poverty, Trollope gives...

This is a definitive collection of Christopher Marlowe's plays. His seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, religious, occult and erotic. In the victories of Tamburlaine, Faustus's encounters with the demonic, the irreverence of Barabas, and the humiliation of Edward, Marlowe explores the shifting balance between power and helplessness, the sacred and its desecration. The Complete Plays offers...

The paperback publication of the first volume of the new, substantially complete translation of one of the best-known and most influential classics of world literature. Every night for three years, the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To end this brutal pattern and save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to...

Available for the first time in Black Classics Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec showcases some of the most entertaining and spirited essays of his age. Perec's literary output was remarkably varied in form and style. This generous selection of his non-fictional work also demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour, and accessibility.

Blending Danish folklore with magical storytelling, Hans Christian Andersen's unique fairy tales describe a world of beautiful princesses and sinister queens, rewarded virtue and unresolved desire. Rich with popular tales such as The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor's New Clothes, and the darkly enchanting The Snow Queen, this revelatory new collection also contains many lesser-known but intriguing stories. Among these is...

Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse form. This collection brings together fantasy poems, such as Goblin Market, and terrifyingly vivid verses for children, love lyrics and sonnets, and the vast body of her devotional poetry. Rossetti's poems weave connections between love and death, triumph and loss,...

New to Black Classics Wilfred Thesiger was born in Addis Ababa in 1910 and educated at Eton and Oxford. Though British, he was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life, "the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets, etc." In the spirit of T.E. Lawrence, Thesiger spent five years exploring and wandering the deserts of Arabia. With...

One of the most celebrated works of classic literature for children, Wind in the Willows follows Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger from one adventure to the next—in gipsy caravans, stolen sports cars, to prison and back to the Wild Wood. A story of animal cunning and human camaraderie, this remains a timeless tale nearly 100 years after its publication.

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. It is the seventh year of the Trojan War. The Greek army is camped outside Troy and Achilles — their military hero — refuses to fight. Inside the city, Troilus, the Trojan King's son, falls in love with Cressida, whose father has defected...

A gripping tale of adventure that has enthralled readers since it was first published, John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps is edited with an introduction and notes by Sir John Keegan in Penguin Classics. Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his London life — until a spy is murdered in his flat, just...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. In need of money, the fat and foolish Falstaff devises a scheme to seduce two married women and steal their husbands' wealth. By talking to each other, however, the wives soon discover his plan and begin to plot their own revenge. Relentlessly inventive,...

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde is part of the Penguin Classics relaunch. Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. This collection includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband,...

Spenser's masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, is among the most influential poems in the English language. It was the first epic in English and established the possibilities of heroic poetry in the English tradition. The author's intention was to rival, or surpass, the epic romances of the Italian poets Ariosto and Tasso through the "darke conceit" of this poem, which unites...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The bitter, deformed brother of the King is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal - and, in his skilful manipulation of...

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. But Richard is an arrogant and despotic ruler, prone to tyranny and vanity, who listens only to his flatterers. As favour turns against him and Bolingbroke returns to reclaim his...

Aristophanes was a contemporary of Socrates and the last and greatest of the old Attic comedians, but unfortunately, only 11 of his plays survive. Of these, Lysistrata and Other Plays contains three: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, and The Clouds. Aristophanes was sceptical about the democratic system of government and was critical of the eagerness with which the people committed themselves to...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Young King Henry wages war on France. But, tainted by his father's crimes, and with enemies among his own men, he must confront the difficult responsibilities of kingship. In rousing speeches, first at the siege of Harfleur where he urges his men 'Once...

First time in Penguin Classics for Rostand's popular comedy about the love-sick swain with an ear for a fine phrase and an extravagantly large nose. Poet and soldier, brawler and charmer, Cyrano de Bergerac is desperately in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in Paris. But there is one very large problem — he has a nose of stupendous...

Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful and...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ...to another half-million copies." - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English

A new selection of Swift's witty, acerbic and polemical prose. The political dilemma of Ireland; the state of faith in England; the charms of the Beggar's Opera; the importance of puns... This selection gathers together some of Swift's most brilliant prose, from high politics to social gossip, from savage tirades to lighthearted social satire. In addition to his classic essays,...

In this text, Rousseau demonstrates how the growth of civilisation corrupts man's natural happiness and freedom due to the artificial inequalities of wealth and social privilege. Contending that primitive man was equal to civilised man, he believed that as societies become more sophisticated, the strongest and most intelligent members gained an unnatural advantage over the weaker. He also argued that...

The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens' last novel, is centred around a mystery involving a presumed crime: the murder of a nephew by his uncle. Tragically, Dickens passed away before completing the story, leaving the mystery unsolved and prompting successive generations of readers to take on the role of detective. Beyond the engrossing nature of this intriguing crime, the novel...

With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses, and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin, the new guest at The Coach and Horses, is at first assumed to be a shy accident victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible and is...

Born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later, Moll's drive to find and hold on to a secure place in society propels her through incest, adultery, bigamy, prostitution and a resourceful career as a thief ('the greatest Artist of my time') before she is apprehended and returned to Newgate. If The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders...

One of the great novels of the twentieth century, now with a gorgeous new cover. The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul—determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal...

On his twenty-fifth birthday, Leo Vincey opens the silver casket that his father has left to him. It contains a letter recounting the legend of a white sorceress who rules an African tribe and of his father's quest to find this remote race. To find out for himself if the story is true, Leo and his companions set sail for...

Rob Roy is Scott's invigorating tale of the battle between the English and the Scots. When young Francis Osbaldistone discovers that his vicious and scheming cousin Rashleigh has designs both on his father's business and his beloved Diana Vernon, he turns in desperation to Rob Roy for help. Chieftain of the MacGregor clan, Rob Roy is a brave and fearless...