Penguin Classics: Biography & Memoir

Childhood, Youth, Dependency, by acclaimed Danish author Tove Ditlevsen, is a poignant and gripping trilogy, now brought together in a single volume as part of the Penguin Modern Classics series. This evocative work, originally hailed as a masterpiece upon its English publication, delves into the intricate layers of Ditlevsen's life, chronicling her journey from a turbulent childhood to the complexities...

In late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche embarked on the task of composing his autobiography. Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing and bizarre examples of the genre ever written. This extraordinary work traces Nietzsche's life, work, and evolution as a philosopher, presenting an intimate portrait of the man behind some of philosophy's most...

George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is a riveting first-person account of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. This gripping narrative immerses readers in the complexities of the war that raged through Spain from 1936 to 1939. Orwell, who volunteered to fight against Francisco Franco's fascist forces, recounts his time on the front lines with the militia of the Workers'...

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson is a splendidly wit-laden memoir that brings to life the humour and chaos of family existence in a rural setting. Written in 1953, Jackson artfully recounts her experiences with her husband and their four spirited children in rural Vermont. Amidst the charming yet unpredictable landscape, life's simple moments are transformed into sources of...

An extraordinary, uncompromising and consoling celebration of a life – through childhood, faith, family, love, friendship, pain and loss – written as its author was facing her own mortality. Gillian Rose was a star academic, acclaimed as one of the most dazzling and original thinkers of her time. Told that she had incurable cancer, she found a new way to...

In the uproarious sequel to Life Among the Savages, the beloved author of The Haunting of Hill House confronts the most vexing demons yet—her own children. Shirley Jackson, with her trademark wit and uncanny precision, skewers the trials of domestic life in 1950s America. In Raising Demons, Jackson's four offspring have now grown into fully-fledged little devils, turning everyday family...

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is one of the most poignant and powerful autobiographical works of the 20th century. This definitive edition, presented by Penguin Black Classics, offers readers an unfiltered look into the life of a young Jewish girl during the harrowing years of World War II. As Anne and her family go into hiding...

The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh offers readers an intimate glimpse into the mind of one of history’s most iconic artists. This comprehensive collection, based on a fresh and meticulously crafted translation, compiles Van Gogh’s personal letters that span nearly his entire adult life. Through these letters, readers are drawn into Van Gogh's world - a realm of artistic passion,...

By the time of his tragic murder in 1965, Malcolm X was world famous as the "angriest black man in America". From hustling, cocaine addiction, and armed violence in the ghettos of Harlem, he experienced a dramatic prison conversion that led him to the fervour of the Black Muslims. Speaking out to millions of oppressed blacks, he brought new hope...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Why I Am so Clever Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?

First published in two volumes in 1927 and 1929, with a second edition in 1940, this is Gandhi's account of his early spiritual progress towards truth and the circumstances of his life that led him to a practical application of the principles of conduct for which he was revered.

The beautiful and moving follow-up to the acclaimed Cider with Rosie. 'The stooping figure of my mother, waist-deep in the grass and caught there like a piece of sheep's wool, was the last I saw of my country home as I left it to discover the world' Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to...

The incredible memoir of Elaine Brown - the first female leader of the Black Panthers. "I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?" So said Elaine Brown on becoming the first female leader of the Black Panther Party in 1974. By that time, the group had...

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of The Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades. Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with The Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David...

The captivating autobiography by one of America's most influential folk singers, Woody Guthrie. Bound for Glory is the funny, cynical and earthy autobiography of Woody Guthrie, the father of American folk music. He tells of his childhood running wild in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, the tragedies that struck his family, and of his life on the open road during the...

Written by a Communist insider, Conversations With Stalin is a candid portrait of one of the most dangerous men in history. This extraordinarily vivid and unnerving book details three meetings held with Stalin during and after the Second World War. Djilas brilliantly describes the dictator in his lair—cunning, cruel, and enormously talented. Few books give as clear a sense of...

From the author of Cider With Rosie, this is a moving, lyrical portrait of the landscape of Laurie Lee's world. 'Living in our valley was like broad beans in a pod, so snug and enclosed and protective.' Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his...

The bluesy, gutsy, no-holds-barred memoir of jazz legend Billie Holiday. "I've been told that no one sings the word 'hunger' like I do. Or the word 'love'." Lady Sings the Blues is the inimitable autobiography of one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century. Born to a single mother in 1915 Baltimore, Billie Holiday had her first run-in with...

In her memoirs, Simone de Beauvoir created a remarkable portrait of a twentieth-century woman's struggle for independence. A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family. Beauvoir writes about rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of...

Born into a theatrical family, Charlie Chaplin's father died of drink while his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from bouts of insanity. All this did not hinder Chaplin from embarking on a filmmaking career which won him immeasurable success, as well as intense controversy. This biography, first published in 1964, was written almost entirely from memory by the...

Marc Chagall's colourful, hilarious, dream-like autobiography. Chagall was born in Witebsk in White Russia, the son of a herring merchant who lived opposite a laundress and a chimney sweep. After the Revolution, while waiting for emigration papers, he wrote his autobiography at the age of 34. My Life reads like one of Chagall's paintings—emotional, fragmentary, humorous, colourful, and dream-like, soaked...

The dramatic and entertaining account of the revolution in Cuba, from the architect of its success. We were an army of shadows, of ghosts, walking as if to the beat of some dark psychic mechanism The Cuban Revolution changed the course of the twentieth century. Following years of brutal tyranny and poverty, a band of idealistic young people fought against...

The autobiography of one of the world's most talented and intriguing writers, reissuing in Penguin Modern Classics. Speak, Memory, said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on, and of grand...

The Cancer Journals is a brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer. — Jackie Kay, New Statesman I would never have chosen this path, but I am very glad to be who I am, here. The Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic, and invigorating account of the experience of breast...

Iris Origo's most famous book, her classic study of the life and times of a medieval Italian merchant. In 1870, an astonishing cache, containing some 150,000 letters and great numbers of business documents, came to light. Iris Origo drew on this material to paint, in detail, a picture of Italian domestic life on the eve of the Renaissance. Francesco di...

First time in Modern Classics Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity—the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family, and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity, and faith....

From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm, and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. Out of Africa is the story of...

A collection that includes three of Camus's most personal and lyrical books- The Right Side and the Wrong Side, Nuptials, and Summer. This volume contains some of Camus' most intimate writing, as he reflects on his identity and childhood in Algeria and celebrates the beauty of the Mediterranean. The Wrong Side and the Right Side, Camus' first book and most...

For the first time, the phenomenal bestselling literary memoir will be published in Penguin Modern Classics. Every Thursday morning in a living room in Iran, over tea and pastries, eight women meet in secret to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. As they lose themselves in the worlds of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice, gradually they come...

A portrait of one of the greatest artists of the nineteenth century, from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth. Rossetti, Evelyn Waugh's first book, is an intimate account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's tragic and mysterious life—the story behind some of the greatest poetry and painting of the nineteenth century. Shot through with Waugh's charm and dry wit, and...

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is, in fact, Gertrude Stein's own autobiography, seen through the eyes of her friend, Alice B. Toklas. With occasional glimpses into her early life, it describes her years in Paris until 1932. At 27 Rue de Fleurus, Gertrude Stein established a formidable literary and artistic salon, and this book provides a record of her...

In 1926, de Saint-Exupery began flying for the pioneering airline Latécoère—later known as Aéropostale—opening up the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. Wind, Sand and Stars is drawn from this experience. Interweaving encounters with nomadic Arabs and other adventures, the book presents a richly textured autobiographical narrative. It includes the extraordinary story of his crash in the...

A short, powerful memoir from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. In this deeply personal book, Baldwin reflects on the experiences that shaped him as a writer and activist — from his childhood in Harlem to the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Exploring the visceral reality of life in the American South...

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 major writer and a leading figure in the public life of Rome, Seneca (c. 4 BC - AD 65) ranks among the most eloquent and influential masters of Latin prose. This selection explores his thoughts on philosophy and the trials of life. In the Consolation to Helvia, he strives to offer solace to his mother following his exile in...

Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute, now comes with a stunning new cover look for his great works. 'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' Written when Orwell was a struggling writer...

The now-classic account of Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War, in a stunning new cover look for his great works. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish...

Lives of the Artists made Vasari one of the most influential art historians of all time, fusing literary and artistic ability. In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes, he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in...

In 1914, Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee farm. Drawn to the exquisite beauty of Africa, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation failed. A poignant farewell to her beloved farm, Out of Africa describes her friendships with the local people, her dedication to the landscape and wildlife, and her great love...

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...

The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973 – c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes, it offers revealing glimpses of the Japanese imperial palace: the auspicious birth of a prince, rivalries between the Emperor's consorts, with...

The 1660s represent a turning point in English history, and for the main events—the Restoration, the Dutch War, the Great Plague and the Fire of London—Pepys provides a definitive eyewitness account, along with lively descriptions of his socialising, his amorous entanglements, his theatre-going and music-making. Unequalled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Now Brando looked at people with assurance, and with what can only be called a pitying expression, as though he dwelt in spheres of enlightenment where they, to his regret, did not. This mesmerizing profile of...

A compelling narrative of the life of the greatest conqueror of all time—Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who led the Macedonian army to victory in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India, was perhaps the most successful conqueror the world has ever seen. Yet although no other individual has attracted so much speculation across the centuries, Alexander himself remains...

This is a substantial selection from the Journals of Captain Cook's voyages, drawn from the four-volume Beaglehole edition. It represents not only Cook's own accounts of his various voyages, but those of his companions, notably the naturalist, Joseph Banks.

The story of Heloise and Abelard remains one of the world's most celebrated and tragic love affairs. Peter Abelard was a 12th-century French philosopher and celebrated logician. He taught in Paris, where Heloise was his pupil. Through their letters, we follow the path of their romance, from its reckless and ecstatic beginnings, through the suffering, the public scandal and enforced...

The Letters of the Younger Pliny provide a series of fascinating views on imperial Rome. A prominent lawyer and administrator, Pliny (c. AD 61-113) was also a prolific letter-writer, who numbered among his correspondents such eminent figures as Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Emperor Trajan, as well as a wide circle of friends and family. His lively and very personal letters...

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Brontë's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her...

A landmark in Boswell and Johnson studies In The Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure, vigorously engaging and fencing...

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...

An intriguing document giving insight into the founders of the Roman Republic. These nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalities, and military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whose lives span the earliest days of the Republic to the establishment of the Empire. Selected from Plutarch's Roman Lives, they include prominent figures who achieved fame for their pivotal roles in...

The extraordinary memoir from one of the world's greatest living novelists, now in the giftable hardback series. The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carré's memoir and his first work of non-fiction, is a thrilling journey into the worlds of his 'secret sharers'—the men and women who inspired some of his most enthralling novels. From terrifying meetings with Yasser Arafat in war-torn...

An astonishing memoir of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child, and an exquisite meditation on memory and trauma. The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld chronicles his experiences as the beloved only child of middle-class Jewish parents living in what is now Ukraine at the outbreak of World War Two. Their peaceful life is upended when soldiers...

A sparkling new translation of the most famous travel book ever written, in a collectable clothbound edition. The Travels by Marco Polo began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions in the Far East. His subsequent account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad—unfamiliar...

Written in 1857, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, Seacole set out independently to the Crimea, where she acted as doctor and 'mother' to wounded soldiers...

A Lady in Kyoto by Sei Shonagon is one of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. All moonlight is moving, wherever it may be... Japanese gentlewoman Sei Shonagon invites us to look behind the painted screens in the Emperor's palace and discover a lost world, where games of poetry are the highest form of wit. Lovers send...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books In one of the great English war memoirs, we learn what it is to cross the Pyrenees through freezing snow to fight fascism in Spain; to narrowly escape execution by your own side; to kill a man with a borrowed rifle and feel nothing but shame. Moving and shrapnel-sharp, A Moment...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Ecce Homo No, I don't hate being black. I'm just tired of saying it's beautiful. No, I don't hate myself. I'm just tired of people bruising their knuckles on my jaw. A novella with the force of a screaming trumpet flare, Dambudzo Marechera's seminal literary debut explores a body and spirit...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books All Frenchmen know you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three and that civilisation comes upon you by contact with an older woman, by revolution, by army discipline, by any escape or any subjection, and then you are civilised and life goes on normally in a latin way. Gertrude Stein's...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for. In Jane Austen's breezy and entirely biased telling of English history, The History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian, Mary, Queen of Scots is a scandalously wronged victim, Elizabeth I is a wicked villain, and...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your - buried treasure? The light in the heart." In these exquisite stories from the genius of English modernism, everyday objects acquire profound significance - a lump of buried green glass leads to a lifetime of obsession; a mark on the wall prompts a questioning...

A masterful new translation of Suetonius' renowned biographies of the twelve Caesars, by the award-winning historian and The Rest Is History podcaster Tom Holland. The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of...

Gerald Durrell's beloved account of his childhood in Corfu, now in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time. 'Living in Corfu was rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas' It is 1935 and the Durrells have escaped the leaden summer skies of Bournemouth to arrive 'like a troupe of medieval tumblers' on the sun-drenched...

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell is his beloved account of childhood in Corfu, now published in a beautiful Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time. "Living in Corfu was rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas." It is 1935 and the Durrells have escaped the leaden summer skies of Bournemouth...

The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated autobiography, The Prime of Life, recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure. First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in her twenties, thirties, and forties. Beginning as a recent graduate from the Sorbonne teaching...

The essential translation of the author's complete, uncensored diaries, revealing the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Dating from 1909 to 1923, The Diaries of Franz Kafka contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts...

A new translation of Lady Nijo's diary—one of classical Japan's greatest literary works. Lady Nijo's A Tale Unasked (Towazugatari) is the last, and arguably the finest, among classical Japanese literature's famous 'women's diaries'. Thought to have been completed around 1307, when the author was in her late forties, the first two thirds of this autobiographical work document in rich and...

A deeply intelligent and moving reckoning with the Zionist project by one of Sweden's most distinguished writers Close, close beneath the land I had once rooted myself in and loved, lay a land filled with violence, injustice and hatred On 22 April 1962 what remains of G ran Rosenberg's family embark from his native Sweden to make Israel their new...

A masterful translation of Suetonius' renowned biographies of the twelve Caesars, by the award-winning historian and The Rest Is History podcaster Tom Holland The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, and to rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars...

A long-forgotten Black abolitionist who liberated captive workers by the wagonload, brilliantly satirised slaveholders, and gave the underground railroad its name. Thomas Smallwood was a shoemaker by day and an organiser of mass escapes from slavery by night. Twelve years after purchasing his freedom from slavery, Smallwood took to the press and, over a 16-month stretch starting in 1842, pseudonymously...

One of the central firsthand accounts of slavery in America A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as a slave in North Carolina and of her final escape and emancipation, Harriet Jacobs's classic narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published pseudonymously in 1861, tells firsthand of the horrors inflicted on slaves. In writing this extraordinary memoir, which culminates in...

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838. It describes how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his...

Part biography, part detective story – the extraordinary life of the eccentric writer Frederick Baron Corvo. One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar novel called Hadrian the Seventh and, captivated by this forgotten masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. Symons proceeds as a detective might, investigating leads, collecting evidence, and corresponding with witnesses....

A landmark collection of poems from the author of Cider with Rosie, as evocative and poignant as his prose. 'If ever I saw blessing in the air I see it now in this still early day...' Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature, as he...

The electrifying memoir of acclaimed photographer Sally Mann - An instant classic (New York Times). Where does the impulse to create come from? What are the forces that shape an artist's work? This ground-breaking memoir, a unique interplay of narrative and image, charts the making of one of America's greatest artists. As Sally Mann tells her story, her work's preoccupation...

An essential new translation of the author's complete, uncensored diaries - revealing the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Dating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka's Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts...

An essential guide to the life and work of one of America's most controversial writers. Advertisements for Myself is a comprehensive collection of the best of Norman Mailer's essays, stories, interviews, and journalism from the Forties and Fifties, linked by anarchic and riotous autobiographical commentary. Laying bare the heart of a witty, belligerent, and vigorous writer, this manifesto of Mailer's...

'Still the best portrait of modern rural life in England, subtle and compassionate' Roger Deakin, BBC Wildlife magazine This colourful, perceptive portrayal of English country life reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants, from the reminiscences of survivors of the Great War evoking days gone by, to the concerns of a younger generation of farm-workers and the fascinating and...

A Little Learning, Waugh's witty and entertaining autobiography, is reissued in a new jacket look. 'Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.' Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccentric men and women who, unknown to themselves, contributed to his genius. Save...

A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in the acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie. A Moment of War is the magnificent conclusion to Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy begun in Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. It was December 1937 when the young Laurie Lee crossed the Pyrenees and...