Top 100 Penguin Classics

Set against the backdrop of the fertile Salinas Valley in California, East of Eden is a profound and compelling novel by John Steinbeck, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. This masterful narrative charts the intertwining destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—across multiple generations. Steinbeck's intricate portrayal of human nature and enduring exploration of moral themes...

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There, he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible...

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a masterful psychological drama set against the gritty backdrop of 19th-century St. Petersburg. The story follows Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished and disillusioned ex-student, who roams the streets, tortured by thoughts of greatness and contempt for societal norms. Consumed by monetary woes and driven by a deluded sense of justice, he plans and executes...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?

A brilliant new translation by Christine Donougher of Victor Hugo's thrilling masterpiece, with an introduction by Robert Tombs. Les Misérables is Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism, and love. It follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. However, his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly...

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend, Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succes...

Considered an audacious second novel, Giovanni's Room is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

The definitive version of Jane Austen's timeless novel of love's triumph over adversity. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane,...

A guaranteed best-seller - a brilliant new edition of one of Penguin's top-ten classics - more than 35k of the Black Classic edition sold every year. Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence...

Brave New World is still one of the most shocking, unnerving and prophetic novels ever written. Mass-consumerism, individualism, total reliance on technology—it is a future that appears to be here already. Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Introduced by Margaret Atwood Our perfect society achieves peace and stability by dispensing with monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself....

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity...

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a...

Things Fall Apart introduces Okonowo, the greatest warrior alive. His fame has spread like a bushfire in West Africa, making him one of the most powerful men of his clan. However, Okonowo's fiery temper is equally renowned. Determined to be the opposite of his father, he refuses to show any weakness to anyone. To maintain his strength and dominance, he...

North and South is one of the earliest novels of industrial alienation, tellingly linked to the plight of 19th-century women. It tells of the relationship between Margaret Hale, a girl from the old rural south, and John Thornton, a mill owner from the new industrial north.

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff's bitterness...

The Iliad is the culmination of a long-standing oral tradition. The oral technique enabled a master bard like Homer to develop what may historically have been an event of minor importance into a fully fledged epic. So, out of a single episode in the legendary Trojan War—Achilles' withdrawal from the fighting and his return to kill the Trojan hero, Hector—Homer...

Hartley's classic novel of innocence lost, now reissued with a new jacket. When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of...

Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together, the aging Quixote's fancy leads them wildly astray. At the same time, the relationship between the two men grows in fascinating subtlety. Often...

For more than two thousand years, The Art of War by Sun Tzu has provided military leaders with essential advice on battlefield tactics, managing troops and terrain, and employing cunning and deception. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business, or in relationships....

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...

The acclaimed new translation of Tolstoy's masterpiece, for the first time in Black Classics after the successful hardback and Red Classics editions—10,000+ hardbacks and, by the time of Black Classics, 20,000+ of Red Classics sold. At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's...

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a profound and evocative tale that captures the journey of the Joad family as they traverse the harsh landscapes of America during the Great Depression. As drought and economic hardship ravage their farming homeland in Oklahoma, the resilient Joads are driven from their beloved home and journey westward in a desperate bid...

First time in Penguin Modern Classics In Ponyboy's world, there are two types of people. There are the Socs, the rich society kids who get away with anything. Then there are the greasers, like Ponyboy, who aren't so lucky. Ponyboy has a few things he can count on—his older brothers, his friends, and trouble with the Socs, whose idea of...

An ambitious novel by the formidable talent, Somerset Maugham. The Razor's Edge follows Larry Darrell, a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters. His fiancée, Isabel, faces a choice between love and wealth, which has lifelong repercussions. Her uncle, Elliot Templeton, is the quintessential expatriate...

One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century - a potent satire on the madness of war. Discover Joseph Heller's hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it. It's the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron...

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his favourite child and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the 'umble Uriah Heep, along...

This Penguin Classics edition of Louisa May Alcott's inspiring tale of sisterhood, Little Women, is edited with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. One of the best-loved books of all time. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, and spoiled Amy face the hard lessons of poverty and growing...

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby, she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile, Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through...

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor—these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There, two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are...

Penguin Classics relaunch The Diary of a Nobody began as a serial in Punch and the book which followed in 1892 has never been out of print. The Grossmith brothers not only created an immortal comic character but produced a clever satire of their society. Mr Pooter is an office clerk and upright family man in a dull 1880s suburb....

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft, capturing the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series...

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Dickens's wonderfully spooky tale with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper, and finished with a silk ribbon. A Christmas Carol tells the story of Mr Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, miserable old man. 'Bah! Humbug!' he declares, as nobody stops him in the street to say a cheery hello, and...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. The Call of the Wild 'The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.' The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable...

To the Lighthouse is Woolf's most autobiographical novel, now in Penguin Black Classics. To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. For years now, the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these...

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents. However, her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between...

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...

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, with an introduction by Lionel Shriver, is a captivating exploration of New York society in the 1870s. The story centres around Newland Archer and May Welland, the quintessential couple. He is a wealthy young lawyer, and she is a lovely and sweet-natured girl. All seems set for success until the arrival of May's...

Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and...

One of Waugh's most exuberant comedies, Scoop is a brilliantly irreverent satire of Fleet Street and its hectic pursuit of hot news. Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in...

A playful mock 'biography' of a chameleonic historical figure, written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend Vita Sackville-West. Orlando has always been an outsider... His longing for passion, adventure and fulfilment takes him out of his own time. Chasing a dream through the centuries, he bounds from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to the modern world. Will he find happiness with...

Madame Bovary tells the story of Emma Bovary, a beautiful and bored woman trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, voracious spending, and eventually, in adultery. However, even her affairs bring her disappointment,...

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...

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...

Famously associated with the term 'magical realism', Gabriel Garcia Marquez is probably South America's most famous literary export. An acknowledged masterpiece, this is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles....

George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian future, annotated for students and with a new introduction by D. J. Taylor. Ever since its publication in 1948, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its citizens like 'a boot stamping on a human face' has become a touchstone for human freedom, and one of the most...

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'.

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....

When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture now weak and childishly afraid of the...

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage, the rumours begin, poisoning her husband...

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set...

Published alongside other works on the 150th anniversary of Joseph Conrad's death, Heart of Darkness has long been regarded as a literary classic and a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. The novella reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians, representing one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's...

Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race, and liberal America in the 1960s. Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way.

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Miller's first novel is a Penguin Modern Classic for the first time. One of the most scandalous and influential books of the 20th century, Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists....

The Sea, The Sea is the Booker Prize-winning masterpiece from one of the twentieth century's most important and entertaining writers. Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims...

Compulsively readable Daily Telegraph The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual...

The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's glittering Jazz Age masterpiece. Jay Gatsby is a self-made man, famed for his decadent champagne-drenched parties. Despite being surrounded by Long Island's bright and beautiful, Gatsby longs only for Daisy Buchanan. In shimmering prose, Fitzgerald shows Gatsby pursue his dream to its tragic conclusion. The Great Gatsby is an elegiac and exquisite portrait of the...

Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world. 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink...' This is the story of Cassandra, precocious and charming, who begins a journal detailing her life with her bohemian family in a crumbling old castle. On the cusp of adulthood, Cassandra meets the family's...

In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, this is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling, and...

The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity, and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him. Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his newfound employment to further...

Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous, and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with...

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the sake of politics, or for...

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he'll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who...

The classic mafia tale - reissued to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its first publication. The classic novel that inspired 'the greatest crime film of all time'. Tyrant, blackmailer, racketeer, murderer - his influence reaches every level of American society. Meet Don Corleone, a friendly man, a just man, a reasonable man. The deadliest lord of the Cosa Nostra. The...

Brideshead Revisited, the masterpiece by Evelyn Waugh, is an extraordinary meditation on a lost world. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by...

Middlemarch, George Eliot's most ambitious novel, is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. It features a richly drawn cast of characters whose stories interweave to create a nuanced and moving drama. Among its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the...

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket;...

A new edition of James's chilling novella, edited by David Bromwich. 'The apparition had reached the landing half-way up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window where, at the sight of me, it stopped short.' The Turn of the Screw tells the story of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans....

Immerse yourself in the opulent and intricate world of Imperial Russia through Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a cornerstone of world literature. This timeless masterpiece of passion, betrayal, and the quest for meaning weaves the lives of its characters into a rich tapestry that has captivated readers for generations. In the heart of this narrative stands Anna, a stunning and intelligent woman...

In 1960, nearly 60 years old and feeling detached from the landscapes and people of America, Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck embarked on a bold journey to reconnect with his homeland. He set out in a custom-built three-quarter-ton pickup truck, which he fondly named Rocinante after Don Quixote's noble steed. Aboard this miniature ship’s cabin and with only his loyal...

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion, Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles—military and domestic—are fought,...

Penguin Classics relaunch. The Return of the Native was written towards the beginning of Hardy's career as a novelist and can be considered one of his most representative works. In this novel, Hardy's tragic vision is powerfully and narrowly focused on Egdon Heath and the men and women who live on it. Set against the backdrop of the Heath and...

Reissued in Black Classics to coincide with the new translation of two other magnificent Bulgakov titles. The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit. With his disorderly band of accomplices—including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat—he immediately begins to create havoc. Disappearances, destruction, and death spread through the city like wildfire, and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the...

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope...

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this story—a black man charged with raping a white girl in the Deep South of the 1930s. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is...

"In a decade marked, much like our own, by simple fears, John Wyndham refused to make simple metaphors". -M John Harrison. A world paralyzed by genetic mutation- Wyndham takes the reader into the anguished heart of a community where the chances of breeding true are less than fifty percent and where deviations are rooted out and destroyed as abominations.

Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor. And that is where he meets Mildred,...

Buddenbrooks, Mann's semi-autobiographical and sweeping family epic, is the book that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Discover Mann's Nobel Prize-winning semi-autobiographical and sweeping family epic. The Buddenbrook clan is everything you'd expect of a nineteenth-century German merchant family—wealthy, esteemed, established. Four generations later, a tide of twentieth-century modernism has gradually disintegrated the bourgeois values on which the Buddenbrooks...

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string, or a single match in a world...