'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head'One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping storiesIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 b
'Those husbands that I had,Three of them were good and two were bad.The three that I call 'good' were rich and old...' One of the most bawdy, entertaining and popular stories from The Canterbury Tales
'Do you see your son, standing over there, in the antechamber? Well, I am going to shoot him.'The story of the great and mad Cambyses, King of Persia, told by part-historian, part-mythmaker Herodotus
'To the utterly at-one with Sivathere's no dawn.'Meditative, deeply personal poems to the god Siva, from four major Hindu saints.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday
'...a good bit of spice to give the critlings a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the mince-meat look rich'Radical Victorian reformer Henry Mayhew walked the streets of London interviewing ordina
'He gave orders that they were not to get any hot glum pudding in flames, for fear the spirits in their innards might catch fire'The Steel Flea is an uproarious and alcohol-soaked shaggy-dog story fro
Exploring issues of colonialism, faith and the limits of comprehension, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India is published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Adela Quested and her elderly com
English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of police inspector Colonel Haki, from whom he hears of Dimitrios - a criminal. Latimer decides to retra
Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and in doing so brings to light new pioneering heroines, from field slaves to mill workers, who fought back and refused to accept the lives into which they were born. 'The power of her historical insights and the sweetness of her dream cannot be denied' The New York Times
'She only wished to prove to herself she was once more on a train going somewhere'A passionate, unfulfilled woman considers her life and her marriage in this moving novella by one of America's finest
Walter Benjamin - philosopher, essayist, literary and cultural theorist - was one of the most original writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. This new selection brings together Benjamin's majo
With A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens created a modern fairy tale and shaped our ideas of Christmas. The tale of the solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of the season by a
'Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!-and you, García Lorca, what were you doing by the watermelons?' Profane and prophetic verses about sex, death, revolution and America by the great icon
She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day'Clarissa Dallo
'The pleasure is twice as sweetWhen you cheat a cheat.'An illustrated collection of fables from one of France's most vital writers. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series,
Gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battle
