'...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
'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n...'In this selection from Milton's great epic poem Paradise Lost, the fallen angels plot their revenge on Heaven after being banished to Hell - and Satan
'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me...'After the death of his wife Emma, a grief-stricken Hardy wrote some of the best verse of his career. Moving and evocative, it ranks among the grea
'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
'Because of his baldness and hairiness, he announced it was a capital offence for anyone either to look down on him as he passed or to mention goats in any context.'The biography of the brutal, crazed
'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...'In this provocative and blackly fun
Be they shocking, ambitious, or simply brilliant, these novels continue to enthrall today as they did at the time they were written. Now, Penguin Classics is proud to present them in gorgeous clothbou
When Joel Knox's mother dies, he is sent into the exotic unknown of the Deep South to live with a father he has never seen. But once he gets there, everyone is curiously evasive when Joel asks to see
James Baldwin said of writing his electrifying first novel: 'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father'.Drawing on his boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, he tel
She had lived by delays; she had meant to stop drinking; she had put off the time, and now she had smashed her car. At once harsh and tender, expansive and acutely funny, this is the story of an elder
He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern
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 p
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, and Vincent Cassel: a rollicking, bawdy, fantastical cycle of 50 fairy tales told by 10 storytellers over 5 daysBefo
'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
'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
I blush to say what happened next.'A satirical portrait of a drunken, orgiastic Roman banquet, hosted by the grossly ostentatious Trimalchio. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's
'The devil gave the woman a nudge: 'Look at that belt full of money peeping out from under the butcher's shirt!''Written for a local German journal and published in 1811, these fabulous, funny, jewel-
'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
'No, no, I've got your word for it, I've got to die ... you promised me ... you told me ...' Turgenev's accounts of hunting in rural Russia, and the extraordinary characters he meets there. Introducin
'O let them be left, wildness and wet'As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a selection of Gerard Manley Hopkins' incomparably brilliant poetry, ranging from the ecstasy of 'The Windhover' and 'Pied Beauty' to
'The Argonauts were terrified at the sight. But Jason planting his feet apart stood to receive them, as a reef in the sea confronts the tossing billows in a gale.'The tragic, epic love affair that all
'Then she began to run, and she ran over the sharp stones and through the thorns, and the wild animals bounded past her ...'Four weird, dark and enchanting fairy-tales from the Brothers Grimm.Introduc
'... a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food...'Swift's devastating short satire on how to solve a famineIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black
A Moment of War is the powerful and harrowing final book in Laurie Lee's acclaimed trilogy that began with Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee was still a young man when he decided to fight for the Republican
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Monk by Matthew Lewis 'He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration ... doomed to perish in tortur
Contains a general introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre. This book provides a separate introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, a
'The most esteemed philosopher to have produced a general introduction to his discipline since Bertrand Russell' Independent In these essays, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth centur
A real-life adventure that inspired countless travellers in fact and fiction, the Penguin Classics edition of Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana includes an introduction by Colin Thubron. In 1933 Rober
The Foucault Reader is the ideal introduction to one the most stimulating and influential writers of the past century. It includes detailed excerpts from all his richly textured historical studies - i
A hugely influential philosophical work of prose poetry, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is an inspirational, allegorical guide to living, and this Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Rob
John Steinbeck's first major critical and commercial success, and perhaps his funniest novel, "Tortilla Flat" includes a critical introduction by Thomas Fensch in "Penguin Modern Classics". Danny is
' "She's an adventuress. Yes, an adventuress, but an end-of-the-century one. She doesn't travel for profit, but for pleasure." ' Offering an entertaining introduction to the fin-de-siècle, this select
Niccolò Machiavelli's brutally uncompromising manual of statecraft, The Prince is translated and edited with an introduction by Tim Parks in Penguin Classics. As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-cent
A modernist novel of supreme stylistic innovation, James Joyce's "Ulysses" is the towering achievement of twentieth century literature. This "Penguin Modern Classics" edition includes an introduction
A post-apocalyptic vision of the world pushed to the brink by famine, John Christopher's science fiction masterpiece The Death of Grass includes an introduction by Robert MacFarlane in Penguin Modern
