'Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.' Virginia Woolf's delightful biography of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sp
'Idleness is the enemy of the soul' Saint Benedict's advice to monks - on everything from correct posture to the value of silence - has offered spiritual guidance to many for fifteen centuries. One of
'It is only a bruise' A carefree Russian official has what seems to be a trivial accident... One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Cl
'And when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars.' This collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, including both old favourites and lesser-known pieces, shows him at his dazzling best. O
' "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
'"You are not my first passion, my divine friend, but you shall be my last." ' In this episode from his infamous memoirs, swashbuckling serial seducer Casanova falls for a beautiful nun on the Venetia
'And then he, completely astonished at her words, left off his lewdness, saying to her as many a man had done before, "Either you are a truly good woman or else a truly wicked woman." ' Brave, outspok
He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural.
"I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!' From the supreme artist of the short story, three disturbing tales of supernatural hallucination
'I gained his secret and we were both lost for ever' Mary Shelley's dark story of a bereaved man's disturbing passion for his daughter was suppressed by her own father, and not published for over a ce
After receiving a series of mysterious calls from a man who later turns up dead, Maigret must plunge into the murky Parisian underworld to solve the case. The twenty-ninth book in the new Penguin Maig
A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's award winning collectionof novellas, which inspired his masterpiece The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. A young working class woman abandoned by her bourgeois love
In time for the 200th anniversary of her birth, a Penguin Hardcover Classics edition of the book many believe to be Charlotte Brontë's crowning achievementWith neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe s
Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial Eliza, grows up in small-town America. Both lonely outsider and passionate chronicler of American life, Eugene experi
A beautiful edition of Anne Bronte's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics. Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and
A stunning clothbound Hardcover Classics edition of Tolstoy’s great novel, one of the undisputed masterpieces of world literature ? At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversatio
When the son of a wealthy businessman fears for his father's life, Maigret is plucked from retirement to visit New York on an unlikely quest. The twenty-seventh book in the new Penguin Maigret series.
One of the great masterworks of English literature, in a gorgeous new clothbound editionIn The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collectio
An official tie-in edition of Philip K Dick's dazzling speculative novel to accompany the new TV series, executive produced by Ridley Scott. Philip K Dick's acclaimed cult novel gives us a horrifying
Esther Freud's best-known novel, which inspired the Kate Winslet film, published as Penguin Essential for the first time. Two little girls are taken by their mother to Morocco on a 1960s pilgrimage of
This is a story of self-obsession narrated by the point of view of a psychiatrist, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. As a psychiatrist in a top-security mental hospital in the 1950s
A remarkable account by a pioneering woman explorer who was described by Rudyard Kipling as 'the bravest woman of all my knowledge'.Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived the typical life of a single Victori
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
Bassanio, a noble but impoverished Venetian, asks his friend the merchant Antonio for a loan to impress an heiress. Antonio agrees, but is forced to borrow the sum from a cynical Jewish moneylender, S
In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all the studies of human society that he had written; he regarded the book as 'a remarkable tour de force'.
'I will go in, out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I will go and never return.'Three disturbing, mysterious and moving stories from Wells, s
Four hilarious and provocative stories from Boccaccio's Decameron, featuring cuckolded husbands, cross-dressing wives and very bad priests. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80
'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling.Introducing Little Bl
'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...'This selection includes three of Wilde's brilliant short stories, all reflect
'We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from our earliest youth ... Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater'This volume contains a selectio
'... ever-present, phantom thing;My slave, my comrade, and my king'Some of Emily Bront+¢'s most extraordinary poemsIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black
Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celeb
'Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.'Captivating aphorisms illustrating the Buddhist dhamma, or moral system.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books fo
'Drunk or sober, king or soldier, none will be excluded'Sensual, profound, delighted, wise, Hafez's poems have enchanted their readers for more than 600 years. One of the greatest figures of world lit
'One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class.' Poet,
The exhilarating, life-affirming call to spiritual arms from world-renowned spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff 'Gurdjieff's voice is heard as a call. He calls because he suffers from the inner chaos in
In Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard's infamous and controversial work made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Camus. This P
