'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
'Drawn on by his eagerness for the open sky, he left his guide and soared upwards...'Ovid tells the tales of Theseus and the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, the Calydonian Boar-Hunt, and many other fam
From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, f
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
'For once there had been false idols and asses' heads drawn on the walls...' Sleepers awake in a remote cave and the ancient mystic Simon Magus attempts a miracle, in these two magical, otherworldly t
Good b.o means good "box office." You can smell it from a mile away' The legendary sixties New York pop artist Andy Warhol's hilarious and insightful vignettes and aphorisms on the topics of love, fam
Everything was dead, everything unreal; the dark mob was made up of stiff lay-figures' One of America's greatest writers explores mob violence, voyeurism and betrayal in these unforgettable tales of C
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
From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light. Penguin Modern: fifty new boo
'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded' Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, the
'I have lived in important places, timesWhen great events were decided . . .'By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece 'The Great Hunger', some of the key poems by th
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Two years after my mo
'It's you who are the dogs...' What makes us happy? For over 800 years the Cynic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome argued that the answer lay in a simple, self-sufficient life. One of 46 new boo
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
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
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
'...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
'Ye Ice-Falls! Ye that from the mountain's browAdown enormous ravines slope amain -...'A selection of Coleridge's poems, including 'This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison' and 'Frost at Midnight'Introducing L
'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
'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-
'Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas that you can find all over the City.'Kipling first became famous for his pungent, harsh and
'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
'Nothing more lonely -' A selection of Basho's most magical haiku Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity
'Their fruits be diverse and plentiful, as nutmegs, ginger, long pepper, lemons, cucumbers, cocos, sago, with divers other sorts...'Scholar, spy, diplomat and supreme propagandist for Elizabethan sea
'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
'But I, while vineyards ring with the cicadas' scream,Retrace your steps, alone, beneath the burning sun.'Virgil's lyrical, wistful and often witty pastoral poems.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80
'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
'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
'In two I'll slice the hair-seat / of Helga's kiss-gulper' In this epic tale from the Viking Age that ranges across Scandinavia and Viking Britain, two poets compete for the love of Helga the Fair - w
'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
'Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me?'A gothic novella about love, torment and doomed aristocracy, set in the remote mountains of Spain.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for
'Hoodwink'd in faery fancy...'This volume contains a selection of Keats's greatest verse - including his gothic story in verse, 'The Eve of St Agnes', and the mysterious 'Lamia' - exploring themes of
'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
'You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns...'The tales of Odysseus's struggle with a man-eating Cyclops and Circe, the beautiful enchantress who turns men into swine.Introducing Little Black Clas
'But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out suddenly, as if by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the tremendous sunshine.'Four personal, sun-drenched sketches of Lawrence's ex
