The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholar
"The Fagles translation is destined to be the English Aeneid of the new century." -The Wall Street Journal Robert Fagles's award-winning translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey have sold more than a
Paul Morel both loves and is repelled by his mother, a good woman who makes up for her poor marriage to a violent, uneducated man by lavishing all her attention on her sons. But as Paul grows up and t
A new selection of seven of Dostoyevsky's best stories. "The Gambler," about a young tutor in the employ of a Russian general, was written under a strict deadline so Dostoyevsky could pay off his rou
Steinbeck's theatrical adaptations of two of his most powerful short novels, now together in one volume A unique treat for Steinbeck fans, this volume includes two extraordinary plays from a master o
A newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome Undeniably one of Rome's most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agr
An "introduction to the nonfascist life" (Michel Foucault, from the Preface)When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by othe
A new translation of the influential teachings of the great Stoic philosopherDESPITE BEING BORN into slavery, Greco-Roman philosopher Epictetus became one of the most influential thinkers of his time.
From Dave the Dude to Al Capone: a defining collection from the world of Damon Runyon Damon Runyon grew up in the West, moved to New York City, and became one of the leading voices of American popular
For the 125th anniversary of Kafka's birth, an astonishing new translation of his best-known stories, in a spectacular graphic package For all his fame, Franz Kafka published only a small number of st
Mother Courage and Her Children is a classic in the repertory of Western theater. Written in response to the outbreak of World War II, this "chronicle play" of the Thirty Years War follows one of Brec
Four classic sea-related tales by Joseph Conrad, two set on a ship and two in a coastal town, present, as critic Paul Kirschner has observed, "a chiaroscuro of sea and land life in an alternating rhyt
The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In Frogs, written during the Pelaponnesian War, Dionysus desc
The dazzling and exuberant comic 'Chronicles' of Rabelais (c. 1483-1552) are a feast of wisdom and laughter. Realism intertwines with carnivalesque fantasy, Renaissance learning with obscene humour to
Set against the sweeping panoply of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, War and Peace- presented here in the first new English translation in forty years-is often considered the greatest novel ever written
This collection features a brilliant new translation of the Japanese master's stories with an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Akutagawa’s disturbing tales of human passion capture the cultural upheav
Generations of readers have delighted in the work of the great American humorist Don Marquis, who was frequently compared to Mark Twain. These free-verse poems, which first appeared in Marquis's New Y
Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician W
Caesar and Cleopatra satirizes Shakespeare's use of history and comments wryly on the politics of Shaw's own time, but the undertone of melancholy makes it one of his most affecting plays.
From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fiction of the great Russian-Jewish writer One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel expressed his sense
The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades - experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism a
The Moon and Sixpence, published in 1919, was one of the novels that galvanized W. Somerset Maugham’s reputation as a literary master. It follows the life of one Charles Strickland, a bourgeois city g
Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as “the Captain” brings him from his boarding school to London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza
Ezra Pound makes his Penguin Classics debut with this unique selection of his early poems and prose, edited with an introductory essay and notes by Pound expert Ira Nadel. The poetry includes such ear
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine
The three plays collected in this volume depict the faults, errors and foibles of ordinary people with exuberant humour, savage satire and acute observations. Volpone portrays a rich Venetian who pret
Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges’s most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepenta
The tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde is one of the greatest narrative poems in English literature. Set during the siege of Troy, it tells how the young knight Troilus, son of King Priam, falls in love
When a disturbed young Russian man came to Freud for treatment, the analysis of his childhood neuroses—most notably a dream about wolves outside his bedroom window—eventually revealed a deep-seated tr
More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression
Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range f
This work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infect
Ex-slave Frederick Douglass's second autobiography-written after ten years of reflection following his legal emancipation in 1846 and his break with his mentor William Lloyd Garrison-catapulted Dougla
The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide. In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for a
To Paul Dombey, business is everything. He runs his domestic affairs as he runs his firm: coldly, calculatingly and commercially, neglecting his daughter Florence. In Dombey's mercantile terms, she is
Somewhere between tales and polemics, these funny, ribald, and inventive pieces show Voltaire doing what he does best: brilliantly challenging received wisdom, religious intolerance, and naive optimis
Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cav
In The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and relates the rise of the capitalist economy to the Calvinist belief in the moral value of hard work and the
