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
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
‘A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth’ After the death of her father, Ann Whitefield becomes the joint ward of two men: the respectable Roebuck Ramsden and
Witty, irreverent tales of war and the supernatural from the maverick misanthrope of American literature. Questing after Pancho Villa's revolutionary forces, Ambose Bierce rode into Mexico in 1913 &am
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is a
"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is a
Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programs, visiting cards, draft manuscripts, and even b
Included in this volume are the dialogues On the Shortness of Life and On Tranquility of Mind, which are eloquent classic statements of Stoic ideals of fortitude and self-reliance. This selection also
Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centres on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new step-sister ent
The nineteenth-century Russian novelist comments upon the communication gap between generations in his compassionate portrayal of one man's obsession with radical change
Menander (c. 341-291 BC) was the foremost innovator of Greek New Comedy, a dramatic style that moved away from the fantastical to focus upon the problems of ordinary Athenians. This collection contain
The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged wit
Hesiod, who lived in Boetia in the late 8th century BCE, is one of the oldest known of Greek poets. His Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world & an ac
Bouvard and Pecuchet are two Chaplinesque copy-clerks who meet on a park bench in Paris. Following an unexpected inheritence, they decide to give up their jobs and explore the world of ideas.
One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence.
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 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.
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
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 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
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
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
Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. Full of pungency and wit, this luminous work is Bulgakov's crowning achievement, skilfully blending magical and realistic ele
‘Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kissing?’ Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding’s first full-length novel, depict
