'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
'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
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
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
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
'Do I wish to keep up with the times? No. My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can'The great American poet, novelist and environmental activist argues for a life lived slowly. Penguin Moder
'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
'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
'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
'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
'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
'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
'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
'An ass, clothed in the skin of a lion...'Aesop's animal fables are some of the earliest stories ever told, thought to have been composed by a slave in Greek antiquity and giving glimpses of a world t
'What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not
"The most important... Russian novel of the 20th century."-The New York Times Book Review Considered Andrei Bely's masterpiece, Petersburg, is a pioneering modernist novel, ranked in importance along
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
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
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
'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
'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
'The pleasure is twice as sweetWhen you cheat a cheat.'An illustrated collection of fables from one of France's most vital writers. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series,
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
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. A castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the 1930s. Two men, inseparable in their youth, meet for t
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
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
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
