A lawyer by day and a creator of a world of fantasy by night, Hoffman (1776-1822) lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence. Many of the characters in his stories are subject to a similar split personality. The duality of his nature is frequently reflected in...

Ossyane, a young Lebanese man and his Jewish wife Clara return to live in Haifa after World War II. Just as war breaks out in the new-born state of Israel, Ossayne is forced to go to Beirut. The border with Israel closes behind him...

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.' This line from the play was adopted by Jean Anouilh to characterize the first production of Waiting for Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone in 1953. He went on to predict that the play would, in...

An orphan girl's progress from the custody of cruel relatives to an oppressive boarding school culminates in a troubled career as a governess. Jane's first assignment at Thornfield, where the proud and cynical master harbors a scandalous secret, draws readers ever deeper into a...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the...

`the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended. The various checks with influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear.'Headed by the larger than life figure of Professor Challenger, a scientific expedition...

'I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne'James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else,...

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to World War II.Set...

THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon before you read the Booker Prize-winning sequel The Testaments. NOW AN AWARD-WINNING TV SERIES STARRING ELISABETH MOSS Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state...

The Great Gatsby is a dazzling social satire, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece and a milestone in twentieth-century literature, now beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men...

THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon before you read the Booker Prize-winning sequel The Testaments. NOW AN AWARD-WINNING TV SERIES STARRING ELISABETH MOSS Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state...

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the tale of an ancient curse suddenly given a terrifying modern application. The grey towers of Baskerville Hall and the wild open country of Dartmoor hold many secrets for Holmes and Watson to unravel. The detective is contemptuous...

"The most consistent of all series in terms of language control, length, and quality of story."

In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death's head; her dark eyes burn...

'All animals are equal - but some are more equal than others' When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But...

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit...

A new series of beautiful hardcover nonfiction classics, with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithWorld-changing ideas meet eye-catching design: the best titles of the extraordinarily successful Great Ideas series are now packaged in Coralie Bickford-Smith’s distinctive, award-winning covers. Whether on a well-curated shelf or in...

The infamous and controversial work that made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and CamusWriting under the pseudonym of "Johannes de silentio," Kierkegaard expounds his personal view of religion through a discussion of the scene in...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's seminal classic, now back in a beautiful hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadRaskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder...

Now a major motion picture starring Anya Taylor-JoyPart of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Beautiful, clever, rich - and...

'I wonder what will become of her!'So speculate the friends and neighbours of Emma Woodhouse, the lovely, lively, wilful,and fallible heroine of Jane Austen's fourth published novel. Confident that she knows best, Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet,...

'If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.' Isaac Babel Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of...

The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential pieces of political propaganda ever written. It is a summary of the whole Marxist vision of history and is the foundation document of the Marxist movement. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were aged 29 and...

Shelley's suspenseful and intellectually rich gothic tale confronts some of the most important and enduring themes in all of literture-the power of human imagination, the potential hubris of science, the gulf between appearance and essence, the effects of human cruelty, the desire for revenge...

'I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books...I want to kick up my heels & be off.'Orlando tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through centuries of English history, first as a man, then as a woman;...

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers - a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608 - on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much...

The Winter's Tale is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists and classroom notes. Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations,...

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers a new, modern-spelling text, collated and edited from all existing printings on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions, and much else detailed...

'it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam' Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very...

'I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind ...' Discovered on the streets of Liverpool, Heathcliff is rescued by Mr Earnshaw and taken to the remote Yorkshire farmhouse of Wuthering Heights. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine rapidly forms a passionate attachment to him, but...

"He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention." Pride and Prejudice , one of the most famous love stories of all time, has also proven itself as a treasured mainstay of the English literary canon. With the arrival of eligible...

'I am making up "To the Lighthouse" - the sea is to be heard all through it' Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall, Virginia Woolf produced one of the masterworks of English literature in To the Lighthouse. It concerns...

Verne's classic novel of global voyagingOne night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished...

A collection of the most famous cases faced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless creation, now in a beautiful hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithThis collection of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes includes many of the famous cases - and...

'I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.' Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash the French Riviera was the stylish place...

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon...

'Happiness, then, is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world.' In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle's guiding question is: what is the best thing for a human being? His answer is happiness, but he means, not something we feel, but rather a...

An Instant New York Times Bestseller A Pulitzer Prize Winner A blind child‚ Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History‚ where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When the Nazis occupy Paris and father...

Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus...

A brilliant modern translation by Christine Donougher of Victor Hugo's thrilling masterpiece, with an introduction by Robert Tombs.This is the best translation of the novel available in English, as recommended by David Bellos in The Novel of the Century.Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism...

Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. Macbeth is one of the most popular texts for study by secondary students the world over. This...

It is hay-making time on the Wookey farm. Two brothers are building the haystack, but thinking about other things - about young women, and love. There are angry words, and then a fight between the brothers. But the work goes on, visitors come and...

As Henry's throne is threatened by rebel forces, England is divided. The characters reflect these oppositions, with Hal and Hotspur vying for position, and Falstaff leading Hal away from his father and towards excess. During Shakespeare's lifetime Henry IV, Part I was his most...

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called,...

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre,...

A beautiful new clothbound edition of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of the Château d'If. There he learns of a great...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''One of the few English novels written for grown-up people' Virginia WoolfGeorge Eliot's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly evocation of connected lives, changing fortunes and human frailties in a provincial community. Peopling its...