Mencius was one of the great philosophers of ancient China, second only in influence to Confucius, whose teachings he defended...

Headstrong and naive, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father...

His haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is...

This volume includes Family Happiness; The Kreutzer Sonata; The Devil and Father Sergius. The four stories are all about love,...

Previously published as L'assommoir (The Dram Shop), Emile Zola's The Drinking Den is an unflinching study of a desperate young...

Perhaps his most famous work, Emile Zola's Therese Raquin is a dark and gripping story of lust, violence and guilt, set in the...

Plutarch's vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and...

Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era,...

Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of a married woman's affair caused a moral outcry on its...

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking...

Anton Chekhov's only full-length novel, this Penguin Classics edition of The Shooting Party is translated and edited by Ronald...

Containing an enchanting mix of familiar favourites and hidden gems, the Penguin Classics edition of Hans Christian Andersen's...

Set at the height of the "tulipomania" that gripped Holland in 17th century, this is the story of Cornelius van Baerle, a humble...

'I hope my passion for Rome's past has not impaired my judgement; for I do honestly believe that no country has ever been greater...

The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely...

First published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness and religious experience, and...

The Steppe and Other Stories 1887-91 is a collection that reveals Anton Chekhov's evolution from a novice writer to a master of...

The Ladies' Delight is the glittering Paris department store run by Octave Mouret. He has used charm and drive to become director...

The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga contain the first ever descriptions of North America, a bountiful land of...

The action of the saga takes place at the end of the tenth century, at about the time Scandinavia was converting from worship of...

Joris-Karl Huysmans' shocking novel of an innocent's descent into a world of depraved, blasphemous rituals, The Damned (La-Bas)...

Telling the tragic tale of a socially advantageous but emotionally ruinous match, Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest is translated...

Infamous as the inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A...

Created by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth...

Considered by Andre Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Emile Zola's Germinal is a brutal depiction...

The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical...

The epic Viking Age stories that inspired J. R. R. Tolkien and Wagner's Ring cycle

Written in thirteenth-century Iceland but...

One of the foundation-stones of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes' Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings is translated from...

One of the central texts of the Middle Ages, The Golden Legend deeply influenced the imagery of poetry, painting and stained...

During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of...