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

This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of...

George Eliot's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly evocation of connected lives, changing fortunes and human frailties in a...

And again, as always, he had the feeling he was holding something that never was quite his - his. Something too delicate, too...

Returning home to tend her widowed father Dr Marjoribanks, Lucilla soon launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to...

Also known as Journey to the West, Wu Ch'eng-en's Monkey is one of the Four Great Classical Novels in Chinese literature,...

Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of...

Beatrice and Benedick both claim they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each...

'It's coming - the postponeless Creature' Electrifying poems of isolation, beauty, death and eternity from a reclusive genius and...

Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre des Varietes. She...

A new edition of the classic African American autobiography, now with with the inclusion of Douglass's other works.

The...

Barely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and...

'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. Wilson

The hero of Dickens's...

Niels Lyhne is an aspiring poet, torn between romanticism and realism, faith and reason. Through his relationships with six...

Virginia Woolf's delicate second novel is both a love story and a social comedy, yet it also subtly undermines these traditions,...

Ever since its publication in 1948, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its...

Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided...

A witty, intricately-plotted exploration of a sudden fall from grace, the Penguin Classics edition of Wilkie Collins's No Name is...

A rich and enjoyable novel about marriage, love and betrayal, from the great German realist Theodor Fontane.

Charming,...

In more than a century since its appearance, Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the...

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into...

With its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's...

Nostromo, published in 1904, is one of Conrad's finest works. Nostromo - though one hundred years old - says as much about...

'The best thing is to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! So, long live the underground!'
Alienated from society and paralysed...

Puskin's masterpieces in prose, in sparkling new translations by the award-winning Pevear and Volokhonsky.

The father of...

Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy - a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service,...

'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.'

These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has stirred...

Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth...

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers with its...

In the first century BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these...