Classics

Hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, the authors included are as diverse as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Ernest Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace. Every title has been reset in a contemporary typeface, and has been printed to a high-quality production specification, to create a series that every lover of fine travel literature will want to collect and keep. Mungo Park set off from his home in the Scottish borders in May 1795 at the age of 23 to discover the course of the Niger River in west Africa. When he reappeared in Engla... read more

Hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, the authors included are as diverse as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Ernest Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace. Every title has been reset in a contemporary typeface, and has been printed to a high-quality production specification, to create a series that every lover of fine travel literature will want to collect and keep Henry Walter Bates and his co-naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace embarked together in 1848 on an expedition to the forests of the Amazon in search of plants and animals that ... read more

Homer's epic tells of the adventures of Odysseus, the mythological King of Ithaca and leader of the Trojan war, recounting the hero's wanderings and his eventual regaining of his kingdom.

Hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, the authors included are as diverse as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Ernest Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace. Every title has been reset in a contemporary typeface, and has been printed to a high-quality production specification, to create a series that every lover of fine travel literature will want to collect and keep.

Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue is a hymn to the English language. In examining how a second-rate, mongrel tongue came to be the undisputed language of the globe. Bryson explores English from America to Australia and looks at, among other things, swearing, spelling, spoonerisms and Scrabble. No self-respecting English speaker should open his mouth without reading it.

Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun encompasses forty years of incisive and moving reportage about Africa by one of the world's greatest journalists. From newly independent Ghana to war-torn Rwanda, Kapuscinski captures the sights, sounds, smells and, above all, the real lives of this vast continent. Poetic and profound, this dazzling travelogue has been acclaimed as one of the most significant works on Africa and its people.

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and why neither of them could have written War and Peace, over the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and imaginary) sister, over the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity, she gives us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century.

The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him. E.V. Rieu's translation of The Odyssey was the very first Penguin Classic to be published, and has itself... read more

Quick-witted, beautiful, headstrong and rich, Emma Woodhouse is inordinately fond of matchmaking. Yet the irony is that she is oblivious to the question of who she herself might marry. Through this comedy of sentimental education, she discovers a capacity for love and marriage.

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - although knowing this will ensure his own early death. Interwoven with this tragic sequence of events are powerfully moving descriptions of the ebb and ... read more

The first part of Tolkien's epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, now in B format paperback with a black cover based on Tolkien's own design. Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power -- the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring -- the ring that rules them all -- which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin... read more

Orphaned at an early age, Jane Eyre leads a bleak and lonely life, until she is employed as a governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester - a man who guards a grim secret. This is a story of passionate love, travail and the triumph of an indomitable spirit.

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats is the groundbreaking psychology manual that has inspired organisations and individuals all over the world. De Bono's innovative guide divides the process of thinking into six parts, symbolized by the six hats, and shows how the hats can dramatically transform the effectiveness of meetings and discussions. This is a book to open your mind, unleash your creativity and change the way you think about thinking.

Sir Ernest Shackleton's South is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. In 1914, Shackleton led a party of men hoping to be the first to traverse the Antarctic, but when their ship became crushed by ice 350 miles from land, the expedition soon became a matter of life and death. This is the extraordinary account of treacherous seas, glaciers and relentless cold, and wonderfully encapsulates the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. First published 1919.

Containing an afterword, each volume in the "Collector's Library" series includes a biography of the author, and a further reading list.

"The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)" offer a wide range of spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the Roman Emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. The Meditations are a readable exposition of the system of metaphysics known as stoicism. This title presents a translation of the Meditations.

Travelling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Leslie S. Klinger illuminates every aspect of Bram Stoker's haunting novel (including an examination of the original typescript with its shockingly different ending). He investigates the many subtexts - from the masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic and 'dentophilic' implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological and historical threads. Employing his superb literary detective skills, Kl... read more

Written at a time when most of Europe supported the French Revolution, Edmund Burke's prescient and, at the time, controversial denunciation of its mob rule predicted the Terror, began the modern conservative tradition and still serves as a warning to those who seek to reshape societies through violence. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted... read more

Collected together for the first time, this volume includes the complete text of "The Road to Wigan Pier" - Orwell's vivid and impassioned documentary of unemployment and proletarian life - as well as Orwell's best writing on the political and social condition of England.

The bright young things of Mayfair exercise their inventive minds and "vile bodies" in every kind of capricious escapade in this story. The characters are an assortment of those inhabiting the social domain that lies between Park Lane and Bond Street.