'Ye Ice-Falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain -...'
A selection of Coleridge's poems, including 'This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison' and 'Frost at Midnight'
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Coleridge's Selected Poetry, The Complete Poems and (with William Wordsworth) Lyrical Ballads are available in Penguin Classics.
'Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.'
The true horror of the trenches is brought to life in this selection of poetry from the front line.
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). Owen is available in Penguin Classics in Three Poets of the First World War: Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen.
'Although he feared death, he could not stop. 'If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they'd call me an idiot!'
A pair of short stories about greed, charity, life and death from one of Russia's most influential writers and thinkers.
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy's works available in Penguin Classics are Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,The Cossacks and Other Stories, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, What is art?, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Master and Man and Other Stories, How Much Land Does A Man Need? & Other Stories, A Confession and Other Religious Writings and Last steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy.
The latest volume in Penguin Modern Poets series - moving and unflinchingly honest poems from three different cultures about experiences of the female body, the family, sexual politics and conflict
Your Family, Your Body features the work of Malika Booker, the Guyanese-British writer and performer behind London- and Chicago-based collective Malika's Kitchen; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sharon Olds, one of America's most brilliant, beloved and candid voices; and Warsan Shire, the award-winning poet and first ever Young Poetry Laureate of London who also lent her words to Beyonce's visual album Lemonade.
Inspired by Penguin's enormously successful '60s series of the same name, the Penguin Modern Poets are succinct, collectible, lovingly-assembled guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry, from the UK, America and beyond. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the seasoned poetry fan and the curious reader alike to encounter our most exciting new voices.
'Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!-and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing by the watermelons?'
Profane and prophetic verses about sex, death, revolution and America by the great icon of Beat poetry.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
A novel of serendipity, of fortunes won and lost, and of the spectre of imprisonment that hangs over all aspects of Victorian society, Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit is edited with an introduction by Stephen Wall in Penguin Classics.
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.
Stephen Wall's introduction examines Dickens's transformation of childhood memories of his father's incarceration in the Marshalsea debtors' prison. This revised edition includes expanded notes, appendices and suggestion for further reading by Helen Small, a chronology of Dickens's life and works, and original illustrations.
Charles Dickens is one of the best-loved novelists in the English language, whose 200th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. His most famous books, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers, have been adapted for stage and screen and read by millions.
If you enjoyed Little Dorrit, you might like Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, also available in Penguin Classics.
The complete works of one of England's greatest Edwardian writers Saki is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's 'Golden Afternoon' - the slow and peaceful years before the First World War. Although, like so many of his generation, he died tragically young, in action on the Western Front, his reputation as a writer continued to grow long after his death. His work is humorous, satiric, supernatural, and macabre, highly individual, full of eccentric wit and unconventional situations. With his great gift as a social satirist of his contemporary upper-class Edwardian world, Saki is one of the few undisputed English masters of the short story and one of the great writers of a bygone era. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher Clark
FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012 Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014
The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination?
In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.
Reviews:
'Formidable ... one of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
'Easily the best book ever written on the subject ... A work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe ... Academics should take note: Good history can still be a good story' Washington Post
'A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations' Niall Ferguson
'[Reading The Sleepwalkers], it is as if a light had been turned on a half-darkened stage of shadowy characters cursing among themselves without reason ... [Clark] demolishes the standard view ... The brilliance of Clark's far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue ... In conception, steely scholarship and piercing insights, his book is a masterpiece' Harold Evans, New York Times Book Review
'Impeccably researched, provocatively argued and elegantly written ... a model of scholarship' Sunday Times Books of the Year
'Superb ... effectively consigns the old historical consensus to the bin ... It's not often that one has the privilege of reading a book that reforges our understanding of one of the seminal events of world history' Mail Online
'A monumental new volume ... Revelatory, even revolutionary ... Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable' Boston Globe
'Superb ... One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe's great powers could have stumbled into World War I ... This is the single best book I have read on this important topic' Fareed Zakaria
'A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account Military History Clark is a masterly historian ... His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them ... A magisterial work' Wall Street Journal
'This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject' Foreign Affairs
'A brilliant contribution' Times Higher Education
'Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject ... He provides vivid portraits of leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the war' Irish Times
'In recent decades, many analysts had tended to put most blame for the disaster [of the First World War] on Germany. Clark strongly renews an older interpretation which sees the statesmen of many countries as blundering blindly together into war' Stephen Howe, Independent Books of the Year
About the author:
Christopher Clark is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author of The Politics of Conversion, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Iron Kingdom. Widely praised around the world, Iron Kingdom became a major bestseller. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
'The most inspiring book I've ever read' Bill Gates, 2017
'A brilliant, mind-altering book ... Everyone should read this astonishing book' Guardian
'Will change the way you see the world' Daily Mail
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012
Wasn't the twentieth century the most violent in history? In his extraordinary, epic book Steven Pinker shows us that this is wrong, telling the story of humanity in a completely new and unfamiliar way. From why cities make us safer to how books bring about peace, Pinker weaves together history, philosophy and science to examine why we are less likely to die at another's hand than ever before, how it happened and what it tells us about our very natures.
'May prove to be one of the great books of our time ... he writes like an angel' Economist
'Masterly, a supremely important book ... For anyone interested in human nature, it is engrossing' The New York Times
'Marvellous ... riveting and myth-destroying' New Statesman
'A marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling, written in Pinker's distinctively entertaining and clear personal style ... I was astonished by the extent to which violence has declined in every shape, form and scale' Financial Times
'An outstandingly fruitful read, with fascinating nuggets on almost every page' Sunday Times, Books of the Year
Born in Nicaragua, Ruben Dario is known as the consummate leader of the Modernista movement, an esthetic trend that swept the Americas from Mexico to Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. Seeking a language and a style that would distinguish the newly emergent nations from the old imperial power of Spain, Dario's writing offered a refreshingly new vision of the world - an artistic sensibility at once cosmopolitan and connected to the rhythms of nature. The first part of this collection presents Dario's most significant poems in a bilingual format and organized thematically in the way Dario himself envisioned them. The second part is devoted to Dario's prose, including short stories, fables, profiles, travel writing, reportage, opinion pieces, and letters. A sweeping biographical introduction by distinguished critic Ilan Stavans places Dario in historical and artistic context, not only in Latin America but in world literature.
Revealing the breadth of F. Scott Fitzgerald's gift for the short story form, this Penguin Classics edition of The Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories spans multiple genres and styles to dazzling effect.
Full grown with a long, smoke-coloured beard, requiring the services of a cane and fonder of cigars than warm milk, Benjamin Button is a very curious baby indeed. And, as Benjamin becomes increasingly youthful with the passing years, his family wonders why he persists in the embarrassing folly of living in reverse. In this imaginative fable of ageing and the other stories collected here - including 'The Cut-Glass Bowl' in which an ill-meant gift haunts a family's misfortunes, 'The Four Fists' where a man's life shaped by a series of punches to his face, and the revelry, mobs and anguish of 'May Day' - F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unmatched gift as a writer of short stories.
'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', originally published in 1922, was made into a major motion picture directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed 'the first American Flapper', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda's gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and, incomplete at the time of his death, The Last Tycoon. After his death The New York Times said of him that 'in fact and in the literary sense he created a "generation" '.
If you enjoyed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you might like Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, also available in Penguin Classics.
'A master of the American short story' The Philadelphia Enquirer
'His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings' Ernest Hemingway
Towering over the rest of Greek tragedy, Sophocles' The Three Theban Plays are among the most enduring and timeless dramas ever written. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Robert Fagles with introductions and notes by Bernard Knox.
Collected here are Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, in a translation by Robert Fagles which retains all of Sophocles' lucidity and power: the cut and thrust of his dialogue, his ironic edge, the surge and majesty of his choruses and, above all, the agonies and triumphs of his characters. Oedipus in exile, searching for his identity, desperately trying to avoid his fate, seeking the truth of his origins and achieving immortality; his daughter, Antigone, defending her integrity and ideals to the death - these heroic, tragic figures have captivated theatregoers and readers since the fifth century BC. It is Sophocles' characterisation of Oedipus that would, in the nineteenth century, inspire Sigmund Freud to a revolutionary conception of the human mind, and the tragedies in this volume continue to move and inspire us to this day.
Sophocles (496-405 BC) was born at Colonus, just outside Athens. His long life spanned the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire; he was a friend of Pericles, and though not an active politician he held several public offices, both military and civil. The leader of a literary circle and friend of Herodotus, Sophocles wrote over a hundred plays, drawing on a wide and varied range of themes, and winning the City Dionysia eighteen times; though only seven of his tragedies have survived, among them Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Ajax and Oedipus at Colonus.
If you enjoyed The Three Theban Plays, you might like Aeschylus' The Oresteia, also available in Penguin Classics.
'I know of no better English version' Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Oxford University
'The most impressive verse translations of Sophocles that have been made' Stephen Spender
DON'T MISS THE STANDALONE NEW NOVEL FROM JOJO MOYES, THE NO. 1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ME BEFORE YOU, AFTER YOU AND STILL ME
'A wonderful novel. The Giver of Stars is the most sweeping, dramatic, richly evocative book, full of brilliantly feisty women' Sophie Kinsella
'Alice had come halfway across the world to find that, yet again, she was considered wanting. Well, she thought, if that was what everyone thought, she might as well live up to it.'
England, late 1930s, and Alice Wright - restless, stifled - makes an impulsive decision to marry wealthy American Bennett Van Cleve and leave her home and family behind.
But stuffy, disapproving Baileyville, Kentucky, where her husband favours work over his wife and is dominated by his overbearing father, is not the adventure - or the escape - that she hoped for.
That is, until she meets Margery O'Hare, a troublesome woman - and daughter of a notorious felon - the town wishes to forget.
Margery's on a mission to spread the wonder of books and reading to the poor and lost - and she needs Alice's help.
Trekking alone under big open skies, through wild mountain forests, Alice, Margery and their fellow sisters of the trail discover freedom, friendship - and a life to call their own.
But when Baileyville turns against them, will their belief in one another - and the power of the written word - be enough to save them?
Inspired by a remarkable true story, The Giver of Stars features five incredible women who will prove to be every bit as beloved as Lou Clark, the unforgettable heroine of Me Before You.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW
Praise for Jojo Moyes:
'Moyes somehow manages to break your heart before restoring your faith in love' Sunday Express
'Storytelling at its best' Marie Claire
'A triumph' Heat
'A deeply satisfying book full of big emotions' Good Housekeeping
'Britain's best contemporary female author' Sun on Sunday
One of the most influential books in human history, in a revelatory new translation.
China's first and greatest teacher, Confucius traveled from state to state as an itinerant philosopher. The Analects preserves his major teachings, as compiled by his disciples after his death - everything from how people should relate to each other (the Golden Rule, which he was the first to define), to how a country should be organized (like a family), to how to lie in bed (not like a corpse). This new translation, by one of the pre-eminent scholars of Confucius, draws on the most recent excavated texts and latest scholarship. The historian Annping Chin sets out to illuminate the historical context of Confucius's teachings, explaining who the many local figures referenced in The Analects are, and navigating a rich tradition of historical commentaries to provide a map of Confucian thought that brings us as close as possible to experiencing Confucius as his followers might have 2,500 years ago.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) was a philosopher, political figure and founder of one of the major schools of thought in Chinese history.
Annping Chin is a senior lecturer in the history department at Yale and is the author of The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics and a coauthor, with Jonathan Spence, of The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.
A firsthand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia includes an introduction by Julian Symons in Penguin Modern Classics.
"A true genius . . . Roald Dahl is my hero" - David Walliams
"So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone."
Matilda is the world's most famous bookworm, no thanks to her ghastly parents.
Her father thinks she's a little scab. Her mother spends all afternoon playing bingo.
And her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull?
She's the worst of all.
She's a big bully, who thinks all her pupils are rotten and locks them in the dreaded Chokey.
Despite these beastly grownups trying to push her down, Matilda is an extraordinary girl with a magical mind.
And she's had enough.
So all the terrible adults had better watch out, because she's going to teach them a lesson they'll never forget!
Now you can listen to MATILDA and other Roald Dahl audiobooks read by some very famous voices, including Kate Winslet, David Walliams and Steven Fry - plus there are added squelchy soundeffects from Pinewood Studios!
This beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition of Tolstoy's great novel is translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs, and with an afterword by Orlando Figes.
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, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.
Anthony Briggs's superb translation combines stirring, accessible prose with fidelity to Tolstoy's original, while Orlando Figes's afterword discusses the novel's vast scope and depiction of Russian identity. This edition also contains appendices, notes, a list of prominent characters and maps.
'A masterpiece ... This new translation is excellent' - Anthony Beevor
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.
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'.
This invaluable reference work provides an account of the development of African society from 175 million years ago, through the first appearance of humans to the complex polity of the twentieth century. Colin McEvedy tracks the development of modern man, the differentiation and spread of languages, the first crossings of the Sahara, the exploration of the Niger, and the search for the 'fountains of the Nile'. Gold and ivory lure traders from far away; Christendom and Islam compete for African attention. Names from the distant past become nation-states with aspirations appropriate to the modern world. With sixty maps and a clear, concise text, this synthesis is especially useful to African studies and history teachers, but is also a fascinating guide for the general reader.
The brand new book from Mrs Hinch - the Instagram sensation and No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author
'A must for fans' Mail on Sunday ________________
Hello! Mrs Hinch here! Welcome to your very own Hinch activity journal!
This little book is all about giving yourself the gift of time out: time to plan, time to dream, time to relax, time for us to have a bit of a giggle and a de-stress.
We all live such busy lives and it can be hard to take a moment just to breathe, but I want this book to be all about YOU. Something that we can all enjoy together.
So, make yourself a cuppa and curl up with this journal on the sofa in the mornings, or use it to wind down every evening before bed; whenever you get a spare few moments - just don't forget your crystal pen, as there are loads of relaxing, light-hearted activities for you to have fun with. Plus plenty of pages for you to plan your own hinching lists ready for the week ahead.
Read from start to finish or dip in on random pages - there are absolutely no rules here! Think of it as a book-shaped slice of you time. You deserve it!
Love, Mrs Hinch xx __________________
'The sensation' Sun
'We're mad about Mrs Hinch' Vogue
'My new cleaning goddess' Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph
