PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-penguin-english-library/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_English_Library_Series_26_06">Choose 5 classics for £25 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

The Penguin English Library Edition of Howards End by E. M. Forster 
 
'The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can' 
 
'Only connect.' is the idea at the heart of this book, a heartbreaking and provocative tale of three families at the beginning of the twentieth century: the rich Wilcoxes, the gentle, idealistic Schlegels and the lower-middle class Basts. As the Schlegel sisters try desperately to help the Basts and educate the close-minded Wilcoxes, the families are drawn together in love, lies and death. 
 
Frequently cited as E. M. Forster's finest work, Howards End brilliantly explores class warfare, conflict and the English character. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Howards End

J. M. Barrie

'All children, except one, grow up.' 
 
It was Friday night. Mr and Mrs Darling were dining out. Nana had been tied up in the backyard. The poor dog was barking, for she could smell danger. And she was right - this was the night that Peter Pan would take the Darling children on the most breath-taking adventure of their lives, to a place called Neverland, a strange country where the lost boys live and never grow up, a land with mermaids, fairies and pirates - and of course the terrible, evil, Captain Hook. Peter Pan is undoubtedly one of the most famous and best-loved stories for children, an unforgettable, magical fantasy which has been enjoyed by generations. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

Peter Pan

Daniel Defoe

'I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance ... reflecting upon all my comrades that were drown'd, and that there should not be one soul sav'd but my self ... ' 
 
Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language.

Robinson Crusoe

Rudyard Kipling

The Penguin English Library Edition of Kim by Rudyard Kipling 
 
'He knew the wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian Nights ...' 
 
Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. Kim is white, although born in India. While he wants to play the Great Game of imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands. A celebration of their friendship in an often hostile environment, Kim captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Joseph Conrad

The Penguin English Library Edition of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 
 
'The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? - but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder - the man knows, and can look on without a wink' 
 
Marlow, a seaman, tells of a journey up the Congo. His goal is the troubled European and ivory trader Kurtz. Worshipped and feared by invaders as well as natives, Kurtz has become a godlike figure, his presence pervading the jungle like a thick, obscuring mist. As his boat labours further upstream, closer and closer to Kurtz's extraordinary and terrible domain, so Marlow finds his faith in himself and civilization crumbling. Conrad's Heart of Darkness has been considered the most important indictment of the evils of imperialism written to date. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Heart of Darkness

G K Chesterton

'No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be' 
 
Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. 
 
With a beautiful new cover design by award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith and presented in the delightful Penguin English Library series, this new selection brings together the very best of the Father Brown stories, inviting new readers to discover one of the most unforgettable characters in literature.

Father Brown Selected Stories

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle 
 
"Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" 
 
The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body: this classic horror story pits detective against dog, rationalism against the supernatural, good against evil. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles' heir comes to an equally gruesome end. The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and has continued to hold its place in the popular imagination. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

'We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.' 
 
Like his much-loved novels, E. M. Forster's short stories are rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds. Telling tales of violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings, his sharp and vivid prose has the ability to throw the characters', and readers', perceptions and beliefs off balance. 
 
Selected to appeal to a new generation of readers around the world, this new selection of short stories in the Penguin English Library series celebrates E. M. Forster's unparalleled skill for storytelling, beginning with his masterful work of science fiction, The Machine Stops.

The Machine Stops and Other Stories

Charles Dickens

The Penguin English Library Edition of Hard Times by Charles Dickens 
 
'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else' 
 
Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and 'bully of humility' Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimised weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognise the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in the English language, from the eighteenth century and the first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Hard Times

Jane Austen

Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Here in one volume are her seven great novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan. Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their circle, Austen vividly portrays English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close and the nineteenth century began. Each of the novels is a love story and a story about marriage: marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not romances; ironic, comic, and wise, they are masterly evocations of the society Jane Austen observed. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

The Complete Novels of Jane Austen

George Eliot

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
The Penguin English Library Edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot 
 
'She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day' 
 
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'. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Middlemarch

Laurence Sterne

The Penguin English Library Edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne 
 
'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done ...' 
 
Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Tristram Shandy

Jack London

'The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.' 
 
The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author's unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

The Call of the Wild

Thomas Hardy

The Penguin English Library Edition of Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy 
 
'Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars...' 
 
Hardy's atmospheric, moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces far beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion and conflict against a background of vast stellar space and scientific discovery. Two on a Tower tells the story of Lady Constantine, who breaks all the rules of decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. Together, in an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observation tower, they create their own private universe - until the pressures of the outside world threaten to destroy it. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Two on a Tower

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Penguin English Library Edition of Treasure Island and The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
'"One more step, Mr Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out"' 
 
In Treasure Island, a weathered old sailor known as Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkins's parents - and it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. For when Bones dies mysteriously, Jim stumbles across a map of a mysterious island in his sea chest - where 'X' marks the spot of a stash of buried pirate gold. Setting sail with his friends on the ship Hispaniola to recover the treasure, Jim soon realizes that he's not the only one who knows about the hoard. Suddenly he is thrown into a world of treachery, mutiny, castaways and murder and, at the centre of it all, is the charming but sinister Long John Silver, who will stop at nothing to grab his share of the loot... The Ebb-Tide, a short novel published the year of Stevenson's death, is also a rollicking seafaring adventure, narrating the voyage of a stolen ship whilst exploring such themes as imperialism, violence, dishonesty, Christianity and corruption. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Treasure Island and The Ebb-Tide

Walter Scott

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
The Penguin English Library Edition of Ivanhoe by Walter Scott 
 
'Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!' 
 
Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his passionate desire is to be reunited with the beautiful but forbidden lady Rowena, but he soon finds himself playing a more dangerous game as he is drawn into a bitter power struggle between the noble King Richard and his evil and scheming brother John. The first of Scott's novels to address a purely English subject, Ivanhoe is set in a highly romanticized medieval world of tournaments and sieges, chivalry and adventure where dispossessed Saxons are pitted against their Norman overlords, and where the historical and fictional seamlessly merge. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Ivanhoe

Louisa May Alcott

'I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.' 
 
Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored by generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo's hand, cried over little Beth's death, and dreamed of travelling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Future writers have found inspiration in Jo's devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, both parts of which are included here, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature's most beloved women. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

Little Women

Jonathan Swift

The Penguin English Library Edition of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift 
 
'Fifteen hundred of the Emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and an half high, were employed to draw me towards the Metropolis, which, as I said, was half a Mile distant' 
 
A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with, among others, quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophizing horses and the brutish Yahoo tribe, that change his view of humanity - and himself - for ever. Swift's classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Gulliver's Travels

Charlotte Brontë

The Penguin English Library Edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
 
'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself' 
 
Passionate, poetic and revolutionary, Jane Eyre is a novel of naked emotional power. Its story of a defiant, fiercely intelligent woman who refuses to accept her appointed place in society - and instead finds love on her own terms - has become famous as one of the greatest romances ever written, but it is also a brooding Gothic mystery, a profound depiction of character and a transformative work of the imagination. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Jane Eyre

Oscar Wilde

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 
 
'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me ... Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day - mock me horribly!' 
 
A story of evil, debauchery and scandal, Oscar Wilde's only novel tells of Dorian Gray, a beautiful yet corrupt man. When he wishes that a perfect portrait of himself would bear the signs of ageing in his place, the picture becomes his hideous secret, as it follows Dorian's own downward spiral into cruelty and depravity. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a masterpiece of the evil in men's hearts, and is as controversial and alluring as Wilde himself. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Penguin English Library edition 
 
Many readers would claim that The Adventure of the Copper Beeches or The Man with the Twisted Lip was their favourite Sherlock Holmes story - but then that would be doing an injustice to The Adventure of the Yellow Face and The Problem of Thor Bridge. It is just as well that in the end we do not have to choose - as if we did then there would be no doubt it should be The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons and Other Cases

The Penguin English Library Edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 
 
"What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with her stick; 'that, where those cobwebs are?" 
"I can't guess what it is, ma'am." 
"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!" 
 
Great Expectations, Dickens's funny, frightening and tender portrayal of the orphan Pip's journey of self-discovery, is one of his best-loved works. Showing how a young man's life is transformed by a mysterious series of events - an encounter with an escaped prisoner; a visit to a black-hearted old woman and a beautiful girl; a fortune from a secret donor - Dickens's late novel is a masterpiece of psychological and moral truth, and Pip among his greatest creations. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Great Expectations

As usual with the Sherlock Holmes stories it is very hard to say which are the best - but there are many stories here which would get the vote - ranging from The Boscombe Valley Mystery to the wonderful Adventure of Silver Blaze, from the Adventure of the Norwood Builder to A Case of Identity, but above to the uniquely strange and macabre Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb.

The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb and Other Cases

O. Henry

One of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century, O. Henry's comic eye and unique, playful approach to the rough material of life's realities are unmatched. These stories, which range from the cattle-lands of Texas to the bars of New York, highlight the joys of avoiding habit and convention, and demonstrate O. Henry's mastery of speech and place. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

The Cop and the Anthem and Other Stories

Lewis Carroll

The Penguin English Library Edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll 
 
'"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). "Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Goodbye, feet!"' 
 
'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole ... without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Lewis Carroll, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. His dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking Glass kingdom depict order turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig, time is abandoned at a disorderly tea-party and a chaotic game of chess makes a seven-year-old girl a Queen. But amongst the anarchic humour and sparkling word play, puzzles and riddles, are poignant moments of nostalgia for lost childhood. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Celebrated as the writer of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde is equally beloved for his fairy tales, written ‘partly for children and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy’. With warmth, tenderness and quiet wit, these fables have moved and delighted for generations. In far-off kingdoms and ocean realms, in the company of giants and nightingales, Wilde speaks of heartbreak and redemption, of cruelty and compassion, of love lost, of love gained, of love everlasting. Rediscover here the complete stories from The Happy Prince and The House of Pomegranates, Wilde’s two fairy tale collections. 
 
Wilde's children's stories are splendid ... As explanations of the world, fairy stories tell us what science and philosophy cannot and need not. There are different ways of knowing 
Jeanette Winterson

The Complete Fairy Tales

"Every idiot who goes around with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding" 
 
After reading A Christmas Carol, the notoriously reculsive Thomas Carlyle was 'seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality' and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens's other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity and memory.

Showing results for: ‘Karin Slaughter’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter