Essential Penguin Classics

Describing Dante’s descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonizing torture, Dante encounters doomed souls. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.

A compelling exploration of racial identity, adapted into a film that is now streaming on Netflix and still deeply resonant today. Clare Kendry is living on the edge. Light-skinned, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a racist white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past after deciding to “pass” as a white woman. Clare’s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community. Clare’s interest in Irene turns into a longing for Irene’s black identity that she can never embrace again, and is forced to grapple with her decision to pass for white in a way that is both tragic and telling.

Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth’s early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy is a prejudice only matched by the folly of his arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to true feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.

When The Souls of Black Folk was first published in 1903, it had a galvanizing effect on the conversation about race in America — and it remains both a touchstone in the literature of African Americans and a beacon in the fight for civil rights. Believing that one can know the “soul” of a race by knowing the souls of individuals, W. E. B. Du Bois combines history and stirring autobiography to reflect on the magnitude of American racism and to chart a path forward against oppression, and introduces the now-famous concepts of the color line, the veil, and double-consciousness.

A beautiful collectible hardcover edition of the father of Korean American literature’s “wonderfully resplendent evocation of a newcomer’s America” (Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker). Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England. In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers — and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families — the Trasks and the Hamiltons — whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere … As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: How she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to her betrayal and terrible revenge — and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.

A collectible hardcover edition of our greatest African American poet’s award-winning first novel, about a black boy’s coming of age in a largely white Kansas town, featuring an introduction by National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.

The classic story of the March family, Little Women has been adored for generations. The novel follows the lives of four sisters — tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy — as they come of age while their father is fighting in the Civil War. Since 1868, readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo’s hand, cried over the family’s tragedy, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature’s most beloved women.

Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, Jane Eyre was immediately recognized as a work of genius when it appeared in 1847. How Jane takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr. Rochester and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage are elements in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman’s passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society.

The great Kenyan writer and Nobel Prize nominee’s novel that he wrote in secret, on toilet paper, while in prison — featuring an introduction by Namwali Serpell, the author of the novel The Old Drift. An impassioned cry for a Kenya free of dictatorship and for African writers to work in their own local dialects, Devil on the Cross has had a profound influence on Africa and on post-colonial African literature.

It’s the early 1920s in Paris, and Jake, a wounded World War I veteran working as a journalist, is hopelessly in love with charismatic British socialite Lady Brett Ashley. When Jake, Brett, and their fellow expatriate friends travel to Spain to watch the bullfights, both passions and tensions rise. Amid the flash and revelry of the fiesta, each of the men vies to make Brett his own, until Brett’s flirtation with a confident young bullfighter ignites jealousies that set their group alight. This edition of Hemingway’s classic novel of post-war disillusionment — the emblematic novel of the Lost Generation — features an introduction by Amor Towles.

Victor Hugo’s tale of injustice, heroism, and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him, and has been a perennial favorite since it first appeared over 15o years ago. This exciting new translation will be a gift both to readers who have already fallen for its timeless story and to new readers discovering it for the first time.

A 1946 Filipino American social classic about the United States in the 1930s from the perspective of a Filipino migrant laborer who endures racial violence and struggles with the paradox of the American dream.

Originally published in 1971, Merle Miller’s On Being Different is a pioneering and thought-provoking book about being homosexual in the United States. Just two years after the Stonewall riots, Miller wrote a poignant essay for the New York Times Magazine entitled “What It Means To Be a Homosexual.” Described as “the most widely read and discussed essay of the decade,” it carried the seed that would blossom into On Being Different — one of the earliest memoirs to affirm the importance of coming out.

Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton’s famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America’s Black Panther Party. From Newton’s impoverished childhood on the streets of Oakland to his adolescence and struggles with the system, from his role in the Black Panthers to his solitary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, Revolutionary Suicide is unrepentant and thought-provoking in its portrayal of inspired radicalism.

The great Native American novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power.

Written in 1920, Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a time and place long gone by — 1870s New York City — beautifully captures the complexities of passion, independence, and fulfillment, and how painfully hard it can be for individuals to truly see one another and their place in the world.

The Odyssey is literature’s grandest evocation of everyman’s journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, renowned translator Robert Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer’s original in a bold, contemporary idiom and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Sõseki’s Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro — meaning “heart” — is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls “Sensei,” and the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.

Mary Shelley’s haunting adventure about ambition and modernity run amok. Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. This chilling gothic tale has become the world’s most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Don Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, these exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote’s fancy often leads him astray — he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants — Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together — and together they have haunted readers’ imaginations for nearly four hundred years.

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence …

In the magical world of Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom, order is turned upside-down: A baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a tea-party; and a chaotic game of chess makes a seven-year-old a Queen.

A Room of One’s Own is a landmark in feminist thought in which Woolf imagines the fictional Judith Shakespeare, sister to William and equally gifted but lost to history. How much genius has gone unexpressed, Woolf wonders, because women are not afforded the same privileges as men? A hundred years later, her brilliant polemic reverberates into our own time.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women — their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

Young, handsome, and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby seems to have everything. But at his mansion east of New York City, where the party never seems to end, one thing will always be out of reach: The married Daisy Buchanan, whose house is visible from Gatsby’s just across the bay. A brilliant evocation of the Roaring Twenties and a satire of postwar America obsessed with wealth and status, The Great Gatsby is a novel whose power remains undiminished after a century.

This fully annotated volume collects three of Baum’s fourteen Oz novels — The Wizard of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, and Glinda of Oz — in which he developed his utopian vision and which garnered an immense and loyal following. Tapping into a deeply rooted desire in himself and his readers to live in a peaceful country which values the sharing of talents and gifts, Baum’s imaginative creation, like all great utopian literature, holds out the possibility for change.

Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather’s love and attention. But he is focused on his duties as chief of a Mãori tribe in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand — a tribe that claims descent from the legendary ‘whale rider.’ Kahu should be next in line as chief, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl. Kahu will not be ignored. And in her struggle, she has a unique ally: The whale rider himself.

Julia Alvarez’s modern Latinx classic about four sisters known as Las Mariposas, or the Butterflies, who fought to liberate the Dominican Republic from Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s storytelling, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage, love, and the human cost of political oppression.

An Artist of the Floating World is a sensual and profoundly convincing portrait of the artist as an aging man. At once a multigenerational tale and a samurai death poem written in English, it is also a saga of the clash of the old and new orders, blending classical and contemporary iconography with compassion and wit.

Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War.

The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come.

In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Audre Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social differences as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting the struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the art of the Japanese short story, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable practitioners writing today. Edited by acclaimed translator Jay Rubin, who has himself freshly translated some of the stories, and with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, this book is a revelation.

Ex-slave Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography — written after ten years of reflection following his legal emancipation in 1846 and his break with his mentor William Lloyd Garrison — catapulted Douglass into the international spotlight as the foremost spokesman for American Blacks, both freed and slave. Written during his celebrated career as a speaker and newspaper editor, My Bondage and My Freedom reveals the author of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass grown more mature, forceful, analytical, and complex with a deepened commitment to the fight for equal rights and liberties.

Claude McKay’s first novel, Home to Harlem, was published in 1928 during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay portrays Harlem post-WWI through two Black migrants to New York: Jake, a Southern-born African American longshoreman who deserts the U.S. army and returns to his home in Harlem; and Ray, an educated Haitian immigrant. With his innovative use of Black dialects, McKay portrays a complex world of Black people, both native-born and immigrant, who navigate a dynamic society in the midst of radical change.

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. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes — conflict and love, birth and death, free will and fate — with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.