Three plays by Racine 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.
Three plays by Racine For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking wor...
One of Voltaire's earliest tales, 'Zadig' is set in the exotic East and is told in the comic spirit of 'Candide'; 'L'Ingenu', written after 'Candide', is a darker tale in which an American Indian records his impressions of France.
One of Voltaire's earliest tales, 'Zadig' is set in the exotic East and is told in the comic spirit of 'Candide'; 'L'Ingenu', written after 'Candide',...
With an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett and an afterword by Tatiana Tolstaya Turgenev's depiction of the conflict between generations and their ideals stunned readers when Fathers and Sons was first published in 1862. But many could also sympathize with Arkady's fascination with its nihilist hero whose story vividly captures the hopes and regrets of a changing Russia. 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...
With an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett and an afterword by Tatiana Tolstaya Turgenev's depiction of the conflict between generations and...
Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot--of the triumvirate that dominated French letters in the eighteenth century, Diderot was unmatched in the sheer breadth and depth of his interests and ideas. Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream are dazzling exposes of Diderot's radical scientific and philosophical thinking. Written in dialogue form, they were too outspoken to be published during the lifetime of one whose ideas earned him enemies as fast as they stimulated new criteria for social progress. Of the two pieces, Rameau's Nephew was composed over many years, and in form and...
Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot--of the triumvirate that dominated French letters in the eighteenth century, Diderot was unmatched in the sheer breadth an...
A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The Civil War is a tense and gripping depiction of his struggle with Pompey over the leadership of Republican Rome - a conflict that spanned the entire Roman world, from Gaul and Spain to Asia and Africa. Where Caesar's own account leaves off in 48 BC, his lieutenants take up the history, describing the vital battles of Munda, Spain and Thapsus, and the installation of Cleopatra, later Caesar's mistress, as Queen of Egypt. Together these...
A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The ...
"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains"
These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or 'social contract', that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some...
"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains"
These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigo...
Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking...
Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life a...
'What Pindar catches is the joy beyond ordinary emotions as it transcends and transforms them' --C. M. Bowra Arguably the greatest Greek lyric poet, Pindar (518-438 B.C.) was a controversial figure in fifth-century Greece--a conservative Boiotian aristocrat who studied in Athens and a writer on physical prowess whose interest in the Games was largely philosophical. Pindar's Epinician Odes--choral songs extolling victories in the Games at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and Korinth--cover the whole spectrum of the Greek moral order, from earthly competition to fate and mythology. But in C....
'What Pindar catches is the joy beyond ordinary emotions as it transcends and transforms them' --C. M. Bowra Arguably the greatest Greek ly...
'The Admiral was quite certain that they were near land ... He promised to give a silk doublet to the first sailor who should report it'
No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure,...
'The Admiral was quite certain that they were near land ... He promised to give a silk doublet to the first sailor who should report it'
Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism, reinterpreting ancient Celtic myth as a profound spiritual fable. It recounts the quest of the knights of Camelot - the simple Perceval, the thoughtful Bors, the rash Gawain, the weak Lancelot and the saintly Galahad - as they journey through danger and temptation to reach the elusive Holy Grail. But only one of them is judged worthy to see the mysteries within the sacred vessel, and look upon the ineffable. Enfused with tragic grandeur...
Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian sym...
