A poet whose verse inspired music by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was in his lifetime equally admired for his elegant prose. This collection charts the development of that prose, beginning with three meditative works from the Travel Pictures, inspired by Heine's journeys as a young man to Lucca, Venice and the Harz Mountains. Exploring the development of spirituality, the later On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany spans the earliest religious beliefs of the Germanic people to the philosophy of Hegel, and warns with startling...

The unlikely heroes of the Spanish picaresque novels make their way - by whatever means they can - through a colourful and seamy underworld populated by unsavoury beggars, corrupt priests, eccentrics, whores and criminals. Both Lazarillo de Tormesand Pablos and the swindler are determined to attain the trappings of the gentleman, but have little time for the gentlemanly ideals of religion, justice, honour and nobility.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics...

The classic political dialogue, as relevant today as in Plato's time

Taking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, Gorgias debates perennial questions about the nature of government and those who aspire to public office. Are high moral standards essential or should we give our preference to the pragmatist who gets things done or negotiates successfully? Should individuals be motivated by a desire for personal power and prestige, or genuine concern for the moral betterment of the citizens? These questions go to the heart of Athenian democratic...

Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt with an introduction and Notes by John M. Marincola.

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.

In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal...

Machiavelli's highly influential treatise on political power

The Prince shocked Europe on publication with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccolo Machiavelli drew on his own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting traditional values of political theory and recognizing the complicated, transient nature of political life. Concerned not with lofty ideal but with a regime that would last, The Prince has become the bible of realpolitik, and it still retains its power to alarm and...

The eighteen chapters of The Bhagavad Gita (c. 500 b.c.), the glory of Sanskrit literature, encompass the whole spiritual struggle of a human soul. Its three central themes--love, light, and life--arise from the symphonic vision of God in all things and of all things in God.
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...

Andrew George's "masterly new translation" (The Times) of the world's first truly great work of literature

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh s adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, theEpic of Gilgameshis, above...

-Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful and] ...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ... to another half-million copies.- - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English
Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid...

Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction, further reading, and full notes on the text and translation that discuss the structure of the dialogue and elucidate issues that might puzzle the modern reader.

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...