E. M. Forster once described The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With...

Once upon a time, in the Paris of Louis XIV, five ladies and one gentleman-- all of them aristocrats-- seized on the new enthusiasm for "Mother Goose Stories" and decided to write some of them down. Telling stories resourcefully and artfully was a key social grace, and when they recorded these elegant narratives they consciously invented the modern fairy tale as we still know it today.
For this beautiful anthology of six masterpiece wonder tales, Marina Warner gathered five writers with a special sympathy for the French stories they render here in burnished, cunning and amusing English....

Ein alternder berühmter Schriftsteller, der nach einem Autounfall erblindet und entstellt ist, sucht per Zeitungsanzeige einen Sekretär, um ihm seine Autobiographie zu diktieren. In dem Landhaus bei London, in das sich Sir Paul zurückgezogen hat, spricht der junge John Ryder vor, der sich als Glücksfall zu erweisen scheint. Alle Pflichten erledigt er geduldig, ist technisch versiert und auch bereit, auf die Launen und Eigenheiten des klaustrophobischen Blinden einzugehen. Aber dann schleichen sich kleine Pannen ein, die Atmosphäre verändert sich unmerklich, etwas Böses bahnt sich an....

Lewis Carroll's stories of Alice have entranced children - and grown-ups - for nearly 150 years. And more than one reader, turning the last page of "Through the Looking-Glass," must have been saddened by the thought that her adventures had well and truly come to an end. Not so Setting himself the daily task of believing "as many as six impossible things before breakfast" (or at least before lunch), Gilbert Adair has written a delightful successor to Carroll's two immortal fantasies. Here, with the aid of Jenny Thorne's Tenniel-inspired illustrations, you will find characters as nonsensical...