classics to read
Items in this hypelist
Books
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 2022
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens · 2021
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 2016
Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy · 2019
The Phantom Of The Opera
Gaston Leroux · 2023
Chiltern Publishing creates the most beautiful editions of the world’s finest literature. Your favorite classic titles in a way you have never seen them before; the tactile layers, fine details and beautiful colors of these remarkable covers make these titles feel extra special and will look striking on any shelf.<br/>The Phantom of the Opera tells the tale of a disfigured musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House. Mesmerized by the talents and beauty of the young soprano Christine, the Phantom lures her as his protégé and falls fiercely in love with her. One of the most well-known and well-loved gothic horror stories, Leroux's suspenseful tale of unrequited love, passion and tragedy is both dark and moving in its portrayal of Erik, the anti-hero in his yearning for Christine. The novel has been adapted into several formats, most notably a 1925 silent film directed by Rupert Julien and a 1986 musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the most successful theatrical show of all time.
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo · 2015
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 2011
Northhanger Abbey
Jane Austen ( · 2000
Daisy Miller
Henry James · 2011
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 2016
Lies and Sorcery
Elsa Morante · 2023
Angel
Elizabeth Taylor · 2018
Annie John
Jamaica Kincaid · 1997
The essential coming-of-age novel by Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. Annie's voice―urgent, demanding to be heard―is one that will not soon be forgotten by readers.<br/><br/>An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived."<br/><br/>When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary.<br/><br/>At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."
Flush
Virginia Woolf
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare · 1998
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte · 2009
Lord of the Flies
WILLIAM. GOLDING · 2016
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck · 2002
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 2019
One of Esquire's 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time<br/>“A brilliant novel.… [A] savage satire on the distortions of the single and collective minds.”―New York Times<br/>In Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends’ intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.” 6 illustrations
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 2001
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin · 1964
East of Eden
John Steinbeck · 2000
'A fantasia of history and myth ... a strange and original work of art' The New York Times Book Review Described by John Steinbeck as 'the story of my country and the story of me', East of Eden is an epic, engrossing family saga. 'There is only one book to a man' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of indentity; the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen · 1998
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Adultery is not a typical Jane Austen theme, but when it disturbs the relatively peaceful household at Mansfield Park, it has quite unexpected results.<br/>The diffident and much put-upon heroine Fanny Price has to struggle to cope with the results, re-examining her own feelings while enduring the cheerful amorality, old-fashioned indifference and priggish disapproval of those around her.
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen · 2003
Villette
Charlotte Bronte · 2019
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 2003
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1994
The Princesse de Cleves
Madame de Lafayette · 2020
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 2024
Bonjour Tristesse
Francoise Sagan · 2008
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 2016
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 2006
Beware of Pity
Stefan Zweig · 2020
Bruges-la-Morte
Georges Rodenbach · 2022
Three Men in a Boat
Jerome K. Jerome · 2004
The Road to the City
Natalia Ginzburg · 2023
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh · 2008
The Lost Estate
Henri Alain-Fournier · 2007
<p><b>'I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and loved every page. I find its depiction of a golden time and place just as poignant now as I did then' Nick Hornby<br></b><b><br><i>The Lost Estate </i>is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i>.</b><br><br>When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house - and his love for the beautiful girl hidden within it, Yvonne de Galais - his life has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence. <br><br>Robin Buss's translation of <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i> sensitively and accurately renders Alain-Fournier's poetically charged, expressive and deceptively simple style. In his introduction, <i>New Yorker </i>writer Adam Gopnik discusses the life of Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the First World War after writing this, his only novel.<br><br>If you liked <i>Le Grand Meaulnes</i>, you might enjoy Gustave Flaubert's <i>Sentimental Education</i>, also available in Penguin Classics.</p>
Emma
Austen Jane · 2015
The Enchanted April
Elizabeth von Arnim · 2022
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas père · 2003
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 2017
<b>A stunning clothbound Hardcover Classics edition of Tolstoy’s great novel, one of the undisputed masterpieces of world literature. <b>Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read</i></b></b><br> <br> 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. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In <i>War and Peace</i>, 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.<br> <br> 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.
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · 2002
'Great Expectations is up there for me with the world's greatest novels' Howard Jacobson. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read<br/><br/>Charles Dickens's Great Expectations charts the course of orphan Pip Pirrip's life as it is transformed by a vast, mysterious inheritance. A terrifying encounter with the escaped convict Abel Magwitch in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decrepit Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella at Satis House; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble station as an apprentice to blacksmith Joe Gargery, beginning a new life as a gentleman. Charles Dickens's haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his identity, and his 'great expectations'. This definitive version uses the text from the first published edition of 1861. It includes a map of Kent in the early nineteenth century, and appendices on Dickens's original ending and his working notes, giving readers an illuminating glimpse into the mind of a great novelist at work.<br/><br/>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.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 2014
<b>Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition, with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co.<br></b><br>Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters couldn't be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they're putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there's one thing they can't help wondering: Will Father return home safely?
The Yellow WallPaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 2024
The Autobiography of My Mother
Jamaica Kincaid · 1996
The Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol · 2014
This early work by Nikolai Gogol was originally published in 1835 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Overcoat' is a short story about a government clerk who has his precious new overcoat stolen. No-one seems willing to help him retrieve his prized possession, a fact that continues to concern him even when he is beyond the grave. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in Sorochintsi, Ukraine in 1809. In 1831, Gogol brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories, 'Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'. It met with immediate success, and he followed it a year later with a second volume. 'The Nose' is regarded as a masterwork of comic short fiction, and 'The Overcoat' is now seen as one of the greatest short stories ever written; some years later, Dostoyevsky famously stated "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." He is seen by many contemporary critics as one of the greatest short story writers who has ever lived, and the Father of Russia's Golden Age of Realism.
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2003
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 2002
Austen's most popular novel, the unforgettable story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy<br/><br/>Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life. This Penguin Classics edition, based on Austen's first edition, contains the original Penguin Classics introduction by Tony Tanner and an updated introduction and notes by Viven Jones.<br/><br/>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.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Lev Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude · 2019
In "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Lev Tolstoy delves into the inevitable and universal theme of death, presenting a poignant critique of artificial bourgeois society and the struggles of the human soul. As Ivan Ilych grapples with a terminal illness, he confronts the existential void and re-evaluates the superficial life he has led. Tolstoy's narrative is a meditation on the nature of life and the inescapable truth of mortality. This masterful novella remains a profound reflection on how we confront and give meaning to our own ending.
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1996
Summer
Edith Wharton · 2015
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2002
The Golden Bowl
Henry James · 2019
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë, Pauline Nestor · 2002
<b>Coming soon to the big screen is Emerald Fennell’s feature film “<i>Wuthering Heights</i>,” which captures the spirit of this epic love story and stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff.<br></b><br>Emily Brontë's only novel endures as a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence. The Penguin Classics edition is the definitive version of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor.<br><br>Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past. <br><br>In this edition, a new preface by Lucasta Miller, author of <i>The Brontë Myth</i>, looks at the ways in which the novel has been interpreted, from Charlotte Brontë onwards. This complements Pauline Nestor's introduction, which discusses changing critical receptions of the novel, as well as Emily Brontë's influences and background.
A Room With A View
E.M. Forster · 2020
The Pearl
John Steinbeck · 2002
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1999
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin · 2013
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 2022
The debut novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author that is both a tragic love story and a searing group portrait of hapless American expatriates drinking, dancing, and chasing their dreams in postwar Europe.<br/><br/>“An absorbingly beautiful and tenderly absurd, heart-breaking narrative ... It is a truly gripping story.” —The New York Times<br/><br/>Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, exerted a lasting influence on fiction in English through his economical prose style that conceals more than it reveals. His first novel, published in 1926, is narrated by world-weary journalist Jake Barnes, who is burdened by a wound acquired in World War I and by his utterly hopeless love for the flamboyantly decadent Lady Brett Ashley. The Sun Also Rises tracks the Lost Generation of the 1920s from the nightclubs of Paris to the bullfighting arenas of Spain.
