Penguin English Library: The Complete List
I adore beautiful book series and the Penguin English Library is no exception. Despite my love of minimalism and continual efforts to declutter my home library, gorgeous books like these are often working against my goals. I love uniformity and a series like this makes me wish I was the proud owner of them all!
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What is the Penguin English Library?
The Penguin English Library (or PEL) is described by Penguin as “collectable general readers’ editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.” The series was first created in 1963 and reworked into their current state in 2012. The titles are paperbacks and affordably priced, which makes them perfect for collecting!
Penguin English Library Book Covers
The Penguin English Library uses an amazing design system, which allows for variations in illustrated motifs and colors for each cover. These have been thoughtfully designed, including a unique striped orange spine which makes them stand out on the shelf like a rainbow. The series won a design award in 2013; a D&AD Wood Pencil for Brand Expression in Print. It can be hard to find all these covers in one place, so I’ve included all of the designs below.
Who designed the Penguin English Library?
The art director of the Penguin English Library was Jim Stoddart, with Coralie Bickford Smith as designer. Coralie has designed many of my favorite covers and collections over the years, including the beautiful Penguin Clothbound Classics range (which I still collect to this day).
Many illustrators were involved in this project (as credited by Coralie) including Mick Brownfield, Despotica, Matt Dorfman, Mark Ecob, Sara Wood, Neil Gower, Jim Tierney, David Mackintosh, Tom Johnson, Anna Salmane, Benjamin Anslow, David Wardle, Jenny Grigg, Emma King, Alex Allden, Joji Koyama, Richard Green, Matt Young, Antonio Colaco, Imogen Boase and Yeti Lambregts. The series was art worked by Viki Ottewill.
How many books are in the Penguin English Library?
This version of the Penguin English Library series was initially released in 2012 with 100 titles. In 2014 an additional 5 titles were released (all by Arthur Conan Doyle). In 2018 a further 20 titles were released; resulting in 125 titles in total (at present).
Where to buy the Penguin English Library?
Most of these titles can be found online, so I’ve provided links below for each edition. I’m yet to spot a seller offering the complete collection. It’s worth noting however, that some of the titles are out of print and can be harder to track down!
Which Penguin English Library books are discontinued or out of print?
I’ve marked the out of print (or more difficult to find) Penguin English Library titles with an asterisk (*) below. These are the books I’ve had trouble tracking down myself. For these titles I recommend turning to second hand sellers or looking for book swap opportunities; you never know where you might unearth a copy!
What are the Penguin English Library new releases?
You can organize the table below to sort titles by release year and see the latest additions to the Penguin English Library.
What is the Penguin English Library paper quality like?
This is a question that comes up often, as Penguin have changed the paper stock used for the cover over time. The initial release included matte covers (often described as having a velvet finish) while the newer editions use a different stock. As for wear and tear, keep in mind these are paperbacks, so they are difficult to keep in pristine condition.
Penguin English Library vs. Penguin Clothbound Classics
Many readers ask which collection is better; the English Library or the Clothbound Classics. There is much overlap in the titles between the two, which means you may want to focus on collecting one over the other. Both collections are quite contemporary in terms of design, but the cloth and embossing give the Clothbound Classics a more traditional feel. In terms of quality and price, the Clothbound Classics are hard cover and have a more expensive price point; while the English Library are paperbacks and more affordable – a point to consider if you’d like to have more books!
Penguin English Library: Catalogue
Penguin English Library: The Complete List
1.
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
ISBN: 9780241335130
Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth – four “little women” enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored by generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo’s hand, cried over little Beth’s death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Future writers have found inspiration in Jo’s devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, both parts of which are included here, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature’s most beloved women.
2.
Emma
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141199528
Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.
3.
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141199870
Taken from the poverty of her parents’ home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle’s absence in Antigua, the Crawford’s arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen’s first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
4.
Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141389424
During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works.
5.
Persuasion
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141198835
At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
6.
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141199078
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 the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
7.
Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
ISBN: 9780141199672
Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor’s warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love – and its threatened loss – the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
8.
Peter Pan
by J. M. Barrie
ISBN: 9780241341391
It was Friday night. Mr and Mrs Darling were dining out. Nana had been tied up in the backyard. The poor dog was barking, for she could smell danger. And she was right – this was the night that Peter Pan would take the Darling children on the most breath-taking adventure of their lives, to a place called Neverland, a strange country where the lost boys live and never grow up, a land with mermaids, fairies and pirates – and of course the terrible, evil, Captain Hook. Peter Pan is undoubtedly one of the most famous and best-loved stories for children, an unforgettable, magical fantasy which has been enjoyed by generations.
9.
Lady Audley’s Secret
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
ISBN: 9780141198842
In this outlandish, outrageous triumph of scandal fiction, a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young, beautiful – and very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What, exactly, is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her? A huge success in the nineteenth century, the book’s anti-heroine – with her good looks and hidden past – embodied perfectly the concerns of the Victorian age with morality and madness.
10.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Brontë
ISBN: 9780141199351
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman’s fight for domestic independence and creative freedom.
11.
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
ISBN: 9780141198859
Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, Jane Eyre was immediately recognised as a work of genius when it appeared in 1847. Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she 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.
12.
Shirley
by Charlotte Brontë
ISBN: 9780141199535
Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his financial woes, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline, who, bored and desperate, lives as a dependent in her uncle’s home with no prospect of a career. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert’s brother, an impoverished tutor – a match opposed by her family. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled?
13.
Villette
by Charlotte Brontë
ISBN: 9780141199887
With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls’ boarding school in the small town of Villette. There, she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, the hostility of headmistress Madame Beck, and her own complex feelings – first for the school’s English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë’s autobiographical novel, the last published during her lifetime, is a powerfully moving study of loneliness and isolation, and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.
14.
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
ISBN: 9780141199085
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 betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.
15.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
ISBN: 9780241341254
Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.
16.
Evelina
by Frances Burney
ISBN: 9780141198866
In this comic and sharply incisive satire of excess and affectations, beautiful young Evelina falls victim to the rakish advances of Sir Clement Willoughby on her entrance to the world of fashionable London. Colliding with the manners and customs of a society she doesn’t understand, she finds herself without hope that she should ever deserve the attention of the man she loves. Frances Burney’s first novel brilliantly sends up eighteenth-century society – and its opinions of women – while enticingly depicting its delights.
17.
The Way of All Flesh
by Samuel Butler
ISBN: 9780141199153
Written with great humour, irony and honesty, The Way of All Flesh exploded perceptions of the Victorian middle-class family in its radical depiction of Ernest Pontifex, a young man who casts off his background and discovers himself. The awkward but likeable son of a tyrannical clergyman and a priggish mother, and destined to follow his father into the church, Ernest gleefully rejects his parents’ respectability, and chooses instead to find his own way in the world.
18.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
ISBN: 9780141199689
‘I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,’ wrote Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one ‘golden afternoon’ in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. 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 7-year-old a Queen.
19.
The Man Who Was Thursday
by G. K. Chesterton
ISBN: 9780141199771
In a park in London, secret policeman Gabriel Syme strikes up a conversation with an anarchist. Sworn to do his duty, Syme uses his new acquaintance to go undercover in Europe’s Central Anarchist Council and infiltrate their deadly mission, even managing to have himself voted to the position of ‘Thursday’. When Syme discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, however, he starts to question his role in their operations. And as a desperate chase across Europe begins, his confusion grows, as well as his confidence in his ability to outwit his enemies. But he has still to face the greatest terror that the Council has: a man named Sunday, whose true nature is worse than Syme could ever have imagined …
20.
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
ISBN:9780241341421
When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author’s reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin’s great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who – with tragic consequences – refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.
21.
The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins
ISBN: 9780141198873
When Rachel Verinder’s birthday present – the Moonstone, a large Indian diamond – is stolen at her party, suspicion and the diamond’s mysterious curse seem set to ruin everyone and everything she loves. Only Sergeant Cuff’s famous detective skills offer any hope of peace and a future for them all. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collin’s 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a ‘locked-room’ puzzle, The Moonstone was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel.
22.
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
ISBN: 9780141389431
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
23.
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
ISBN: 9780141199788
Marlow, a seaman, tells of a journey up the Congo. His goal is the troubled European and ivory trader Kurtz. Worshipped and feared by invaders as well as natives, Kurtz has become a godlike figure, his presence pervading the jungle like a thick, obscuring mist. As his boat labours further upstream, closer and closer to Kurtz’s extraordinary and terrible domain, so Marlow finds his faith in himself and civilization crumbling. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been considered the most important indictment of the evils of imperialism written to date.
24.
Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad
ISBN: 9780141199054
Jim, first mate on board the Patna, is a simple and sensitive young man who dreams of becoming a hero. But when the Patna threatens to sink, Jim takes the cowardly way out and jumps clear. His unbearable guilt and shame at having violated the unwritten moral code of the sea lead him to become an exile in a remote Malay state. There he fashions a new identity for himself as the benevolent ruler of an exotic land – until his idyll is interrupted. Rich, moving and delicately crafted, Lord Jim is a compelling meditation on identity, guilt and lost honour.
25.
Nostromo
by Joseph Conrad
ISBN: 9780141389448
In the exotic South American republic of Costaguana, the San Tomé silver mine provides opportunities for untold wealth and power. Yet amid the turbulence and brutality of Latin American politics, everyone associated with it – from the compromised English mine-owner Gould to the grasping businessman Holroyd, from the revolutionary Montero to the loyal and seemingly incorruptible worker Nostromo – becomes somehow irrevocably tainted. Nostromo is a grandiose epic, startlingly modern in its technique and political sophistication – and a masterpiece of tension, adventure and mystery.
26.
The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
ISBN: 9780141199559
In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions.
27.
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
ISBN: 9780141199061
Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe’s famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language.
28.
Barnaby Rudge
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199696
Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Charles Dickens’s novel Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and Protestants clash with Catholics on the streets. And, as London erupts into riot, Barnaby Rudge himself struggles to escape the curse of his own past. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
29.
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199092
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens’s most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.
30.
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141389479
After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reculsive Thomas Carlyle was “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality” and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity, and memory.
31.
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199160
This is the novel Dickens regarded as his ‘favourite child’ and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the ‘umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens’s own father which evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt. Dickens’s great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood) is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.
32.
Dombey and Son
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199917
Dombey and Son is both a firm and a family and the ambiguous connection between public and private life lies at the heart of Dickens’ novel. Paul Dombey is a man who runs his domestic affairs as he runs his business: calculatingly, callously, coldly and commercially. Through his dysfunctional relationships with his son, his two wives, and his neglected daughter Florence, Dickens paints a vivid picture of the limitations of a society dominated by commercial values and the drive for profit and explores the possibility of moral and emotional redemption through familial love.
33.
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141198897
Pip doesn’t expect much from life… His sister makes it clear that her orphaned little brother is nothing but a burden on her. But suddenly things begin to change. Pip’s narrow existence is blown apart when he finds an escaped criminal, is summoned to visit a mysterious old woman and meets the icy beauty Estella. Most astoundingly of all, an anonymous person gives him money to begin a new life in London. Are these events as random as they seem? Or does Pip’s fate hang on a series of coincidences he could never have expected?
34.
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199566
Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and ‘bully of humanity’ Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimized weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognize the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery.
35.
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199375
A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity. When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect many lives, from Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier.
36.
Martin Chuzzlewit
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141198903
Old Martin Chuzzlewit, in despair at a family more interested in his wealth than his wellbeing, drives out his grandson and namesake. While the younger Martin leaves to make his own way in the world, love of money drives the hypocritical Pecksniff into scheming his way closer to the older man, and compels Jonas Chuzzlewit to even darker deeds.
Dickens thought Martin Chuzzlewit ‘in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories’. A sinister, funny novel of greed, selfishness, blackmail and murder, it also sees Dickens’s scathing moral sense make the voyage to America.
37.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199924
Dickens’ last novel is a mystery built around a presumed crime – the murder of a nephew by his uncle. Dickens died before completing the story, leaving the mystery unsolved and encouraging successive generations of readers to turn detective. Beyond the preoccupying fact of this intriguing crime, however, the novel also offers readers a characteristically Dickensian mix of the fantastical world of the imagination and a vibrantly journalistic depiction of gritty reality.
38.
Nicholas Nickleby
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199818
The work of a young novelist at the height of his powers, Nicholas Nickleby is one of the touchstones of the English comic novel. Around the central story of Nicholas Nickleby and the misfortunes of his family, Dickens created some of his most wonderful characters: the muddle-headed Mrs Nickleby, the gloriously theatrical Crummles, their protege Miss Petowker, the pretentious Mantalinis and the mindlessly cruel Squeers and his wife. Nicholas Nickleby‘s loose, haphazard progress harks back to the picaresque novels of the 18th century – particularly those of Smollett and Fielding. Yet the novel’s exuberant atmosphere of romance, adventure and freedom is overshadowed by Dickens’ awareness of social ills and financial and class insecurity.
39.
The Old Curiosity Shop
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199580
The tale of Little Nell gripped the nation when it first appeared in 1841. Described as a ‘tragedy of sorrows’, the story tells of Nell uprooted from a secure and innocent childhood and cast into a world where evil takes many shapes, the most fascinating of which is the stunted, lecherous Quilp. Blending realism with non-realistic genres such as fairy-tale, allegory, and pastoral, the tale of Nell’s tragedy contains some of Dickens most memorable comic and grotesque creations, including the dwarf Daniel Quilp, Dick Swiveller and Kit Nubbles.
40.
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141198880
The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens’s tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters – the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.
41.
Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199801
Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance – Old Harmon’s profitable dust heaps – and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed drowned when a body is pulled out of the River Thames, and kindly dustman Mr Boffin, to whom the fortune defaults.
With brilliant satire, Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money.
42.
The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199108
Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers. Readers were immediately captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle and, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters and incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour and literary invention.
43.
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780141199702
After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.
44.
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb and Other Cases
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141395500
As usual with the Sherlock Holmes stories it is very hard to say which are the best – but there are many stories here which would get the vote – ranging from The Boscombe Valley Mystery to the wonderful Adventure of Silver Blaze, from the Adventure of the Norwood Builder to A Case of Identity, but above to the uniquely strange and macabre Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb.
45.
Adventure of Six Napoleons and Other Cases
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141395548
Many readers would claim that The Adventure of the Copper Beeches or The Man with the Twisted Lip was their favourite Sherlock Holmes story – but then that would be doing an injustice to The Adventure of the Yellow Face and The Problem of Thor Bridge. It is just as well that in the end we do not have to choose – as if we did then there would be no doubt it should be The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.
46.
The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141199719
Sherlock Holmes, scourge of criminals everywhere, whether they be lurking in London’s foggy backstreets or plotting behind the walls of an idyllic country mansion, and his faithful colleague Dr Watson, solve these breathtaking and perplexing mysteries. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases we encounter some of his most famous and devilishly difficult problems.
47.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141199177
The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body, this classic horror story pits detective against dog. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles’ heir comes to an equally gruesome end.
48.
The Sign of the Four
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141395487
A dense yellow miasma swirls in the streets of London as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson accompany a beautiful young woman to a sinister assignation. For Mary Marston has received several large pearls – one a year for the last six years – and now a mystery letter telling her she is a wronged woman. If she would seek justice she is to meet her unknown benefactor, bringing with her two companions.
But unbeknownst to them all, others stalk London’s fog-enshrouded streets: a one-legged ruffian with revenge on his mind – and his companion, who places no value on human life.
49.
A Study in Scarlet
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141395524
When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality and violence. Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened house in south London, Watson is startled to find a dead man whose face is contorted in a rictus of horror. There is no mark of violence on the body yet a single word is written on the wall in blood. Dr Watson is as baffled as the police, but Holmes’s brilliant analytical skills soon uncover a trail of murder, revenge and lost love…
50.
The Valley of Fear
by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN: 9780141395562
The deadly hand of Professor Moriarty once more reaches out to commit a vile and ingenious crime, but a mole in Moriarty’s criminal organization alerts Sherlock Holmes of the evil deed by means of a cipher…
When Holmes and Watson arrive at a Sussex manor house they appear to be too late. The discovery of a body suggests that Moriarty’s henchmen have been at their work. But there is much more to this tale of murder than at first meets the eye.
51.
Daniel Deronda
by George Eliot
ISBN: 9780141199245
George Eliot’s last, most controversial novel opens as the spoiled Gwendolen Harleth, poised at a roulette table about to throw away a small fortune, captivates Daniel Deronda. As their lives become intertwined, they are also transformed by suffering, misfortune, revelations and Daniel’s fascination with the Jewish singer Mirah. Daniel Deronda shocked Victorian readers with its portrayal of the Jewish experience in British society, and remains a moving and epic portrayal of human passions.
52.
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
ISBN: 9780141199795
George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as ‘one of the few English novels written for adult people’.
53.
The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
ISBN: 9780141198910
Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie’s fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature’s most unforgettable heroines.
54.
Silas Marner
by George Eliot
ISBN: 9780141389455
Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot’s favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life.
55.
Joseph Andrews
by Henry Fielding
ISBN: 9780141199382
Henry Fielding’s riotous tale of innocents in a corrupt world was one of the earliest English novels, blending bawdy slapstick, philosophical musing and pointed social satire to create a work of moral complexity and generous, life-affirming humanity. Published in 1742, it tells the story of the chaste servant Joseph Andrews who, after being sacked for spurning the advances of the lascivious Lady Booby, takes to the road, accompanied by his beloved Fanny Goodwill and the absent-minded, much put-upon Parson Adams. There they encounter robbers, tricksters, seducers, mishaps and strange twists of fortune, in a series of adventures filled with exuberant comedy.
56.
Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding
ISBN: 9780141199733
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighbouring squire – though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. But when his amorous escapades earn the disapproval of his benefactor, Tom is banished to make his own fortune. Sophia, meanwhile, is determined to avoid an arranged marriage to Allworthy’s scheming nephew and escapes from her rambunctious father to follow Tom to London.
57.
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
ISBN: 9780241341469
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach… Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby – young, handsome, fabulously rich – always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.
58.
Tender is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
ISBN: 9780241341483
Between the First World War and the Wall Street Crash the French Riviera was the stylish place for wealthy Americans to visit. Among the most fashionable are psychoanalyst Dick Diver and his wife Nicole, who hold court at their villa. Into their circle comes Rosemary Hoyt, a film star, who is instantly attracted to them, but understands little of the dark secrets and hidden corruption that hold them together. As Dick draws closer to Rosemary, he fractures the delicate structure of his marriage and sets both Nicole and himself on to a dangerous path where only the strongest can survive. In this exquisite, lyrical novel, Fitzgerald has poured much of the essence of his own life; he has also depicted the age of materialism, shattered idealism and broken dreams.
59.
Howards End
by E. M. Forster
ISBN: 9780141199405
‘The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can only connect.’ is the idea at the heart of this book, a heartbreaking and provocative tale of three families at the beginning of the twentieth century: the rich Wilcoxes, the gentle, idealistic Schlegels and the lower-middle class Basts. As the Schlegel sisters try desperately to help the Basts and educate the close-minded Wilcoxes, the families are drawn together in love, lies and death.
60.
A Room with a View
by E. M. Forster
ISBN: 9780141199825
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.
Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
61.
Where Angels Fear to Tread
by E. M. Forster
ISBN: 9780141199252
‘I had got an idea that everyone here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn’t care for, to please people they didn’t love; that they never learned to be sincere – and, what’s as bad, never learned how to enjoy themselves.’
E. M. Forster’s first novel is a witty comedy of manners that is tinged with tragedy. It tells the story of Lilia Herriton, who proves to be an embarrassment to her late husband’s family as, in the small Tuscan town of Monteriano, she begins a relationship with a much younger Italian man – classless, uncouth and highly unsuitable. A subtle attack on decorous Edwardian values and a humanely sympathetic portrayal of the clash of two cultures, Where Angels Fear to Tread is also a profound exploration of character and virtue.
62.
Cranford
by Elizabeth Gaskell
ISBN: 9780141199429
Gaskell’s best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty. But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reappearance of long-lost relatives.
63.
Mary Barton
by Elizabeth Gaskell
ISBN: 9780141199726
Mary Barton, the heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, is beautiful but has been born poor. Her father fights for the rights of his fellow workers, but Mary wants to make a better life for them both. She rashly decides to reject her lover Jem, a struggling engineer, in the hope of marrying the rich mill-owner’s son Henry Carson and securing a safe future. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself hopelessly torn between them. She also discovers an unpleasant truth – one that could bring tragedy upon everyone, and threatens to destroy her.
64.
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell
ISBN: 9780141198927
Elizabeth Gaskell’s compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton. North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together.
65.
Wives and Daughters
by Elizabeth Gaskell
ISBN: 9780141389462
Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly’s life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. Soon the girls become close, and Molly finds herself cajoled into becoming a go-between in Cynthia’s love affairs. But in doing so, Molly risks ruining her reputation in the gossiping village of Hollingford – and jeopardizing everything with the man she is secretly in love with.
66.
New Grub Street
by George Gissing
ISBN: 9780141199931
In New Grub Street George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London’s literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing brings to life the bitter battles (fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum) between integrity and the dictates of the market place, the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship do to human personality and relationships.
67.
Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141198934
Hardy’s powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men – respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy and devoted Gabriel – making her the object of scandal and betrayal. Vividly portraying the superstitions and traditions of a small rural community, Far from the Madding Crowd shows the precarious position of a woman in a man’s world.
68.
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141199832
Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy’s fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist.
69.
The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141199597
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.
70.
The Return of the Native
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141199740
Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath. Hearing that Clym Yeobright is to return from Paris, she sets her heart on marrying him, believing that through him she can leave rural life and find fulfilment elsewhere. But she is to be disappointed, for Clym has dreams of his own, and they have little in common with Eustacia’s. Their unhappy marriage causes havoc in the lives of those close to them, in particular Damon Wildeve, Eustacia’s former lover, Clym’s mother and his cousin Thomasin. The Retun of the Native illustrates the tragic potential of romantic illusion and how its protagonists fail to recognize their opportunities to control their own destinies.
71.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141199948
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousin’ Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy’s novels.
72.
Two on a Tower
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141199436
Hardy’s atmospheric, moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces far beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion and conflict against a background of vast stellar space and scientific discovery. Two on a Tower tells the story of Lady Constantine, who breaks all the rules of decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. Together, in an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observation tower, they create their own private universe – until the pressures of the outside world threaten to destroy it.
73.
Under the Greenwood Tree
by Thomas Hardy
ISBN: 9780141389486
The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village’s musicians with his decision to abolish the church’s traditional ‘string choir’ and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men – a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. Under the Greenwood Tree follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing.
74.
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
ISBN: 9780141199450
Fiercely romantic and hugely influential, The Scarlet Letter is the tale of Hester Prynne, imprisoned, publicly shamed, and forced to wear a scarlet ‘A’ for committing adultery and bearing an illegitimate child, Pearl. In their small, Puritan village, Hester and her daughter struggle to survive, but in this searing study of the tension between private and public existence, Hester Prynne’s inner strength and quiet dignity means she has frequently been seen as one of the first great heroines of American fiction.
75.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
by James Hogg
ISBN: 9780141198941
A nightmarish tale of religious fanaticism and darkness, this chilling classic of the macabre tells the tale of Robert Wringhim, drawn in his moral confusion into committing the most monstrous acts by an evil doppelganger. James Hogg’s masterpiece is as troublingly duplicitous as Wringhim himself, and was ignored and bowdlerized before becoming a hugely influential work of Scottish literature.
76.
Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
ISBN: 9780141199757
Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? In Daisy Miller Henry James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces.
77.
The Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
ISBN: 9780141199122
When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy her freedom, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond. Charming and cultivated, Osmond sees Isabel as a rich prize waiting to be taken. In this portrait of a ‘young woman affronting her destiny’, Henry James created one of his most magnificent heroines, and a story of intense poignancy.
78.
Washington Square
by Henry James
ISBN: 9780141389493
When timid and plain Catherine Sloper acquires a dashing and determined suitor, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, decides to put a stop to their romance. Torn between her desire to win her father’s love and approval and her passion for the first man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonising dilemma, and becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom. James’s masterly novel deftly interweaves the public and private faces of nineteenth-century New York society; it is also a deeply moving study of innocence destroyed.
79.
The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
ISBN: 9780141199849
Emerging from the grit and stigma of poverty to a life of fairytale privilege under the wing of her aunt, the beautiful and financially ambitious Kate Croy is already romantically involved with promising journalist Merton Densher when they become acquainted with Milly Theale, a New York socialite of immense wealth. Learning of Milly’s mortal illness and passionate attraction to Densher, Kate sets the scene for a romantic betrayal intended to secure her lasting financial security. As the dying Milly retreats within the carnival splendour of a Venetian palazzo, becoming the frail hub of a predatory circle of fortune-seekers, James unfolds a resonant, brooding tale of doomed passion, betrayal, human resilience and remorse.
80.
Ghost Stories
by M. R. James
ISBN: 9780241341629
The aim of a good ghost story is to make the blood freeze, pleasurably, and this M. R. James achieves to perfection in these wonderful stories. His most atmospheric settings include English country houses and gardens, the north end of the churchyard, the yew-maze in ‘Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance’ and the unforgettable train journey in ‘Casting the Runes’. To each of these stories he brings an eye for the telling detail, an imaginative twist and a narrative tone that is, at least to begin with, urbane and reassuring …
81.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
ISBN: 9780141199627
From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman’s dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce’s native Dublin to life. With Dubliners, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental.
82.
Kim
by Rudyard Kipling
ISBN: 9780141199979
Kipling’s epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Two men – Kim, a boy growing into early manhood, and the lama, an old ascetic priest – are fired by a quest. Kim is white, although born in India. While he wants to play the Great Game of imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands. A celebration of their friendship in an often hostile environment, Kim captures the opulence of India’s exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj.
83.
Sons and Lovers
by D. H. Lawrence
ISBN: 9780141199856
The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul – determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother’s suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.
84.
The Monk
by Matthew Lewis
ISBN: 9780141199467
Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.
85.
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London
ISBN: 9780241341490
The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London’s vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author’s unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest.
86.
At the Mountains of Madness
by H. P. Lovecraft
ISBN: 9780241341315
An expedition to Antarctica goes horribly wrong as a group of explorers stumbles upon some mysterious ancient ruins, with devastating consequences. At the Mountains of Madness ranks among Lovecraft’s most terrifying novellas, and is a firm favourite among fans of classic horror.
87.
The Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen
ISBN: 9780241341124
A doctor performs an experiment on a young woman that goes horribly wrong, and a series of increasingly strange events follow: sinister woodland rituals, disappearances, suicides… Viewed as immoral and decadent on first publication in 1894, Machen’s weird tale has since established itself as a classic of its genre and has been described by Stephen King as ‘one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language’.
88.
The Garden Party
by Katherine Mansfield
ISBN: 9780241341643
A windless, warm day greets the Sheridan family on the day of their garden party. As daughter Laura takes the reins on party preparations the news of a neighbour’s demise casts a cloud over the host and threatens the entire celebration.
89.
The Beetle
by Richard Marsh
ISBN: 9780241341353
Eminent politician Paul Lessingham is the toast of Westminster, but when ‘the Beetle’ arrives from Egypt to hunt him down, the dark and gruesome secret that haunts him is dragged into the light. Bent on revenge for a crime committed against the disciples of an Egyptian goddess, the Beetle terrorizes its victims and will stop at nothing until it has satisfaction.
90.
Melmoth the Wanderer
by Charles Robert Maturin
ISBN: 9780141199290
This violent, profound, baroque and blackly humorous novel is the story of Melmoth, who has sold his soul in exchange for immortality in a satanic bargain, and now preys on the helpless in their darkest moments, offering to ease their suffering if they will take his place and release him from his centuries of tortured wanderings. Melmoth the Wanderer blended Gothic fiction and psychological realism to create a work of hallucinatory power.
91.
The Confidence-Man and Billy Budd, Sailor
by Herman Melville
ISBN: 9780141199306
In The Confidence-Man, Melville’s unnerving and hallucinatory satire on the American dream, a slippery trickster and master of disguise comes to swindle his fellow passengers – who themselves may also be con-men – aboard a Mississippi steamboat.
Billy Budd, Sailor, published after Melville’s death in 1891, is a gripping allegory of good and evil, as an innocent man, pressed into service on a British man-of-war, is falsely accused of mutiny. Both these late works are animated with the dark genius of the greatest of American writers.
92.
Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville
ISBN: 9780141198958
Moby-Dick is one of the most expansive feats of imagination in the whole of literature: the mad, raging, Shakespearean tale of Captain Ahab’s insane quest to kill a giant white whale that has taken his leg, and upon which he has sworn vengeance, at any cost. A creation unlike any other, this is an epic story of fatal monomania and the deepest dreams and obsessions of mankind.
93.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Emmuska Orczy
ISBN: 9780241341339
The French Terror is raging, and few are safe from the threat of the guillotine. Sir Percy Blakeney, a foppish Englishman, decides to rescue imprisoned aristocrats before they can be executed. Showing great daring and aided by a band of brave comrades, he disguises himself as the formidable Scarlet Pimpernel. But will his beautiful French wife Marguerite unwittingly prove his downfall? Baroness Orczy’s swashbuckling 1905 novel set the standard for all future tales of masked avengers and was later adapted into a famous stage play and several film versions.
94.
Animal Farm
by George Orwell
ISBN: 9780241341667
When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another.
95.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
ISBN: 9780241341650
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skillfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.
96.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales
by Edgar Allan Poe
ISBN: 9780141198972
Horror, madness, violence and the dark forces hidden in humanity abound in this collection of Poe’s brilliant tales, including – among others – the bloody, brutal and baffling murder of a mother and daughter in Paris in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, the creeping insanity of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, the Gothic nightmare of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, and the terrible doom of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.
97.
Pamela
by Samuel Richardson
ISBN: 9780141199634
Fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, alone in the world, is pursued by her dead mistress’s son. Although she is attracted to Mr B, she holds out against his demands, determined to protect her virginity and abide by her moral standards.
Psychlologically acute in its explorations of sex, freedom and power, Richardson’s first novel caused a sensation when it was published. Richly comic and lively, Pamela contains a diverse cast of characters ranging from the vulgar and malevolent Mrs Jewkes to the aggressive but awkward country squire.
98.
Ivanhoe
by Walter Scott
ISBN: 9780141199139
Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father’s wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his passionate desire is to be reunited with the beautiful but forbidden lady Rowena, but he soon finds himself playing a more dangerous game as he is drawn into a bitter power struggle between the noble King Richard and his evil and scheming brother John. The first of Scott’s novels to address a purely English subject, Ivanhoe is set in a highly romanticized medieval world of tournaments and sieges, chivalry and adventure where dispossessed Saxons are pitted against their Norman overlords, and where the historical and fictional seamlessly merge.
99.
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
ISBN: 9780141198965
A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley’s chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead – but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction. Written after a nightmare when its author was only eighteen, Frankenstein gave birth to the modern science fiction novel.
100.
Humphry Clinker
by Tobias Smollett
ISBN: 9780141199320
Smollett’s savage, boisterously funny lambasting of eighteenth-century British society charts the unfortunate journey of the gout-ridden and irascible squire Matthew Bramble across Britain, who finds himself everywhere surrounded by decadents, pimps, con-men, raucousness and degeneracy – until the arrival of the trusty manservant Humphry Clinker promises to improve his fortunes. Populated with unforgettable grotesques and written with a relish for earthy humour and wordplay, and a ferocious pessimism, Humphry Clinker is Smollett’s masterpiece.
101.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
by Laurence Sterne
ISBN: 9780141199993
Laurence Sterne’s great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate ‘hero’ Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.
102.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
ISBN: 9780141389509
Published as a ‘shilling shocker’, Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll’s strange association with ‘damnable young man’ Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde’s true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity’s basest capacity for evil.
103.
Treasure Island and The Ebb-Tide
by Robert Louis Stevenson
ISBN: 9780141199146
In Treasure Island, a weathered old sailor known as Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkins’s parents – and it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. For when Bones dies mysteriously, Jim stumbles across a map of a mysterious island in his sea chest – where ‘X’ marks the spot of a stash of buried pirate gold. Setting sail with his friends on the ship Hispaniola to recover the treasure, Jim soon realizes that he’s not the only one who knows about the hoard. Suddenly he is thrown into a world of treachery, mutiny, castaways and murder and, at the centre of it all, is the charming but sinister Long John Silver, who will stop at nothing to grab his share of the loot… The Ebb-Tide, a short novel published the year of Stevenson’s death, is also a rollicking seafaring adventure, narrating the voyage of a stolen ship whilst exploring such themes as imperialism, violence, dishonesty, Christianity and corruption.
104.
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
ISBN: 9780141199337
A chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the arrival of his ‘Master’, while a determined group of adversaries prepares to face the terrifying Count.
105.
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift
ISBN: 9780141198989
A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver’s Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with, among others, quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophizing horses and the brutish Yahoo tribe, that change his view of humanity – and himself – for ever. Swift’s classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.
106.
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
ISBN: 9780141199641
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles – military and domestic – are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray’s gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.
107.
The Warden (Barsetshire #1)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141198996
Trollope’s witty, satirical story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal – as the traditional values of Septimus Harding are attacked by zealous reformers and ruthless newspapers – is a drama of conscience that pits individual integrity against worldly ambition. In The Warden Anthony Trollope brought the fictional county of Barsetshire to life, peopled by a cast of brilliantly realised characters that have made him among the supreme chroniclers of the minutiae of Victorian England.
The first book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.
108.
Barchester Towers (Barsetshire #2)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141199115
Trollope’s comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed. Soon a pitched battle breaks out over who will take power, involving, among others, the zealous reformer Dr Proudie, his fiendish wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope.
Barchester Towers is one of the best-loved novels in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which captured nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterization.
109.
Doctor Thorne (Barsetshire #3)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141199474
Dr Thorne, considered by Trollope to be the best of his works, is a telling examination of the relationship between money and morality. It recounts the story of the son of a bankrupt landowner, Frank Gresham, who is intent on marrying his beloved Mary Thorne despite her illegitimacy and apparent poverty. Frank’s ambitious mother and haughty aunt are set against the match, however, and push him to make a good marriage to a wealthy heiress. Only Mary’s loving uncle, Dr Thorne, knows of the fortune she is about to inherit – but believes she should be accepted on her own terms.
The third book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.
110.
Framley Parsonage (Barsetshire #4)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141199764
Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee a bill for a large sum of money for the disreputable local Member of Parliament, while being helped in his career in the Church by the same hand. But the unscrupulous politician reneges on his financial obligations, and Mark must face the consequences this debt may bring to his family.
111.
The Small House at Allington (Barsetshire #5)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141199658
Engaged to the ambitious and self-serving Adolphus Crosbie, Lily Dale is devastated when he jilts her for the aristocratic Lady Alexandrina. Although crushed by his faithlessness, Lily still believes she is bound to her unworthy former fiancé for life and therefore condemned to remain single after his betrayal. And when a more deserving suitor pays his addresses, she is unable to see past her feelings for Crosbie. Written when Trollope was at the height of his popularity, The Small House at Allington contains his most admired heroine in Lily Dale – a young woman of independent spirit who nonetheless longs to be loved – and is a moving dramatization of the ways in which personal dilemmas are affected by social pressures.
112.
The Last Chronicle of Barset (Barsetshire #6)
by Anthony Trollope
ISBN: 9780141199863
When Reverend Josiah Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, is accused of theft it causes a public scandal, sending shockwaves through the world of Barsetshire. The Crawleys desperately try to remain dignified while they are shunned by society, but the scandal threatens to tear them, and the community, apart.
Drawing on his own childhood experience of genteel poverty, Trollope gives a painstakingly realistic depiction of the trials of a family striving to maintain its standards at all costs. With its sensitive portrayal of the proud and self-destructive figure of Crawley, this final volume is the darkest and most complex of all the Barsetshire novels.
113.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
ISBN: 9780141199009
The original Great American Novel, an incomparable adventure story and a classic of anarchic humour, Twain’s masterpiece sees Huckleberry Finn and Jim the slave escape their difficult lives by fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft. There, they find steamships, feuding families, an unlikely Duke and King and vital lessons about the world in which they live. With its unforgettable cast of characters, Hemingway called this ‘the best book we’ve ever had’.
114.
Elizabeth and Her German Garden
by Elizabeth Von Arnim
ISBN: 9780241341292
Taking respite from the Man of Wrath, her children and her stifling household, Elizabeth discovers that the path to joy lies in having a garden, rather than a room, of one’s own. This enchanting semi-autobiographical novel delighted readers when it first appeared in 1898 and has never been out of print since.
115.
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
ISBN: 9780241341100
After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, A Handful of Dust captures the irresponsible mood of the ‘crazy and sterile generation’ between the wars.
116.
The Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells
ISBN: 9780141389516
With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin – the new guest at The Coach and Horses – is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village, and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of an old friend, Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however – and when Kemp refuse to help, he resolves to wreak his revenge.
117.
The Island of Doctor Moreau
by H. G. Wells
ISBN: 9780141389394
Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo – a menagerie of savage animals. Tended to recovery by their keeper Montgomery, who gives him dark medicine that tastes of blood, Prendick soon finds himself stranded upon an uncharted island in the Pacific with his rescuer and the beasts. Here, he meets Montgomery’s master, the sinister Dr. Moreau – a brilliant scientist whose notorious experiments in vivisection have caused him to abandon the civilised world. It soon becomes clear he has been developing these experiments – with truly horrific results.
118.
The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
ISBN: 9780141199344
Chilling, prophetic and hugely influential, The Time Machine sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, where he is delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty and contentment in the form of the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man. But he soon realizes that they are simply remnants of a once-great culture – now weak and living in terror of the sinister Morlocks lurking in the deep tunnels, who threaten his very return home. H. G. Wells defined much of modern science fiction with this 1895 tale of time travel, which questions humanity, society, and our place on Earth.
119.
The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
ISBN: 9780141199047
From the planet of war they came to conquer the Earth … The night after a shooting star is seen streaking across the sky, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common. Fascinated and exhilarated, the local people approach the mysterious object armed with nothing more than a white flag. But when gruesome alien creatures emerge armed with all-destroying heat-rays, their rashness turns rapidly to fear. As the rays blaze towards them, it soon becomes clear they have no choice but to flee – or die. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear …
120.
The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West
ISBN: 9780241341674
Tod Hackett is a brilliant young artist – and a man in danger of losing his heart. Brought to an LA studio as a set-designer, he is soon caught up in a fantasy world where the cult of celebrity rules.
But when he becomes besotted by the beautiful Faye, an aspiring actress and occasional call-girl, his dream rapidly becomes a nightmare. For, with little in the way of looks and no money to buy her time, Tod’s desperate passion can only lead to frustration, disillusionment and rage…
121.
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
ISBN: 9780141389400
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a ‘hired girl’, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction’s finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio towards their tragic destinies.
122.
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
ISBN: 9780141974217
A searing, shocking tale of women as consumer items in a man’s world, The House of Mirth sees Lily Bart, beautiful and charming, living among the wealthy families of New York but reluctant to finally commit herself to a husband. In her search for freedom and the happiness she feels she deserves, Lily is ultimately ruined by scandal. Edith Wharton’s shattering novel created controversy on its publication in 1905 with its scathing portrayal of the world’s wealthy and the prison that marriage can become.
123.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
ISBN: 9780141199498
A story of evil, debauchery and scandal, Oscar Wilde’s only novel tells of Dorian Gray, a beautiful yet corrupt man. When he wishes that a perfect portrait of himself would bear the signs of ageing in his place, the picture becomes his hideous secret, as it follows Dorian’s own downward spiral into cruelty and depravity. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a masterpiece of the evil in men’s hearts, and is as controversial and alluring as Wilde himself.
124.
Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
ISBN: 9780241341117
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel’s lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works.
125.
To The Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
ISBN: 9780241341681
This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transience, she creates an enduring work of art.
What do you think of the Penguin English Library?
Do you own any of these beautiful books? Which one is your favorite? Are you collecting the Penguin English Library? What would you like to see released in future editions? Are you having trouble finding a title that is out of print? I’d love to know your thoughts and feedback on the Penguin English Library in the comments below!
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7 comments
What’s your opinion on the texture of the newer covers? Are they substandard? I’ve heard they’re papery and that the colors aren’t as vibrant. Would you recommend I collect these books despite this?
Hi Jeremy, such a good question! I think readers are pretty divided on this. I’m personally happy with mine and haven’t experienced any feeling ‘papery’, I wonder if they differ depending on where they’ve been printed? The colors of the covers in real life can be a little different to how they are pictured online, sometimes just a little less vibrant! 🙂
Hi! In my search to find some of these books second hand I’ve come across some which have a laminated finish whereas others have the matte, paper finish. Why are these different? Have you see these before?
Hi Charlotte! Thanks so much for stopping by. I absolutely love hunting for second hand books too, it’s one of my favourite weekend activities! I’ve noticed that Penguin sometimes change the paper stock or matte/laminate finish within a series. Though I’m afraid I’m not sure why this happens! I’m wondering if it might even be a regional printing difference? I hope you’ve found lots of treasures in your hunt for these titles!
Hi!
Just curious as to how I print the list out as when I press on the link it take me to the subscribe page which I subscribed too but there is nothing for me to print.
I found the list, the email was hiding in my spam folder
Hi Tahlia, see you sorted it all out, hope you found the list helpful!