'In this painting of Leonardo's there was a smile so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human.'Often called "the first art historian", Vasari writes with delight on the lives of Leonardo and other celebrated Renaissance artists .Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for...

'Of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a Man of his age! - just old enough to be formal, ungovernable and to have the Gout - too old to be agreable, and too young to die.'The scheming and unscrupulous Lady Susan is...

A collection of charming and enduring stories that convey morals to young and old alike.Aesop was a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece around 620-564 BC. No writings by him exist (if they ever existed at all), yet numerous stories and tales...

In this masterpiece Kawabata, his brush dipped in silver, renders all the excruciating anguish and beauty of post-war Japan' Edmund WhiteWith the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters - born to...

GGenerally considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel, The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "roaring twenties", and a devastating expose of the Jazz Age'. Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of...

Discover our collectable Puffin Clothbound Classic edition of The Jungle BookPuffin Clothbound Classics are stunning collectable gift editions of some of the best-loved classics in the world - including this very special 130th anniversary edition of The Jungle Book.Young Mowgli escapes the vicious jaws...

Discover our collectable Puffin Clothbound Classic edition of The Railway ChildrenPuffin Clothbound Classics are stunning collectable gift editions of some of the best-loved classics in the world - including this charming edition of The Railway ChildrenFather is in trouble, and Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.' A comedic romance of mistaken identity, Twelfth Night begins...

HarperCollins is pround to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.' A tale of sin, punishment and atonement, The Scarlet Letter exposes the...

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.' Orphaned and sent to live with her uncle in his austere manor on the moors, Mary Lennox is a lonely and unhappy...

This October, Alexandre Dumas's enduring adventure classic will get a blockbuster treatment by action director Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Death Race 2000). With a star- studded cast that includes Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham, Milla Jovovich as the...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.' Revealing the truths...

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which gives direction to the character of Man.' Including Poe's...

A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased...

Jon Ronson has been on patrol with America's real-life superheroes and to a UFO convention in the Nevada desert with Robbie Williams. He's met a man who tried to split the atom in his kitchen and asked a conscious robot if she's got a...

Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (one of its few rivals in fame and breadth of appeal).As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language:...

'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability.Sense...

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World''Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.'Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. Here is one of Thomas Hardy’s most popular novels, soon to be released as a major motion picture in May 2015. ‘I shall do one thing in this life – one thing...

"After the war, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire pursues wealth, riches and the lady he lost to another man with stoic determination. When Gatsby finally does reunite with Daisy Buchman, tragic events are set in motion. Told through the eyes of his...

Through tight dialogue and absurd settings Kafka creates a maze-like prose to mimic the bureaucracy of early 20th century Germany, trapping his protagonist in an unlawful conviction that alters the path of his life.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning, clothbound,...

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects....

The Invisible Manand is a tense, unsettling novel about a terrifying scientific discovery from one of the masters of science fiction, H. G. Wells.Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These...

Three years have passed since the events narrated in Little Women, and the four March sisters are approaching adulthood, with all its accompanying challenges and expectations. Meg is preparing for her wedding, Beth continues to struggle with her health, Jo is more than ever...

The Divided Self,and R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience.First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing...

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The...

This beautiful hardback Ladybird Classic edition of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas is a perfect first illustrated introduction to the classic story for younger readers.It has been sensitively abridged and retold to make it suitable for sharing with young children from 5+, whilst...

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Holly Golightly is a glittering socialite mover and shaker: generally upwards, sometimes sideways and, every now and then, down. She's up all...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-SmithCelebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.'After taking an elixir created in his laboratory, mild mannered Dr Jekyll is transformed into the cruel and despicable Mr...

A beautiful hardback edition of one of the funny, heartbreaking, iconic coming-of-age novel.'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up.Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a...

The beautiful Nell is a thirteen-year-old orphan who lives with her grandfather in a London bric-a-brac shop. Worried about his charge's future, the old man secretly gambles at night in order to provide an inheritance for her, but finally loses the little he has...

Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home, the farm where she was kept as a slave.Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, she is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...