The Penguin Classics Book

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was said to have been the last person to have read everything. Nowadays most of us need to be more selective.

Spanning 4,000 years of literary history and encompassing 500 authors and 1,200 books, the Penguin Classics list is the ultimate reader’s authority. Sir Allen Lane’s Penguin paperbacks were the 1935 publishing notion that revolutionised our access to great literature, the ‘perfect marvels of beauty and cheapness’ that so impressed J. B. Priestley. From Ancient Mesopotamian legends, Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas and Japanese epics to the poetry of the First World War they form a map of the world in words from the ages.

Now, The Penguin Classics Book provides a sumptuous first reader's companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world. Within its pages you will find suggestions and recommendations to inspire new reading as well as insights into well-loved classics and beloved favourites. Drawing reading connections that stretch across the globe and through history, it’s a book to engage, illuminate and suggest new avenues of reading adventure. It is also a celebration of an abiding series of books, which began more than seventy years ago and has grown incrementally and idiosyncratically ever since.

Compiled by Creative Editor of Penguin Classics Henry Eliot and accompanied by sumptuous illustrations that provide a visual showcase of illustrative and design excellence, The Penguin Classics Book brims with stories both on and behind the page. An extraordinary tapestry of literary history, it is an essential for every book lover (and bookseller!).

“The Penguin Classics Book is a fascinating and forensically comprehensive resource for all true bookworms. Beautifully produced and packed with inspiration for those suffering from reader’s block, it was an immediate favourite with all at Waterstones.” - Nessa Urquhart, Waterstones Classics Buyer