Black Classics - Penguin Classics Australia

When asked during the 1960s which of his many publishing achievements he was most proud of, Allen Lane had no hesitation in nominating the Penguin Classics. The series has grown and developed beyond its original conception, without changing beyond recognition, or compromising the ideals of the early translators and editors.

Popular Penguins: still only $9.95

Penguin Black Classics now available at the classic price of only $9.95.
See the list of titles available here. Find a Black Classics bookseller here.

now available
	De Profundis and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde An epistolic account of Oscar Wilde's spiritual journey while in prison, and describes his conversion from his previous belief in pleasure and decadence to his new, shocking conviction that 'the supreme vice is shallowness'. >>read more	The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis One of the most influential and well-loved books of Christianity which has stimulated religious devotion for over five hundred years. >>read more

previous releases
	The Discovery of America by the Turks by Jorge Amado For the first time in English: legendary Brazilian author Jorge Amado's spirited novella about Arab immigrants to South America. >>read more	The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray by Jorge Amado The great Brazilian novelist's comic masterpiece-published in a new translation for the centennial of Jorge Amado's birth. >>read more
	Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974 by William S. Burroughs This major collection of William Burroughs' letters gives an unprecedented insight into one of America's most incisive and influential writers. >>read more	The Portable Henry James by Henry James The entirely new Portable Henry James provides seven major tales-among them 'Daisy Miller,' 'The Turn of the Screw,' 'The Beast in the Jungle,' and 'The Jolly Corner' -as well as travel writing, correspondence, literary criticism amd more. >>read more
	The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt, Mrs Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry... >>read more	The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Oscar Wilde called James's chilling The Turn of the Screw 'a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale'. It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. >>read more
	Kim by Rudyard Kipling Filled with rich description and vivid characters, this beguiling coming of age story is considered to be Kipling's masterpiece. >>read more	The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings by Alexander Pope This new selection of Pope's work follows the path of his poetic genius over his lifetime. >>read more
	Dubliners by James Joyce In Dubliners, completed when Joyce was only twenty-five, we are given a definitive detailed portrait of the city. >>read more	The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce An oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. >>read more
	Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke These ten letters, written by Rainer Maria Rilke to a young officer cadet, are among the most beautiful, inspiring expressions of creativity. >>read more	The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling A new selection of magical storytelling and short writing from Rudyard Kipling. >>read more
	Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling Among Kipling's most loved works, Just So Stories have been continually in print since 1902. This new edition is part of a series of new Kipling works in Penguin Classics, >>read more	Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling's first collection of short stories, established his reputation and brought India to the British imagination. >>read more
	The Tain: Translated From the Old Irish Epic Tain Bo Cuailnge trans by Ciaran Carson This legendary tale is considered an epic of early Irish literature. >>read more	Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes & an Epilogue by George Bernard Shawl With Saint Joan, Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist, and it was this play that led to his Nobel Prize for Literature for 1925. >>read more
	Revelations of Divine Love trans by Elizabeth Spearing Julian, an anchorite in the great medieval city of Norwich describes an extraordinary series of 'showings' which she received from God. >>read more	The Bounty Mutiny by William Bligh et al The story of this famous mutiny has many beginnings and many endings but they all intersect on an April morning in 1789. >>read more
	The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories ed by Michael Newton This new selection of ghost stories, by Michael Newton, brings together the best of the genre. >>read more	The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights Volume 1 trans by Malcolm Lyons Tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death, tales of the voyages of Sindbad and more. >>read more
	The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights Volume 2 trans by Malcolm Lyons Tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death, tales of the voyages of Sindbad and more. >>read more	The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights Volume 3 trans by Malcolm Lyons Tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death, tales of the voyages of Sindbad and more. >>read more
	The Agricola and the Germania by Tacitus Agricola is a portrait of Julius Agricola – the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-law... >>read more	The Persians and Other Plays by Aeschylus Aeschylus, often known as the father of tragedy, was the first to raise the drama of classical Athens to a high art. . >> read more
	And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac In 1944, Kerouac and Burroughs, then still unknown writers, were arrested following a murder. Later they wrote this fictionalised account of that time. >>read more	A Modest Proposal and Other Writings by Jonathan Swift Here Swift unleashes the full power of his ironic armoury and corrosive wit, finding his targets with deadly precision. >>read more
	The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse by Geoffrey Bownas & Anthony Thwaite The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse contains over 700 poems from the third century to the twentieth, including both tanka and haiku. >>read more	On Architecture by Vitruvius The writings of the architect and engineer Vitruvius (c. 90–c. 20 BC) provide a fascinating picture of how the Romans planned and built their great structures and cities. >>read more
	A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov A masterpiece of Russian prose, Lermontov's only novel was influential for many later nineteenth-century authors, including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. >>read more	The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels Written when Engels was only twenty-four, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England. >>read more
	So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne by John Keats John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written. >>read more	The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin In July 1917 Lenin fled from Petrograd and later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote this impassioned, never-completed masterwork. >>read more
	The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays by John M Synge et al Riots greeted the first performance of The Playboy, yet now Synge's comedy centring around an apparent parricide and its cover-up is considered his masterpiece. >> read more	Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne This pioneering science fiction classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. >>read more
	The Alexiad by Anna Komnene The Alexiad is an important source of information on the Byzantine war with the Normans, and on the First Crusade offering a startlingly different perspective to that of Western historians. >>read more	The Qur'an trans by Tarif Khalidi In 114 chapters, or suras, The Qur'an provides the rules of conduct that remain fundamental to Muslims – most importantly the key Islamic values of prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and absolute faith in God. >>read more
	The Histories by Tacitus In AD 68 Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. In the surviving books of his Histories Tacitus describes the 'long but single year' when four emperors emerged in succession. >>read more	The Golden Bowl by Henry James Maggie Verver, a young American heiress, and her widowed father Adam, a billionaire collector of objets d'art, lead a life of wealth and refinement in London. >>read more
	Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments by Sappho By turns subversive, erotic and poignant, Sappho is one of the most versatile and exquisite poets in Classical literature. >>read more	Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy Serving on the jury at a murder trial, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devastated when he sees the prisoner – Katyusha, a young woman he seduced and abandoned years before. >>read more
	The Art of War by Sun-Tzu An elemental part of Chinese culture, The Art of War has become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business, or in relationships. >>read more	The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggs by Rainer Maria Rilke The only novel by one of the greatest writers of poetry in German, the semi-autobiographical Notebooks is an uneasy, compelling and poetic book that anticipated Sartre and is full of passages of lyrical brilliance. >>read more
	The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime ed by Michael Sims Collected here for the first time: the best crime fiction from the gaslight era and also stories by distinguished writers from outside the mystery and detective genres, including Sinclair Lewis, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells and William Hope Hodgson. >>read more	The Mahabharata trans by John D Smith The Mahabharata is the story of two warring factions of cousins – 100 demons in human form against five sons of gods. It is also a vital Hindu text on the nature of dharma – the right way for each person to live his or her life, and the only way to secure an improved lot in future births. >> read more
	Poems of John Keats by John Keats John Keats (1795-1821) asked that his gravestone carry only the phrase 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.' But although his life was short, he left work that sets his name among the greatest in English poetry. >> read more	Faust, Part II by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe After the sorrowful loss of his beloved Gretchen, the soul-sold Faust is tempted by the demon Mephistopheles with the grandest distractions of politics and power. >>read more
	The Pit and the Pendulum: The Essential Poe by Edgar Allan Poe This selection of critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates Poe's intense interest in aesthetic issues and the human mind. >>read more	The Talmud: A Selection trans & ed by Norman Solomon The Talmud is one of the most significant religious texts in the world, second only to the Bible in its importance to Judaism. As the Bible is the word of God, the Talmud applies that word to the lives of its followers. >>read more
	John Milton: Selected Poems by John Milton The poems of John Milton (1608-74) have inspired readers for generations and the selection in this new edition spans his entire career. >>read more	The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories by Henry Lawson In this selection Lawson is revealed as an author whose delightful, humorous, wry and moving short stories continue to delight generations of readers. This is the essential Lawson collection – the classic of Australian classics. >>read more
	The Anger of Achilles: The Iliad trans by Robert Graves Robert Graves's gripping retelling of The Iliad uses dark, satirical humour to take a revered epic back to its roots as popular entertainment, portraying a world of quarrelling kings and tarnished heroes. >>read more	Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Alienated from society, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'. >>read more
	Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Adams An instant bestseller when first published anonymously in 1880, Democracy is the quintessential American political novel. >> read more	The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Graham Coleman The Tibetan Book of the Dead is overwhelmingly the most influential of all Tibetan Buddhist texts in the West and one of the greatest works created by any culture. >>read more
	The Kabbalistic Tradition by Alan Unterman 'Kabbalah' is the general term for Jewish mysticism, specifically that which has been learned from a 'living master'. >>read more	The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan ed by Ed Glinert, intro by Mike Leigh Together, librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan created some of the best-loved musical works in the world, with a finely honed yet anarchic sensibility that found its expression in upturned logic and extravagant wordplay. >>read more
	The Poems of Robert Burns selected by Ian Rankin This new selection by Ian Rankin of verses and lyrics from Scotland's national poet, the 'Heaven-taught ploughman', reveals a writer capable of evoking tremendous sympathetic power from his readers. >>read more	Chronicles of the Crusades by Joinville & Villehardouin The Conquest of Constantinople and The Life of Saint Louis are eye-witness accounts of going to war in the service of God. >>read more
	Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan ed by Gordon Jarvie A nation rich with superstitions and storytellers, Scotland has a grand tradition of folk and fairy tales, and this collection provides an insight into the curses, blessings and creatures that populate it. >>read more	Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollet Squire Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels around Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister and manservant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. >>read more
	The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas Young D'Artagnan arrives in Paris to join the King's elite guards, but almost immediately finds he is duelling with some of the very men he has come to swear allegiance to - Porthos, Athos and Aramis, inseparable friends: the Three Musketeers. >>read more	Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin Tired of the glitter and glamour of St Petersberg society, aristocratic dandy Eugene Onegin retreats to the country estate he has recently inherited. >>read more