In 1844, Charles Dickens took a break from novel writing to travel through Italy for almost a year and Pictures from Italy is an illuminating account of his experiences there. He presents the country like a magic-lantern show, as vivid images ceaselessly appear before his - and his readers' - eyes.
Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy
The Penguin Modern Classics edition of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction which, with its unique melange of fact and fiction, creates a compelling, tragic vision of America at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham," wrote Gore Vidal. "He was always so entirely there." Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern
One of the three seminal works of Japanese literature—a beautiful collection of poems and tales that offers an unparalleled insight into ancient Japan Along with the Tale of Genji and One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, the Tales of Ise is considered one of the three most important works of Japanese
'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded' Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays blend the intensely personal with the political to envisage a better world.
'INTENSE SEXUAL DESIRE IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD' A tale of art, sex, blood, junkies and whores in New York's underground, from cult literary icon Kathy Acker.
'Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.' A potted history of the women who pioneered feminism and changed the world. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the
