Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

Neil MacGregor

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John Steinbeck

Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are dashed as Lennie becomes a victim of his own strength. Tackling universal themes of friendship and shared vision, and giving a voice to America's lonely and dispossessed, Of Mice and Men remains Steinbeck's most popular work, achieving success as a novel, Broadway play and three acclaimed films.

Of Mice and Men

Penguin Modern Classics

Franz Kafka

Michael Hoffman

One morning, ordinary salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach. Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, is one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction, and is accompanied here by two more classic stories.

Metamorphosis

Arthur Conan Doyle

Emerging from their smoke-filled rooms at 21B Baker Street, Holmes and Watson grapple with the forces of crime that stalk the streets of London. From the first story, 'A Scandal in Bohemia' where Holmes is foiled by the quick-thinking of 'the woman', Irene Adler, to what was presumed to be the last, 'The Final Problem' where Holmes at last comes face to face with the diabolical Professor Moriarty, this selection is presents the very best of Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

Sylvia Townsend  Warner

Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft.

Lolly Willowes

Leo Tolstoy

Dmitry Andreich Olenin, in the hope of escaping the hollowness of his privilege, joins the army and heads to the Caucasus. There among the foothills, he will meet the Cossacks: a people he considers to be at one with the land. In their company he will hunt, he will drink, he will fall in love and, slowly, he will begin to understand that between people, between cultures, there is often a space that cannot be traversed...

The Cossacks

Kate Chopin

This candid portrayal of a woman who refuses to accept her allotted role as wife and mother caused an outcry when it was published in 1899. It is the story of Edna Pontellier, who spends the summer on the Gulf of Mexico with her businessman husband and her two sons. When an illicit romance awakens unfamiliar ideas and longings in Edna, she discovers a new identity for herself, but cannot hope for understanding in the stifling attitudes of Louisiana society.

The Awakening

Virginia Woolf

'The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful'. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London's streets in search of a pencil. The account of her journey - the people, the places, the pleasure - soon becomes one of the great paeans to city life. This collection also includes other wonderful essays, such as 'How Should One Read a Book?' and 'The Sun and the Fish'.

Street Haunting

Sam Selvon

Sam Selvon is now widely considered to be one of the greatest chroniclers of the West Indian emigrant experience. His evocation of voice, of place, of longing, defined for many the experience of a generation. Describing life in the Caribbean and day-to-day adventures in London, this collection features many his most acclaimed stories, including 'The Village Washer', 'A Drink of Water' and 'The Cricket Match'.

Calypso in London

Anaïs Nin

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for fleeting romance. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out...

A Spy In The House Of Love

Italo Calvino

Twelve enchanting and fantastical stories about the evolution of the universe from the giant of Italian literature, Italo Calvino. His characters - whether human, dinosaur or mollusc - disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms - and have time for a love life.

Cosmicomics

Yuko Tsushima

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time, and remains one of Yuko Tsushima's most beloved works.

Territory of Light

Arthur Schnitzler

Like his Viennese contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzler 
was a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human consciousness. His novella Dream Story tells the tale of a young married man who, after a discussion with his wife about their fantasises, embarks on a eery reverie through Vienna's underbelly.

Dream Story

Saki

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. 
 
With his signature flair and razor-sharp wit, Saki is an undisputed master of the short story. His tales are by turns hilarious, festive, supernatural and macabre, but all offer fabulous, bite-sized satires of a decadent upper-class Edwardian world. 
 
'Saki, like a chivalrous highwayman, only robs the rich: behind all these stories is an exacting sense of justice . . . they dazzle and delight' Graham Greene

Reginald's Christmas Revel

Dylan Thomas

For a boy growing up in an ordinary town in Wales, summer is 'always radiant, rainless, lazily rowdy and skyblue', and it always snows at Christmas. Weaving through the course of a year, this selection of Dylan Thomas's most evocative and bittersweet stories depicts silent winter mornings by the sea, glorious holidays in the countryside and lovelorn nights in the pub. It ends with 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', perhaps the most beautiful story of the festive season ever written.

A Child's Christmas in Wales

Lafcadio Hearn

In this haunting collection, the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore stalk the page. Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in Ireland, to create these chilling tales. They are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.

Of Ghosts and Goblins

Yasunari Kawabata

Tired of the bustling city, a man takes the train through the snow to Japan's mountains, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, she is tightly bound by the rules of a rural geisha, and lives a life of servitude and seclusion. Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata's masterpiece, is a delicate, subtle meditation on love and its limits.

Snow Country

Françoise Sagan

Published when she was only eighteen, Françoise Sagan's astonishing novella, Bonjour Tristesse, became an instant bestseller. It tells the story of Cécile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences.

Bonjour Tristesse

Elizabeth Von Arnim

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim's brilliant, irrepressible novella, tells the tale of four very different women who, on answering an advertisement in The Times, find themselves far away from the drizzle of London and instead in the warmth of an Italian sun. There, alongside the lapping of the Mediterranean, the women's spirits begin to shift, and quite unexpected changes take place.

The Enchanted April

Truman Capote

Holly Golightly is a glittering socialite mover and shaker: generally upwards, sometimes sideways and, every now and then, down. She's up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She's a shoplifter, a delight, a drifter, a tease. In short, she's an icon. Truman Capote's most famous work, Breakfast at Tiffany's is the ultimate ode to dreamers.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Jane Austen

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-Smith. 
 
 Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. 
 
Recently widowed, the unscrupulous and beautiful Lady Susan Vernon is determined to scheme her way through high society in the hope of a profitable new match - all while trying to marry off her unfortunate daughter. Told through a series of letters, Jane Austen's magnificent first novella is as subversive as it is charming. 
 
'The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste' - Virginia Woolf

Lady Susan

George Orwell

Today, George Orwell is perhaps most famous for his iconic novels - Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm - but in his own time it was his remarkable nonfiction writing which drew most attention. Kind-hearted, intelligent, often funny, occasionally indignant, always insightful: his essays are some of the best ever written. Among others, this selection includes 'Shooting an Elephant', 'Such, Such Were the Joys' and 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

Shooting an Elephant

Hans Christian Andersen

Step into the enchanting world of Hans Christian Andersen with this collection of timeless Christmas tales, capturing both the magic and melancholy of the season. This selection brings together Andersen’s most beloved works, from the magical journey of ‘The Snow Queen’ to the heart-breaking ‘The Little Match Girl’, and the tender reflections on the passage of time in ‘The Fir Tree’. Together these stories show how Andersen transformed the traditional fairy tale with his unique ability to blend exuberant whimsy and profound insight.

The Snow Queen

Nella Larsen

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-Smith. 
 
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. 
 
Clare Kendry, elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she reunites with childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves. A taut exploration of race and gender, Passing is one of the Harlem Renaissance's greatest works. 
 
'A tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life' The New York Times

Passing

Penguin Classics

Albert Camus

Jean-Baptiste Clamence - refined, handsome, forty, a former successful lawyer - is in turmoil. Over several drunken nights he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. He talks of parties and his debauchery, of Parisian nights and the Aegean sea, and, ultimately, of his self-loathing. One of Albert Camus' most famous works, The Fall is a brilliant, complex portrayal of lost innocence and the true face of man.

The Fall

Edith Wharton

A novella regarded by Edith Wharton as one of her very best, Summer tells the tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams set against the backdrop of a lush summer in rural Massachusetts. A sensation on first publication, its honest depiction of a young woman attempting to live on her own terms remains as vital today as it was in 1917.

Summer

O. Henry

O. Henry is one of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century and a true master of the short story. This selection of tales ranges from Christmas in New York to the cattle-lands of Texas, taking in con men, clerks, shop assistants, tramps and tricksters. They all highlight O. Henry's comic eye, his gift for evoking speech and setting, and his unique approach to life's quirks of fate.

The Gift of the Magi

Clarice Lispector

The small incidents of life become moments of inner revelation in the luminous writing of Clarice Lispector. A woman contemplating a vase of roses after a nervous breakdown; a tangled mother-daughter relationship; a man's abandonment of a dog; an animal in a zoo: each one leads to mystery and self-discovery, delight and devastation.

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