Also known as Journey to the West, Wu Ch'êng-ên's Monkey is one of the Four Great Classical Novels in Chinese literature, translated by Arthur Waley in Penguin Classics. Monkey depicts the adventures of Prince Tripitaka, a young Buddhist priest on a dangerous pilgrimage to India to retrieve sacred scriptures accompanied by his three unruly disciples: the greedy pig creature Pipsy, the river monster Sandy - and Monkey. Hatched from a stone egg and given the secrets of heaven and earth, the i...

'Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too.

Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.'Virginia Woolf's delightful biography of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, which asks what it means to be human - and to be dog. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and acr...

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants. Is he in love or insane? This is a silver-tongued poet or a pervert?

Samuel Richardson's Pamela is a captivating story of one young woman's rebellion against the social order, edited by Peter Sabor with an introduction by Margaret A. Doody in Penguin Classics. Fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, alone in the world, is pursued by her dead mistress's son.

Although she is attracted to Mr B, she holds out against his demands and threats of abduction and rape, determined to protect her virginity and abide by her moral standards. Psychologically acute in its exploratio...

"Shamela" is a parody of Samuel Richardson's "Pamela", in which a virtuous servant girl long resists her master's advances and is eventually 'rewarded' with marriage. "Joseph Andrews", Fielding's first novel, can also be seen as a response to Richardson, as the lascivious Lady Booby sets out to seduce her comically chaste servant Joseph.