Books in Lake Classics series

Nine Greek biographies illustrate the rise and fall of Athens, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The high-spirited work of a young Dickens, The Pickwick Papers is the remarkable first novel that made its author famous and that has remained one of the best-known books in the world. In it the inimitable Samuel Pickwick, his well-fed body and unsinkable good spirits clad in tights and gaiters, sallies forth through the noisy streets of London and into the colorful country inns of rural England for a series of sparkling encounters with love and misadventure. From the wit of cockney bootblack Sam Weller to the unforgettable Fat Boy and rascals like the amorous Mr. Jingle and the unscrupulous lawyers Dodson and Fogg, The Pickwick Papers reels with joyous fantasy, infectious good humor, and a touch of the macabre—a classic work that G. K. Chesterton called “the great example of everything that made Dickens great…[a] supreme masterpiece.”

This early work by Susan Coolidge was originally published in 1885 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. In 'A Little Country Girl', orphaned Candace makes the first long trip of her life alone and gets to know her three second cousins, girls of similar ages. A virtuous story about living a good and true life. Sarah Chauncey Woolsey was born on 29 January 1835, into a wealthy and influential New England Dwight family, in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Her time as a medical worker provided Woolsey with the experience and self-determination in order to embark on her writing career. She has subsequently become famous as a children's author, writing numerous books under the pseudonym of 'Susan Coolidge'. Woolsey is best known for her classic children's novel What Katy Did (published in 1872)

In The Sketch-Book (1820-21), Irving explores the uneasy relationship of an American writer to English literary traditions. In two sketches, he experiments with tales transplanted from Europe, thereby creating the first classic American short stories, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Based on Irving's final revision of his most popular work, this new edition includes comprehensive explanatory notes of The Sketch-Book's sources for the modern reader.

Written when Engels was only twenty-four, and inspired in particular by his time living among the poor in Manchester, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England. Engels paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in the new industrial towns, and for miners and agricultural workers—depicting overcrowded housing, abject poverty, child labour, sexual exploitation, dirt and drunkenness—in a savage indictment of the greed of the bourgeoisie. His fascinating later preface, written for the first English edition of 1892 and included here, brought the story up to date in the light of forty years’ further reflection. A masterpiece of committed reporting and an impassioned call to arms, this is one of the great pioneering works of social history. Based on the original translation by Florence Wischnewetzky, this volume is edited by Victor Kiernan, whose foreword considers Engels’s friendship with Marx, and the book’s position as a seminal work of socialism. Also included are notes, a detailed index, new chronology and further reading and a revised forward.

Oliver Twist's famous cry of the heart - "Please, sir, I want some more" - has resounded with generations of readers of all ages. The author poured his own youthful experience of Victorian London's unspeakable squalor into this realistic depiction of a spirited young innocent's unwilling but inevitable recruitment into a scabrous gang of thieves. Masterminded by the loathsome Fagin, the underworld crew features some of Dickens's most memorable characters, including the vicious Bill Sikes, gentle Nancy, and the juvenile pickpocket known as the Artful Dodger.