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Henry Eliot
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Penguin Classics: In Search of the Best Books Ever Written Hardcover – January 1, 2019

by Henry (Editor) Eliot (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 292 ratings
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**Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year**

The Penguin Classics Book is a reader's companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world.

Spanning 4,000 years from the legends of Ancient Mesopotamia to the poetry of the First World War, with Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas, Japanese epics and much more in between, it encompasses 500 authors and 1,200 books, bringing these to life with lively descriptions, literary connections and beautiful cover designs.

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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  3. Publication date
    January 1, 2019
  4. Dimensions
    7.95 x 1.61 x 10 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0241320852
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0241320853
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (January 1, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241320852
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241320853
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.58 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.95 x 1.61 x 10 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 292 ratings

About the author

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Henry Eliot

Henry Eliot

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Henry Eliot is the author of The Penguin Classics Book, The Penguin Modern Classics Book, Follow This Thread and Curiocity: An Alternative A-Z of London. An inveterate bookworm, Henry has tackled a number of bookish adventures, such as recreating Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; mounting a quest for the Holy Grail based on Malory's Morte d'Arthur; swimming across the Hellespont from Europe to Asia on the bicentenary of Lord Byron's crossing (the subject of Byron's 1810 poem, 'Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos'); and reading Ulysses in real-time on Bloomsday, 16 June, starting at 8am with grilled kidneys and finishing in the early hours of the following morning. He produced an interactive edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest in collaboration with Sir Ian McKellen and Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, which Apple named one of the '10 best apps of 2016', and for five years he was an editor of the Penguin Classics series in London. Today he is one of the QI research elves and hosts the podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics, in which he travels to discuss books with guests including Frank Cottrell Boyce, Louis de Bernières, Rachel Joyce, Patience Agbabi, Andrew Motion and Will Self.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
292 global ratings
Great condition and quality
5 Stars
Great condition and quality
I love it so much! Very recommended!!!
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Top reviews from the United States

bookishgal
5.0 out of 5 stars gift-worthy, beautiful book
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2021
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i adore this book.

obvi, it's a great ref book, and beyond that it's just so lovely. the cloth cover is textured & the pages are glossy and heavy (not flimsy.) it's def going to be a book i buy for the holidays for others
7 people found this helpful
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Panache
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource at a Great Price
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2022
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This is a beautiful book. It is rich in detail and framing the classics. Live it!
6 people found this helpful
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Martijn Niekus
5.0 out of 5 stars nice!
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023
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Thank you for offering on Amazon
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rkass
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book full of discoveries
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2019
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The headline says it all. This generously illustrated book is a work of art in itself, and I'm discovering new classics to explore on every page. Also interesting to learn about the history of the Penguin Classics line.
4 people found this helpful
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Joyce Redman
5.0 out of 5 stars Love this book
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2021
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Has a comprehensive listing of Penguin books from various covers. Very interesting to read.
2 people found this helpful
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D. Trent
4.0 out of 5 stars A for content, C- for manufacture
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2021
Verified Purchase
The book itself is excellent, but the manufacturing quality of it may be sub-par. I had an entire signature fall out, but didn't return it, because I figure it not an isolated occurrence.
4 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars very pleased
Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2022
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book in excellent condition....fast delivery...heart on invoice !!
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Wanting
5.0 out of 5 stars Great condition and quality
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2022
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I love it so much! Very recommended!!!
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Wanting
5.0 out of 5 stars Great condition and quality
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2022
I love it so much! Very recommended!!!
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3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Manuel E.
5.0 out of 5 stars Completeness
Reviewed in Canada on June 2, 2023
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Well bound
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Michael de Rooij
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting to flip through
Reviewed in the Netherlands on October 5, 2022
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Nice book, but it does not contain everything that has ever been in the Penguin Classics line.
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Chandan Das Gupta
5.0 out of 5 stars Visual feast
Reviewed in India on November 18, 2020
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Magnificient presentation..Now expecting a similar companion to the Modern Penguin Classics..
One person found this helpful
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Stefan Kümmel
5.0 out of 5 stars Standardwerk
Reviewed in Germany on January 12, 2020
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Standardwerk für jeden Buchliebhaber! Schöne Aufmachung
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BioDiplomacy
5.0 out of 5 stars How a flightless bird plans to circle the globe
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2019
Verified Purchase
For those who grew up with the distinctive colour-coded covers and elegant roundels of E. V. Rieu’s early Penguin Classics, Henry Eliot’s celebration of flightless bibliomania will evoke Proustian memories. Caesar's “The Conquest of Gaul “(L22, 1951, decked in imperial purple) will always be for me the crib smuggled into “Bolshie” Brown’s grim Latin lessons in Kirkcaldy High School; and the two volumes of “The Brothers Karamazov”* (L78/9, 1958), are impregnated with the whiff of Tilley lamp oil spilled onto them during a family holiday in the Orkneys, camping out in the empty Longhope manse on Hoy.
* No, illiterate Spellchecker, I did not mean “Kalamazoo”.

Penguin Classics have undergone faster evolutionary changes than have the birds. The first volume, Rieu’s prose translation of Homer’s “Odyssey”, provided for those with no Greek an entry to “the classics” - highlights of Greek or Roman literature. Their scope quickly extended to all European languages, including the controversial Nevill Coghill translation of bawdy Chaucerian Middle English into 20th century Queen’s English. Before the roundels and colour coding were abandoned, the scope had already widened to include a few non-European classics (translated from Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese).

Transformative change started in 1963 with Germano Facetti’s introduction of uniform black spines and photographed artworks on the covers. Then the category “classics” was reinterpreted to cover key works of the natural and social sciences as well as literature; and in all languages, not just translations. In principle, this made the series global, though the inclusion of English-language classics gave the series a numerical bias towards Anglo-Saxon attitudes. However, Eliot's arrangement of his guide to the entire series into chapters that group together works from specific historical periods and/or different geographical/cultural areas has the huge advantage of revealing the gaps which remain to be filled. The series now aspires to being a global library, with this book as its richly illustrated catalogue. By the time Penguin Books celebrate their centenary in 2035 we will be able to judge definitively whether this flightless bird has become our way to travel to all Earth's written cultures, turning the Tower of Babel into a 21st century wonder, the Library of Alexandria reborn.

The 2035 edition of this treasure-trove will be an even fatter Penguin, especially if it were also to cover those titles – not included here - which already enjoy the status of Penguin Modern Classics or Puffin Classics.
14 people found this helpful
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