The Penguin English Library - New Book Collection

Penguin Books are pleased to announce the return of the Penguin English Library, a new, beautifully designed collection that celebrates 100 novels written in English.

Simon Winder, Publishing Director, said: "For some twenty years, beginning in 1963, millions of readers first encountered the most enjoyable works in the English language through the orange-spined Penguin English Library.  For many the series was a magic door, the start of a lifetime's engagement with the most vivid writing imaginable.  Now the spirit of the original Penguin English Library has inspired a fresh, contemporary new series."

Starting with Robinson Crusoe, the first novel in English and spanning two centuries until Dubliners published just before the First World War, this list (which includes titles in the original Penguin English Library) are some of the most scintillating, stimulating, bestselling and enlightening books in our culture.

Every novel has a stunning new look - award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith has played on the history of Penguin's design with elegant, modern covers and a colour update on the iconic orange spines that draws the series together.  Each book will also contain an engaging essay at the end by writers such as Virginia Woolf to Zadie Smith. This new collection provides the ultimate readers' editions and invites you to celebrate the pleasures of reading.

The first twenty titles are published on 26th April 2012, £5.99 (paperback) each:

'Persuasion' by Jane Austen

'Lady Audley's Secret' by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Brontë

'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins

'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens

'Oliver Twist' by Charles Dickens

'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens

'The Mill on the Floss' by George Eliot

'North and South' by Elizabeth Gaskell

'Far from the Madding Crowd' by Thomas Hardy

'The Private Memiors and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' by James Hogg

'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville

'The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales' by Edgar Allan Poe

'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley

'Dracula' by Bram Stoker

'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift

'The Warden' by Anthony Trollope

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' by Mark Twain

'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells

'The House of Mirth' by Edith Wharton


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