Penguin English Library

The Penguin English Library is an imprint of Penguin Books. The series was first created in 1963[1] as a 'sister series'[2] to the Penguin Classics series, providing critical editions of English classics; at that point in time, the Classics label was reserved for works translated into English (for example, Juvenal's Sixteen Satires). The English Library was merged into the Classics stable in the mid 1980s,[1] and all titles hitherto published in the Library were reissued as Classics.

The imprint was resurrected in 2012 for a new series of titles.[2][3] The present English Library no longer seeks to provide critical editions; the focus is now 'on the beauty and elegance of the book'.[3]

History

1963 to 1986

The Penguin English Library aimed to publish 'a comprehensive range of the literary masterpieces which have appeared in the English language since the 15th century'.[1] All texts in the Library were published with an introduction and explanatory notes written and compiled by an editor; some with a bibliography as well.[2] Editors were also required to provide 'authoritative texts', using their own judgement in printing one, or in some cases creating their own.[2] The series was recognisable chiefly by its distinctive orange spine.[1][3]

Most, if not all, titles were reprinted as Penguin Classics following the merger of the two imprints in the mid 1980s. Some of these editions were superseded in the 1990s or later,[4] while some continue to be reprinted today as Classics. Additionally, the introductions to some titles survive in present-day Penguin Classics as appendices – for example, Tony Tanner's introduction to Mansfield Park.

2012 to present

The imprint was resurrected in name, though not so much in spirit, in 2012. Texts published in the series no longer include critical apparatus; they instead feature an essay by a notable literary figure, usually excerpted from prior work - for example, the essays of Harold Bloom, V. S. Pritchett and John Sutherland have been featured.[3] A portrait or photograph of the author remains printed on the inside of the front cover.[3] The focus is now on cover art, with each title designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith.[3]

List of English Library titles

This is an incomplete list of the titles in the Penguin English Library:^[citation needed]

1963 to 1986

All titles listed below are assumed to have lists of further reading appended and/or are no longer in print having been superseded by new editions, unless stated.

Author	Editor	Title	Series no.	Notes
Matthew Arnold	P. J. Keating	Selected Prose	58	Still in print as a Penguin Classic titled Culture and Anarchy and Other Selected Prose (2015).[5][6]
John Aubrey	Oliver Lawson Dick	Aubrey's Brief Lives	79
Jane Austen	Ronald Blythe	Emma	10
Jane Austen	Margaret Drabble	Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon	102
Jane Austen	Tony Tanner	Mansfield Park	16	Tanner's introduction to the novel is reprinted as an appendix in the 2003 Penguin Classics edition.[7]
Jane Austen	Anne Henry Ehrenpreis	Northanger Abbey	74	Does not include a bibliography.
Jane Austen	D. W. Harding	Persuasion	5
Jane Austen	Tony Tanner	Pride and Prejudice	72
Jane Austen	Tony Tanner	Sense and Sensibility	47
James Boswell	Christopher Hibbert	The Life of Samuel Johnson	116
Charlotte Brontë	Q. D. Leavis	Jane Eyre	11
Charlotte Brontë	Andrew and Judith Hook	Shirley	95
Charlotte Brontë	Tony Tanner (introduction) Mark Lilly	Villette	118
Emily Brontë	David Daiches	Wuthering Heights	1
Thomas Browne	C. A. Patrides	The Major Works	109
Edmund Burke	Conor Cruise O'Brien	Reflections on the Revolution in France	Unknown	Still in print as a Penguin Classic.
John Bunyan	Roger Sharrock	The Pilgrim's Progress	4	Reprinted with revisions as a Penguin Classic in 1987.
Samuel Butler	Peter Mudford	Erewhon	57
Samuel Butler	Richard Hoggart (introduction) James Cochrane	The Way of All Flesh	12
Lord Byron	Peter Gunn	Selected Prose	80
Thomas Carlyle	Alan Shelston	Selected Writings	65
Marcus Clarke	Stephen Murray-Smith	His Natural Life	51
William Cobbett	George Woodcock	Rural Rides	23
Wilkie Collins	J. I. M. Stewart	The Moonstone	14
Wilkie Collins	Julian Symons	The Woman in White	96
Daniel Defoe	Anthony Burgess (introduction) Christopher Bristow	A Journal of the Plague Year	15
Daniel Defoe	Pat Rogers	A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain	66
Daniel Defoe	Juliet Mitchell	Moll Flanders	107
Daniel Defoe	Angus Ross	Robinson Crusoe	7
Thomas De Quincey	Alethea Hayter	Confessions of an English Opium Eater	61
Thomas De Quincey	David Wright	Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets	56
Charles Dickens	George Woodcock	A Tale of Two Cities	54
Charles Dickens	John S. Whitley Arnold Goldman	American Notes for General Circulation	77
Charles Dickens	Gordon Spence	Barnaby Rudge	90
Charles Dickens	J. Hillis Miller (introduction) Norman Page	Bleak House	63
Charles Dickens	Trevor Blount	David Copperfield	8
Charles Dickens	Raymond Williams (introduction) Peter Fairclough	Dombey and Son	48
Charles Dickens	Angus Calder	Great Expectations	3
Charles Dickens	David Craig	Hard Times	42
Charles Dickens	John Holloway	Little Dorrit	25
Charles Dickens	P. N. Furbank	Martin Chuzzlewit	31
Charles Dickens	Michael Slater	Nicholas Nickleby	113
Charles Dickens	Angus Wilson (introduction) Peter Fairclough	Oliver Twist	17
Charles Dickens	Stephen Gill	Our Mutual Friend	60
Charles Dickens	Deborah A. Thomas	Selected Short Fiction	103
Charles Dickens	Michael Slater	The Christmas Books, Volume 1 (A Christmas Carol/The Chimes)	68
Charles Dickens	Michael Slater	The Christmas Books, Volume 2 (The Cricket on the Hearth/The Battle of Life/The Haunted Man)	69
Charles Dickens	Angus Wilson (introduction) Arthur J. Cox	The Mystery of Edwin Drood	92
Charles Dickens	Malcolm Andrews (introduction) Angus Easson	The Old Curiosity Shop	75
Charles Dickens	Robert Patten	The Pickwick Papers	78
Benjamin Disraeli	Thom Braun	Coningsby	192
Benjamin Disraeli	Thom Braun (text and notes) Rab Butler (introduction)	Sybil; or, The Two Nations	134
George Eliot	Unknown	Adam Bede	121
George Eliot	Barbara Hardy	Daniel Deronda	20
George Eliot	Peter Coveney	Felix Holt	84
George Eliot	W. J. Harvey	Middlemarch	2
George Eliot	A. S. Byatt	Mill on the Floss	120
George Eliot	Andrew Sanders	Romola	139
George Eliot	David Lodge	Scenes of Clerical Life	87
George Eliot	Q. D. Leavis	Silas Marner	30
Henry Fielding	R. F. Brissenden	Joseph Andrews	114
Henry Fielding	R. P. C. Mutter	Tom Jones	9
John Ford	Stephen Gill	Three Plays ('Tis Pity She's a Whore/The Broken Heart/Perkin Warbeck)	59
Elizabeth Gaskell	Peter Keating	Cranford/Cousin Phillis	104
Elizabeth Gaskell	Stephen Gill	Mary Barton	53
Elizabeth Gaskell	Dorothy Collin Martin Dodsworth	North and South	55
Elizabeth Gaskell	Alan Shelston	The Life of Charlotte Brontë	99
Elizabeth Gaskell	Frank Glover Smith	Wives and Daughters	46
George Gissing	Bernard Bergonzi	New Grub Street	32
Richard Hakluyt	Jack Beeching	Voyages and Discoveries	73
Thomas Hardy	C. H. Sisson	Jude the Obscure	131
Thomas Hardy	Susan Hill	The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales	124
Thomas Hardy	Ronald Blythe	Far from the Madding Crowd	126
Thomas Hardy	Martin Seymour-Smith	The Mayor of Casterbridge	125
Thomas Hardy	George Woodcock	The Return of the Native	122
Thomas Hardy	A. Alvarez (introduction) David Skilton (editor)	Tess of the D'Urbervilles	135
Thomas Hardy	David Wright	Under the Greenwood Tree	123
William Hazlitt	Ronald Blythe	Selected Writings	50
Nathaniel Hawthorne	Thomas E. Connolly (introduction and notes)	The Scarlet Letter and Selected Tales	52	The text of The Scarlet Letter is that of the authoritative Centenary Works edition, published by Ohio State University Press. Connolly's notes and the text are still included in the updated Penguin Classics edition, which has excised the tales and replaced his introduction with one by Nina Baym.
Henry James	Anthony Curtis	The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw	Unknown	Still in print as a Penguin Classic.
Samuel Johnson	Patrick Cruttwell	Selected Writings	33
Samuel Johnson	D. J. Enright	The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia	108
Ben Jonson	Michael Jamieson	Three Comedies (Volpone/The Alchemist/Bartholomew Fair)	13
Thomas Malory	John Lawlor (introduction) Janet Cowen	Le Morte d'Arthur, Volume 1	43
Thomas Malory	John Lawlor (introduction) Janet Cowen	Le Morte d'Arthur, Volume 2	44
Christopher Marlowe	J. B. Steane	The Complete Plays	37
Charles Maturin	Alethea Hayter	Melmoth the Wanderer	110
Herman Melville	Harold Beaver	Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories	29
Herman Melville	Harold Beaver	Moby-Dick	82
Herman Melville	Harold Beaver	Redburn	105
Herman Melville	George Woodcock	Typee	70
George Meredith	George Woodcock	The Egoist	34
John Milton	C. A. Patrides	Selected Prose	91
William Morris	Asa Briggs	News from Nowhere and Selected Writings and Designs	115
Thomas Nashe	J. B. Steane	The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works	67	Still in print as a Penguin Classic.
Thomas Love Peacock	Raymond Wright	Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle	45	Does not include a bibliography per se, but an editorial note is appended to the introduction, giving a brief list of editions and criticism. Still in print as a Penguin Classic.
Edgar Allan Poe	David Galloway	Selected Writings	28
Edgar Allan Poe	Harold Beaver	The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket	97
Edgar Allan Poe	Harold Beaver	The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe	106
Walter Scott	A. N. Wilson	Ivanhoe	143
Walter Scott	Angus Calder	Old Mortality	98
Walter Scott		The Heart of Mid-Lothian	129
Walter Scott	Andrew Hook	Waverley	71
Philip Sidney	Maurice Evans	Arcadia	111
Tobias Smollett	Angus Ross	Humphry Clinker	21
Laurence Sterne	A. Alvarez (introduction)	A Sentimental Journey	26
Laurence Sterne	Christopher Ricks (introduction) Graham Petrie	Tristram Shandy	19	Ricks's introductory essay is reprinted in the current Penguin Classics edition.
Robert Louis Stevenson	Jenni Calder	Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories	117
Jonathan Swift	Michael Foot (introduction) Peter Dixon and John Chalker (notes)	Gulliver's Travels	22
William Makepeace Thackeray	John Sutherland Michael Greenfield	The History of Henry Esmond	49
William Makepeace Thackeray	J. I. M. Stewart (introduction) Donald Hawes	The History of Pendennis	76
William Makepeace Thackeray	J. I. M. Stewart	Vanity Fair	35
Edward John Trelawny	David Wright	Records of Shelley, Byron and The Author	88
Anthony Trollope	Stephen Wall	Can You Forgive Her?	86
Anthony Trollope	John Sutherland	Phineas Finn	85
Anthony Trollope	John Sutherland Stephen Gill	The Eustace Diamonds	41
Anthony Trollope	Laurence Lerner (introduction) Peter Fairclough	The Last Chronicle of Barset	24
Anthony Trollope	John William Ward (introduction) Robert Mason	North America	38
Mark Twain	Justin Kaplan	A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court	64
Mark Twain	Malcolm Bradbury	Pudd'nhead Wilson	40
Mark Twain	Peter Coveney	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	18
John Webster	D. C. Gunby	Three Plays (The White Devil/The Duchess of Malfi/The Devil's Law Case)	81
Gilbert White	Richard Mabey	The Natural History of Selborne	112
Oscar Wilde	Hesketh Pearson	De Profundis and Other Writings	89
Richard Steele and Joseph Addison	Angus Ross	Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator	130
	Gāmini Salgādo	Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets	83
	Peter Happé	Four Morality Plays (The Castle of Perseverance/Magnyfycence/King Johan/Ane satire of the thrie estaitis)	119
	Peter Happé	English Mystery Plays	93
	Keith Sturgess	Three Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies (Arden of Faversham/A Yorkshire Tragedy/A Woman Killed with Kindness)	39
	Peter Happé	Tudor Interludes	62
Cyril Tourneur John Webster Thomas Middleton	Gāmini Salgādo	Three Jacobean Tragedies (The Revenger's Tragedy/The White Devil/The Changeling)	6	Authorship of The Revenger's Tragedy (which was published anonymously) was then attributed to Tourneur; today it is generally thought to have been written by Middleton.[8]
Sir George Etherege William Wycherley William Congreve	Gāmini Salgādo	Three Restoration Comedies (The Man of Mode/The Country Wife/Love for Love)	27	Still in print as a Penguin Classic.
John Marston Thomas Middleton Ben Jonson Philip Massinger	Gāmini Salgādo	Four Jacobean City Comedies (The Dutch Courtesan/A Mad World, My Masters/The Devil Is an Ass/A New Way to Pay Old Debts)	101
Horace Walpole William Beckford Mary Shelley	Mario Praz (introduction)	Three Gothic Novels (The Castle of Otranto/Vathek/Frankenstein)	36	Still in print as a Penguin Classic. The text of Frankenstein is that of the revised 1832 edition. The cover art is a detail from J. H. Fuseli's 1781 oil painting The Nightmare, and the detail was retained when the book was first reprinted as a Penguin Classic in 1986. However, reprints from 2003 onwards[9] feature the detail of a photograph by Sir Simon Marsden instead.[10]

2012 to present

Author	Title	Essayist	Essay	Notes
Elizabeth von Arnim	Elizabeth and Her German Garden
Jane Austen	Persuasion	Elizabeth Bowen	Unknown
Jane Austen	Pride and Prejudice	J. B. Priestley	Austen Portrays a Small World with Humour and Detachment
Charlotte Brontë	Jane Eyre	Elaine Showalter	Jane Eyre	The essay is from Showalter's A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)
Emily Brontë	Wuthering Heights	Virginia Woolf	Wuthering Heights
Lewis Carroll	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Virginia Woolf	Lewis Carroll
G. K. Chesterton	The Man Who Was Thursday	Unknown	Unknown
Wilkie Collins	The Moonstone	T. S. Eliot	The Moonstone
Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	David Blewett	The Island and the World	The essay is taken from a chapter in Blewett's Defoe's Art of Fiction: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).
George Eliot	Silas Marner			Correspondence between John Blackwood and George Eliot, and two contemporary reviews
Henry Fielding	Tom Jones	R. P. C. Mutter	Tom Jones	The essay is a reprint of Mutter's introduction to the original Penguin English Library edition (see above).
F. Scott Fitzgerald	The Great Gatsby
Elizabeth Gaskell	North and South	V. S. Pritchett	The South Goes North	The essay is from Sir Victor's 1942 collection of essays, In My Good Books.
Nathaniel Hawthorne	The Scarlet Letter	D. H. Lawrence	Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter	The essay is from Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature.
James Joyce	Dubliners
Katherine Mansfield	The Garden Party
Baroness Orczy	The Scarlet Pimpernel
George Orwell	Animal Farm
Walter Scott	Ivanhoe	A. N. Wilson	Ivanhoe
Mary Shelley	Frankenstein	Paul Cantor	The Nightmare of Romantic Idealism	The text is that of the 1985 Penguin Classics edition, edited by Maurice Hindle, i. e. the 1832 text. The essay is taken from a chapter in Cantor's book, Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Laurence Sterne	Tristram Shandy	V. S. Pritchett	Tristram Shandy
Bram Stoker	Dracula	John Sutherland	Why Does the Count Come to England?	The essay is taken from Sutherland's Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in Nineteenth Century Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Mark Twain	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Harold Bloom	Unknown
Evelyn Waugh	Brideshead Revisited
Oscar Wilde	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Peter Ackroyd	-	The essay is a reprint of Ackroyd's introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition.

References

1. Kelly, Stuart. "The new Penguin English Library is a far cry from its 1963 version". The Guardian.
2. "About Penguin Classics". Penguin Classics.
3. Akbar, Arifa. "A whole new chapter for the Penguin English Library". Independent. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
4. Andrew Sanders. Wooten, William; Donaldson, George (eds.). Reading Penguin: A Critical Anthology. p. 112. ISBN 1443850829.
5. Keating, Peter. "What's new". Peter Keating: Author and vegetarian cook. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
6. "Culture and Anarchy and Other Selected Prose". Penguin UK. Penguin. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
7. Austen, Jane (2003). Mansfield Park. Penguin Classics. pp. 440–465. ISBN 9780141439808.
8. Maus, Katharine (1998). Four Revenge Tragedies. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics. p. i. ISBN 0192838784.
9. Patton, Phil. "Reflections on a Penguin-iversary". AIGA. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
10. "Back cover of Three Gothic Novels (Classics, 2003)".