"It seems to me the biggest part of my education came from Penguin titles going way back to my youth. ...With the Penguin books all you need is an island for complete happiness."

• Seeking Hyde by Robert Mighall
  When I started work on the new Penguin Classics edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I was amazed how few people had actually read the book. Of course they all knew what it was about. They had seen the films and TV shows, laughed at the sketches and cartoons, and were fully conversant with the idea of a 'Jekyll-and-Hyde Personality'.
• Arthur Conan Doyle
  Laurie R. King looks at the life and influences of Arthur Conan Doyle.
• Anna Karenina
  Lisa Appignanesi on 'the greatness of Tolstoy's art' and on what makes Anna Karenina a masterpiece.
• Chaucer
  Helen Cooper takes us through the Chaucerian calendar. Plus: Q&A session on The Canterbury Tales with actor, playwright producer and director Martin Starkie.'
• de Nerval
  Hieronymo's Mad Againe: Richard Sieburth on Translating Nerval.
• Emile Zola
  Elaine Showalter discusses Zola and the department store: 'the site of a new feminine religion'.
• Emma Bovary
  The Real Emma Bovary: Geoffrey Wall deconstructs the nineteenth-century tragic heroine.
• Frances Burney
  Claire Harman on the extraordinary life of Fanny Burney.
• William Hazlitt
  Tom Paulin on Hazlitt, 'one of the sturdiest, most plain-spoken critics and artists'.
• Henry James
  Philip Horne on masks and masquerades in the work of Henry James.
• Edward Lear
  Jackie Wullschlager looks at the lives of Lear, the Owl and the Pussycat and what became of them.
• Mary Prince
  Fred D'Aguair looks at the moral world invoked by the slave narrative of Mary Prince.
• Christina Rossetti
  Jan Marsh discusses the works and relationships of the Pre-Raphaelite.
• George Bernard Shaw
  Joley Wood on the paradoxes of George Bernard Shaw.
• The Sixties
  Ann Charters on the turbulent decade and her classic anthology, The Portable Sixties Reader.
• Travel Writing
  Emily Perkins takes you on a journey through the best travel literature.
• Wilde Thing
  Robert Mighall on the wit, morality and enduring appeal of the works of Oscar Wilde.

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