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By Adam Freudenheim, Penguin Classics Publisher
Among my three favourite Classics, I would choose George Eliot's Middlemarch, as the most perfect novel in English. How do I admire it? Let me count the ways. It is packed full of ideas and beautifully written with incredibly memorable characters - and I always think of it as the closest thing to a 19th century Russian novel to be found in the same period in English.
Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory
The most sublime autobiography, for me, is Nabokov's Speak, Memory - it's stylistically very memorable, full of vivid recollections of a bygone childhood.
When I think of Modern Classics my current favourite is James Salter's first novel, The Hunters, from the 1950s. I've no particular interest in flying but this novel made me interested and is a page-turning, sparely written, tragic tale.
By Rachel Love, Editorial Co-ordinator, Penguin Classics and Reference
This novel is unashamedly gothic and indulges every possible desire you could have of heroines, villains, towers, turrets and secret chambers. I read it years ago but still remember how the poetic writing and heavy atmosphere impressed me.
Read Frankenstein as an allegory on the 'noble savage' and theories of civilisation, or simply as the spine-chilling story of a mad scientist, his gruesome experiments and a lonesome monster…..the choice is yours!
Mrs Dalloway epitomises for me the beauty of Virginia Woolf's style. A ground-breakingly modern 'stream-of-consciousness' novel for its day, Woolf weaves multiple narratives together seamlessly, but never loses touch with any of her individual characters in view of the larger picture.
By Natalie Ramm, Marketing Manager, Penguin Classics
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels are magic, and a wonderful form of escapism; the more of his books you read, the more vivid their world becomes. Journeying through and beyond the whole spectrum of humanity and range of emotions, at least several times, this novel is an epic for all the family.
Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
Don Quixote is my favourite literary character of all time: hilarious and tragic at once, This novel is also a great celebration of friendship - everyone needs a friend as loyal and entertaining as Sancho Panza, but they're few and far between.
Penguin's Poems for Life - selected by Laura Barber
Poetry can turn the most dull moments of life into something beautiful, Laura Barber illustrates wonderfully in this collection. From Leigh Hunt's Jenny Kissed Me to Phillip Larkin's An Arundel Tomb, this book makes life feel remarkable, always.
By Jill Foulston, Senior Commissioning Editor, Modern Classics
Yourcenar's novel is astonishing. She takes what I always thought of as a dry period in history and brings it to life by writing from deep within Hadrian's personality. He muses on famous battles, yes, but also on the stars, and on love. It's a history of emotion.
This is a rich and chilling illustration of the clash between American innocence and enthusiasm and European weariness, something James understood well. For me, it is the most poignant of his novels.
Two of my favourite poets, Keats and Marie, might have had something to say to one another. Both were entranced with the sound of the nightingale, and in Marie it becomes a symbolic gift from one lover to another. I love the magical worlds in Marie's Lais, and the fabulous beasts you meet in them.
By Alexis, Penguin Classics Editorial Senior Commissioning Editor
Lolita is infamous for the paedophilic love of Humbert Humbert for the child Lolita at its centre; but it is just as much about Nabokov's love affair with America and with the American language. He wrote Lolita in the backseat of their Oldsmobile while his wife Vera drove them across America's heartland, stopping in at roadside motels and chasing American butterflies along the way, and he clearly relished the pleasure of capturing America's idiom and its landscape.
Anna Karenina - in literature, happiness can be so dull, but Tolstoy's depiction of Kitty and Levin's domestic happiness is poignant for the account of loneliness behind it. Happiness is cherished here for its fragility.
From pets to St Augustine, Montaigne's Essays are encyclopaedic and accessible with an emphasis on how to live well and thoughtfully. He invented the idea of reading for pleasure and self-improvement.
