'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.
In January 1946, the Penguin Classics list was launched with E. V. Rieu's translation of The Odyssey. The series now consists of over 800 titles including the best in English, American, European, classical and non-western literature and an extensive range of philosophy, religion, art, history and politics titles.