"Routledge Classics is more than just a collection of texts...it embodies and circulates challenging ideas and keeps vital debates current and alive." – Hilary Mantel
The Routledge Classics series, with titles by Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mary Midgley, was launched in 2001. The series contains the very best of Routledge’s publishing over the past century or so, books that have, by popular consent, become established as classics in their field. Drawing on a fantastic heritage of innovative writing published by Routledge and its associated imprints, this series makes available in attractive, affordable form some of the most important works of modern times.
In 2021 we are delighted to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Routledge Classics series with the publication of fifteen stellar new titles. All include new forewords or introductions and eye-catching cover designs, a hallmark of the series.
By Konrad Lorenz
August 09, 2002
Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. He did more than ...
By Frances Yates
July 02, 2001
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the contribution made by Dame Frances Yates to the serious study of esotericism and the occult sciences. To her work can be attributed the contemporary understanding of the occult origins of much of Western scientific thinking, indeed of Western ...
By Alasdair MacIntyre
July 08, 2003
A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides ...
Edited
By W.B Yeats, William Blake
November 15, 2002
William Blake is a poet without parallel, who remains a source of wisdom and inspiration to countless individuals throughout the world. This selection was commissioned in 1905 by the firm of George Routledge from W.B. Yeats, who had previously been one of the pioneer editors of Blake's ...
By Simone Weil
November 12, 2002
Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the farmer to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of ...
By Theodor Adorno
December 07, 2001
The Stars Down to Earth shows us a stunningly prescient Adorno. Haunted by the ugly side of American culture industries he used the different angles provided by each of these three essays to showcase the dangers inherent in modern obsessions with consumption. He engages with some of his most ...
By Karl Popper
August 09, 2002
Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of...
By Konrad Lorenz
August 09, 2002
In this wonderful book, the famous scientist and best-selling author, Konrad Lorenz, 'the man who talked with animals', enlightens and entertains us with his illustrated account of the unique relationship between humans and their pets. Displaying Lorenz's customary humanity and expert knowledge of ...
By D.T. Suzuki
August 02, 2002
If the Western world knows anything about Zen Buddhism, it is down to the efforts of one remarkable man, D.T. Suzuki. The twenty-seven year-old Japanese scholar first visited the West in 1897, and over the course of the next seventy years became the world's leading authority on Zen. His radical and...
By Karl Popper
March 29, 2002
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company....
By A.J.P. Taylor
May 23, 2001
One of A.J.P. Taylor's best-known books, The Course of German History is a notoriously idiosyncratic work. Composed in his famously witty style, yet succinct to the point of sharpness, this is one of the great historian's finest, if more controversial, accomplishments. As Taylor himself noted,...
By Iris Murdoch
May 23, 2001
Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored ...