Routledge Classics
About the Book Series
"Routledge Classics is more than just a collection of texts...it embodies and circulates challenging ideas and keeps vital debates current and alive." โ 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 Routledgeโs 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.
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
1st Edition
By Mary Douglas
November 15, 2002
Is cleanliness next to godliness? What does such a concept really mean? Why does it recur as a universal theme across all societies? And what are the implications for the unclean? In Purity and Danger Mary Douglas identifies the concern for purity as a key theme at the heart of every society. In ...
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
1st Edition
By David Bohm
November 15, 2002
David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose ...
Gravity and Grace
1st Edition
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 ...
The Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel
2nd Edition
By David Lodge
November 12, 2002
Language of Fiction was the first book of criticism by the renowned novelist and critic David Lodge. His uniquely informed perspective - he was already the author of three successful novels at the time of its first publication in 1966 - and lucid exposition meant that the work proved a landmark of ...
To Hell With Culture
2nd Edition
By Herbert Read
November 12, 2002
Herbert Read was a maverick character in the cultural life of the twentieth century. A radical leader of the avant garde in the 1930s, and an anarchist revolutionary during the war years, by the time of his death in 1968 he had become a key figure at the heart of the British cultural establishment....
Stories and Tales
2nd Edition
By Hans Christian Andersen
August 30, 2002
A true classic of Western literature, Stories and Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, arguably the most notable children's writer of all, has delighted young and old for generations. This unique collection was first translated for George Routledge over 130 years ago. Completely reset, but ...
British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler
2nd Edition
By Katharine Briggs
August 29, 2002
In 1970 Katharine Briggs published in four volumes the vast and authoritative Dictionary of British Folktales and Legends to wide acclaim. This sampler comprises the very best of those tales and legends. Gathered within, readers will find an extravagance of beautiful princesses and stout ...
Archaeology of Knowledge
2nd Edition
By Michel Foucault
August 09, 2002
In France, a country that awards its intellectuals the status other countries give their rock stars, Michel Foucault was part of a glittering generation of thinkers, one which also included Sartre, de Beauvoir and Deleuze. One of the great intellectual heroes of the twentieth century, Foucault was ...
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
2nd Edition
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...
King Solomon's Ring
2nd Edition
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 ...
Man Meets Dog
1st Edition
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 ...
Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist
2nd Edition
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...






