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." – 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.
The Philosophy of Leibniz
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
March 17, 2025
Bertrand Russell’s study of the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz is one of his earliest books, providing a fascinating glimpse of his philosophical brilliance. It remains one of the most important books on this polymathic seventeenth-century thinker and the only book Russell wrote ...
A Life of One's Own
1st Edition
By Marion Milner
May 01, 2024
'This is what I really want. I want to discover ways to discriminate the important things in human life. I want to find ways of getting past this blind fumbling with existence.' - Marion Milner, from A Life of One’s Own. How often do we really ask ourselves, 'What will make me happy? What do I ...
An Experiment in Leisure
1st Edition
By Marion Milner
May 01, 2024
'Before I began this experiment I had always been haunted by the feeling that the surface of life, what everyone said about it, was quite different from the reality of life, that the important things that were happening all the time were on the whole quite different from what was said about them.'&...
Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381
1st Edition
By Rodney Hilton
May 01, 2024
The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was the first popular uprising in British history. Centred around the counties of South East England and rebelling against legislation to fix minimum wages, it was driven by agricultural labourers and the urban working classes but quickly gathered ...
On Immigration and Refugees
1st Edition
By Michael Dummett
May 01, 2024
The philosopher Michael Dummett was one of the sharpest and most prominent commentators and campaigners for the fair treatment of immigrants and refugees in Britain and Europe. On Immigration and Refugees was the only book he wrote on the topic and among one of the most eloquent and important ...
The Captive Wife
1st Edition
By Hannah Gavron
May 01, 2024
In 1965, at the age of twenty-nine, the young sociologist Hannah Gavron took her own life. A year later, the book based on the research she carried out for her thesis was published as The Captive Wife. Based on first-hand accounts of the lives of working-class and middle-class women in Kentish Town...
The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality
1st Edition
By Lynda Nead
May 01, 2024
The history of Western art is saturated with images of the female body. Lynda Nead's The Female Nude was the first book to critically examine this phenomenon from a feminist perspective and ask: how and why did the female nude acquire this status? In a deft and engaging manner, Lynda Nead explores ...
Are You an Illusion?
1st Edition
By Mary Midgley
September 28, 2023
In an impassioned defence of the importance of our own thoughts, feelings and experiences, the renowned philosopher Mary Midgley shows that there’s much more to our selves than a jumble of brain cells. Exploring the remarkable gap that has opened up between our understanding of our sense of self ...
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud
1st Edition
By Herbert Marcuse
September 28, 2023
Hailed as the 'Guru of the New Left' and a leading figure of 1960s counterculture and liberation movements, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse is amongst the most renowned and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Eros and Civilization is one of his best-known books and brought him ...
Everyday Life in the Modern World
1st Edition
By Henri Lefebvre
September 28, 2023
Philosopher, sociologist and urban theorist, Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was one of the great social theorists of the twentieth century and pioneered the theorization of everyday life and space. In this fascinating book, which became a manifesto for urban activism upon its first publication in the ...
General Economic History
1st Edition
By Max Weber
September 28, 2023
Sociologist, historian and political economist, Max Weber is one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His astonishing range and penetrating insights resulted in many influential books spanning religion, society, politics, and economics, permanently affecting the...
Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks
1st Edition
By Simone Weil
September 28, 2023
Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical minds of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist, worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War, before her tragic ...