Penguin Classics is an
imprint published by
Penguin Books, a subsidiary of
Penguin Random House. They are published in varying editions throughout the world including in the United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, South Africa, and South Korea. Books in this series are seen by literary critics as important members of the
Western canon, though many titles are translated or of non-Western origin; indeed, the series for decades from its creation included only translations, until it eventually incorporated the
Penguin English Library imprint in 1986. The first Penguin Classic was
E. V. Rieu's translation of
The Odyssey, published in 1946, and Rieu went on to become general editor of the series. Rieu sought out literary novelists such as
Dorothy Sayers and
Robert Graves as translators, believing they would avoid "the archaic flavour and the foreign idiom that renders many existing translations repellent to modern taste."