"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 Bertrand Russell
March 17, 2025
In An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, Bertrand Russell returns to philosophy after a long period of writing about education, religion and marriage. Investigating how we can be justified in what we know and how we can reconcile knowledge of the physical world with immediate sensory knowledge, ...
By Peter Strawson
March 17, 2025
Sir Peter Strawson (1919–2006) was one of the leading British philosophers of his generation and an influential figure in a golden age for British philosophy between 1950 and 1970. Individuals, his most important book, is a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it presents ...
By Bertrand Russell
March 17, 2025
Bertrand Russell's writings on logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language and epistemology are among the most influential of the twentieth century. Logic and Knowledge presents Russell's very best and most important work on these topics in a single volume, which by placing philosophical logic at ...
By Bertrand Russell
March 17, 2025
“To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things – this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship.” —Bertrand Russell Mysticism and Logic is one of Russell's most celebrated collection of essays. They not ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.'&...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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 ...