Hello and welcome back to the Penguin podcast and another episode of Ask Penguin. I'm your host,

Rihanna Dylan. Today, I'm back here at Penguin Books tucked away in our ever more book-filled

studio, where as usual, I'm going to try and answer some of our listeners' questions.

Well, actually, I'm going to find some experts to answer them for you, because as the Penguin

podcast, we're lucky enough to be able to speak with loads of the incredible authors whose work

is published right here at Penguin, as well as the people who work in all sorts of other

parts of the business. So if you have a question that you'd like to ask Penguin, this is the place

to send it. Go on, we'd be so

pleased to hear from you. You can get in touch by emailing penguinpodcast at penguin randomhouse.combe.

And you can find that address in the show notes. Or if you don't have a question, perhaps there's

just a general topic that you'd like us to cover, or an author that you'd love to hear as a guest.

Do let us know. We cover all sorts of themes and genres on the show, but today we're talking about

a very specific kind of fiction. Our episode this week is all about classics and modern classics.

But what does that word classics actually mean? I mean, what makes a book a classic? Is that quite an intimidating label? Are there some stories that everyone should really read? What is a modern classic? Later, we'll be chatting with author Jill Hornby about her detailed research into the Austin family that led her to write

her best-selling novel, Miss Austin. But first, when it comes to the classics, there's one person

that literally everyone in Penguin said we should talk to. Here with me today is author, editor

and fellow podcaster, Henry Elliott. Henry's the author of the Penguin Classics book and the Penguin Modern Classics book.

You can see why you've asked him here.

He's also a QI elf and hosts the podcast on the road with Penguin Classics.

So I think if anyone can help unpick this, it's Henry Elliott.

Hello, Henry. Thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thanks for having me. Great to be here. So before we get into any more details or recommendations, which I know you're going to help us with, I think let's try and understand. What does it mean when a book is described as a classic or a modern classic? Yeah, this is the big question, isn't it? And it's surprisingly tricky to pin it down, and lots of people have come up with definitions for what a classic means. My favourite definition is one that Ezra Pound, the poet came up with. And he published this book called The ABC of Reading, which sounds better than it is actually. It's a kind of it's a kind of book for critiquing poetry.

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