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 2026 we are delighted to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Routledge Classics series with the publication of seven stellar new titles. All include new prefaces, forewords, introductions or postscripts as well as eye-catching cover designs, a hallmark of the series.
Anthropology and Modern Life
1st Edition
By Franz Boas
March 29, 2021
Franz Boas (1858–1942) is widely regarded as the founder of American anthropology. He influenced an astonishing variety of scholars and researchers, from the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, to the philosopher W. E. B. DuBois, and novelist Zora Neale Hurston. Towards the end of his ...
Autistic States in Children
3rd Edition
By Frances Tustin
March 29, 2021
Frances Tustin (1913-1994) was one of the first professionally trained child psychotherapists in Britain. Although internationally recognised for her pioneering therapeutic work with autistic children, her approach is considered by some to be controversial, as her psychogenic view of childhood ...
Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia
2nd Edition
By Audrey Richards
March 29, 2021
Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was a leading British anthropologist of the twentieth century and the first woman president of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Based on fieldwork conducted at a time when the discipline was dominated by male anthropologists, Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony ...
Economic Philosophy
1st Edition
By Joan Robinson
March 29, 2021
Joan Robinson (1903-1983) was one of the greatest economists of the twentieth century and a fearless critic of free-market capitalism. A major figure in the controversial ‘Cambridge School’ of economics in the post-war period, she made fundamental contributions to the economics of international ...
The Origin and Goal of History
1st Edition
By Karl Jaspers
March 29, 2021
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher and one of the most original European thinkers of the twentieth century. As a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, he had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. He was Hannah Arendt’s supervisor ...
The World of Goods
1st Edition
By Mary Douglas, Baron Isherwood
March 29, 2021
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned ...
Portraits from Memory: And Other Essays
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
November 30, 2020
‘I have come to think that one of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence.’ – Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory Portraits from Memory is one of Bertrand Russell’s most self-reflective and engaging books...
The Problem of China
1st Edition
By Bertrand Russell
November 30, 2020
'China, by her resources and her population, is capable of being the greatest power in the world after the United States.' Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China In 1920 the philosopher Bertrand Russell spent a year in China as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Beijing (then Peking), ...
The Way of Man: According to the Teachings of Hasidism
2nd Edition
By Martin Buber
April 23, 2020
Martin Buber was one of the most significant religious thinkers of the twentieth century. In this short and remarkable book he presents the essential teachings of Hasidism, the mystical Jewish movement which swept through Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Told through ...
England Under the Tudors
1st Edition
By G.R. Elton
October 31, 2018
‘Anyone who writes about the Tudor century puts his head into a number of untamed lions’ mouths.’ G.R. Elton, Preface Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) was one of the great historians of the Tudor period. England Under the Tudors is his major work and an outstanding history of a crucial and turbulent ...
Professional Ethics and Civic Morals
1st Edition
By Emile Durkheim
September 25, 2018
Émile Durkheim is one of the founding fathers of sociology and Professional Ethics and Civic Morals is one of his most neglected yet insightful works. Durkheim's view that the instability of industrial society was connected to the decline of religion and his characterization of the state as ...
The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
1st Edition
By Peter Strawson
September 25, 2018
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. The Bounds of Sense is one of the most influential books ever written about Kant’s philosophy, and is one of the key ...