From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by Jessica Hische It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series launches with six perennial favorites to give as elegant gifts, or to showcase on your own shelves. U is for Undset. Set in fourteenth-century Norway, The Wreath, the first volume of Undset’s medieval trilogy begins the life story of Kristin Lavransdatter. Starting with Kristin’s childhood and continuing through her romance with Erlend Nikulaussøn, a dangerously charming and impetuous man, Undset re-creates the historical backdrop in vivid detail, immersing readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political undercurrents of the period. But the story she tells is a modern one, brought to life with clarity and lyrical beauty in this remarkable translation by Tiina Nunnally. Defying her parents and stubbornly pursuing her own happiness, Kristin emerges as a woman who loves with power and passion.

Happy Times in Norway is a moving and delicately humorous picture of Undset’s own blissful home life before her nation fell to the Nazi occupation. Captured here is the excitement of a Norwegian Christmas, the Seventeenth of May, and summer in the idyllic mountains, as well as the chaotic adventure of raising two energetic boys. With vivid detail and illuminating descriptions of the landscape, Happy Times in Norway is infused with the wish that those cherished days could come again.

Sigrid Undset is among the great modern writers of the twentieth century and was an adult convert to Catholicism. This forgotten treasure from the Nobel Prize–winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter is a fascinating collection of saints’ lives, a prophetic critique of modernity, and a surprisingly contemporary take on being Catholic—in particular a Catholic woman—in a sometimes-hostile secular world. Stages on the Road is a series of essays about the relationship between the Church and the modern world. In the spirit of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, Undset points to inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and blind spots of the modern secular mindset by introducing readers to the stories of somewhat-forgotten Catholic figures like St. Angela Merici and the English martyrs Margaret Clitherow and Robert Southwell—people who stood fast to their faith in the face of both intellectual and political hostility. Undset tackles such topics as religious freedom, Christian/Muslim relations, and the vocation of women.

The first historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter A Penguin Classic More than a decade before writing Kristin Lavransdatter, the trilogy about fourteenth-century Norway that won her the Nobel Prize, Sigrid Undset published Gunnar’s Daughter, a brief, swiftly moving tale about a more violent period of her country’s history, the Saga Age. Set in Norway and Iceland at the beginning of the eleventh century, Gunnar's Daughter is the story of the beautiful, spoiled Vigdis Gunnarsdatter, who is raped by the man she had wanted to love. A woman of courage and intelligence, Vigdis is toughened by adversity. Alone she raises the child conceived in violence, repeatedly defending her autonomy in a world governed by men. Alone she rebuilds her life and restores her family's honor—until an unremitting social code propels her to take the action that again destroys her happiness. First published in 1909, Gunnar's Daughter was in part a response to the rise of nationalism and Norway's search for a national identity in its Viking past. But unlike most of the Viking-inspired art of its period, Gunnar's Daughter is not a historical romance. It is a skillful conversation between two historical moments about questions as troublesome in Undset's own time—and in ours—as they were in the Saga Age: rape and revenge, civil and domestic violence, troubled marriages, and children made victims of their parents' problems.

Sigrid Undsetಙs Catherine of Siena is critically acclaimed as one of the best biographies of this well known, and amazing fourteenth-century saint. Known for her historical fiction, which won her the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928, Undset based this factual work on primary sources, her own experiences living in Italy, and her profound understanding of the human heart. One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, Undset was no stranger to hagiography. Her meticulous research of medieval times, which bore such fruit in her multi-volume masterpieces Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken, acquainted her with some of the holy men and women produced by the Age of Faith. Their exemplary lives left a deep impression upon the author, an impression Undset credited as one of her reasons for entering the Church in 1924. Catherine of Siena was a particular favorite of Undset, who also was a Third Order Dominican. An extraordinarily active, intelligent, and courageous woman, Catherine at an early age devoted herself to the love of God. The intensity of her prayer, sacrifice, and service to the poor won her a reputation for holiness and wisdom, and she was called upon to make peace between warring nobles. Believing that peace in Italy could be achieved only if the Pope, then living in France, returned to Rome, Catherine boldly traveled to Avignon to meet with Pope Gregory XI. With sensitivity to the zealous love of God and man that permeated the life of Saint Catherine, Undset presents a most moving and memorable portrait of one of the greatest women of all time.

The novel tells the story of Jenny Winge, a talented young Norwegian painter who goes to Rome to seek artistic inspiration but ultimately betrays her own ambitions and ideals. After falling into an affair with the married father of a would-be suitor, Jenny has a baby out-of- wedlock and decides to raise the child on her own. Her life ends tragically in suicide. Undset’s portrayal of a woman struggling toward independence and fulfillment is written with an unflinching, clear-eyed honesty that renders her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.