Ever since the first travellers reached the coast of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, the ocean has been one of the wellsprings of the human imagination. Its restless immensity has given us new horizons to cross, new possibilities to explore, and inspired wonder, heartache and heroism.

In The Penguin Book of the Ocean bestselling author James Bradley presents a dazzling selection of writing exploring this grandest of obsessions, combining fact and fiction, classical and contemporary, to create a collection like no other.

From Rachel Carson's luminous account of our planet's birth to the story of the wreck that inspired Moby-Dick, from Ernest Shackleton's harrowing account of his escape from Antarctica by open boat to Tim Winton's award-winning dissection of the dark side of surfing, The Penguin Book of the Ocean is a hymn to the mystery, beauty and majesty of the ocean, and to the poets and explorers it has inspired.