Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) was the son of shoemakers who went on to have an illustrious academic career. He is credited with a renewal of emphasis on symbol and poetic meaning in architecture.

Mark Z. Danielewski is the bestselling author of several novels, including House of Leaves and the National Book Award Finalist Only Revolutions. He lives in New York City.

Richard Kearney is an author, a philosopher, and the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College.

A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin Classics

Rare is the work of philosophy that invites both the casual reader and the academic. Rare, too, is the text so universal that luminaries across an array of fields lay claim to it. Yet, that is precisely the case with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. A rumination on the spaces we inhabit and the dreams and memories that fill them, this seminal work continues to be studied and enjoyed by philosophers, architects, writers, and literary theorists alike.

This new edition features a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, whose bestselling novel House of Leaves drew inspiration from Bachelard’s writings, and an introduction by internationally renowned philosopher Richard Kearney who explains the book’s enduring importance and its role within Bachelard’s remarkable career.