Autobiography covers the 54-year old former Smiths frontman's life from his birth in Manchester on 22 May 1959 to the present day.

Penguin agreed to publish the 480pp title under the respected Classics imprint, ranking it alongside works from the like of Thomas Hardy, Samuel Beckett, William Blake, Robert Burns and William Shakespeare.

On its website the publisher noted: "Most pop stars have to be dead before they reach the iconic status the Morrissey has reached in his lifetime."

It added that in 2006 Morrissey was voted the second greatest living British icon after David Attenborough by BBC viewers.

Penguin Classics was started in 1946 with the classicist and publisher E.V.Rieu's translation of Homer's Odyssey and has since grown to 1,200 titles and spawned two more imprints: Modern Classics and Red Classics.