Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

Jane Austen's final completed novel is set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath. It has been described as the most romantic of all her novels.

It follows the feisty, quick-witted Elizabeth Bennet as her parents seek to ensure good marriages for her and her sisters in order to secure their future. The protagonists Darcy and Elizabeth learn much about themselves and those around them and Austen's expertly crafted comedy characters of Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins demonstrate her great artistry as a...

Edward Prendick, the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the South Pacific, is set ashore on an island where he meets the mysterious Doctor Moreau. Horrified by the discovery that Moreau is performing vivisection on animals to form monstrous human hybrids, Prendick flees into the jungle. 

He interweaves a compelling, bitter-sweet romantic love story of the rivalry of two brothers for the hand of the heroine Anne Garland, played out against the loves of a lively gallery of other characters.

Gilbert Markham becomes suspicious when he begins to hear these stories, however it is only when he reads Helen’s diary that he learns the full cruelty that her husband subjected her to in her previous life.

Independent and spirited, Bathsheba Everdene owns the hearts of three men. Striving to win her love in different ways, their relationships with Bathsheba complicate her life in bucolic Wessex – and cast shadows over their own.

The Mill on the Floss, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.

'The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus'

An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, this collection of the infamous writer's works displays his brilliant, quick wit to its full glory.

This novel is a highly autobiographical account of the adolescence of Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses, and who comes to realize that before he can become a true artist, he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics and essential bigotry of his background in late 19th century Ireland.

Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto—of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary...

1841: Solomon Northup is a successful violinist when he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Taken from his family in New York State – with no hope of ever seeing them again – and forced to work on the cotton plantations in the Deep South, he spends the next twelve years in captivity until his eventual escape in 1853.

How did the leopard get its spots? Why do the tides ebb and flow? How did the elephant get its trunk? And how was the alphabet made?

First published in 1928, this tale of unrivalled imagination and wit quickly became the most famous work of women’s fiction. Sexuality, destiny, independence and desire – all come to the fore in this highly influential novel that heralded a new era in women’s writing.

But it is his symbolic art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin. In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.

'Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous.'