Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achiles and the battkes and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon.

'... slowly uncoiling their tentacles... and making a soft purring sound to each other'

But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing, and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something - fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a 'suitable' match.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg.

As she begins to settle into Sanditon society, with the Parkers and the rich widow Lady Denham, a slew of new arrivals stir up emotions. Among them are relatives of Lady Denham, seeking her generous fortune; Miss Lambe, a rich heiress; and Sydney Parker, the handsome young man who catches Charlotte's eye. 

Smith's day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax. Virginia Woolf's masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923.

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.

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned".

'We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.'   

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.

Though they grow up and marry other people, theirs is a fierce love that cannot be tamed by the laws of society or cooled by the passage of time. Bronte's gothic tale explores the irresistible and dangerous nature of a love that knows no limits as it consumes the two people at its core.

 Stunned, his parents nevertheless try to raise him as they would any normal baby. By the time Benjamin is twelve, his parents realize their son is aging backwards, getting younger every day.

In the most renowned onstage law scene of all time, Portia proves herself one of Shakespeare’s most cunning heroines, disguising herself as a lawyer and vanquishing Shylock’s claims; meanwhile, Shylock triumphs on a humanitarian level with his plea for tolerance: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’

'The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.'

Simenon explores the complexity of parent child relationships and the bitterness of things left unsaid in this stark, confessional piece.

The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries, with their naivety, ludicrous single-mindedness and readiness for murder and destruction, might seem exaggerated - until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since.