King Lear, William Shakespeare

Oscar Wilde’s only novel is the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty.In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England.

Taking young Harriet Smith under her wing, Emma sets her sights on finding a suitable match for her friend. Chided for her mistakes by old friend Mr Knightley, it is only when Harriet starts to pursue her own love interests that Emma realises the true hidden depths of her own heart.

Their story, which encompasses violence, revenge, love and redemption, is grippingly played out against the backdrop of the terrifying brutality of the French Revolution.

Jenny, whose partial deafness allows her a role as an observer of the rest, Anne who Denis falls for rather hard but who prefers Gombauld and Mary whose virginity has become a burden she feels she must rid herself of – but who?

His interpretation of the biblical story of Genesis is vivid and intense in its language, justifying the actions of God to men. In his sequel poem, Paradise Regained, Milton shows Satan trying to seduce Jesus in a similar way to Eve, but ultimately failing as Jesus remains steadfast.

Rewriting the traditional family saga and the pageant, these unsettling novels provide extraordinary critiques of Englishness and English identity while pursuing compelling existentialist and psychological themes such as the nature of time, memory, personal relationships and sexual desire. 

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.

Set in frontier America in the midst of the French-Indian war, as the French are attempting to overthrow an English fort, Cooper’s story follows Alice and Cora Munro, pioneer sisters who are trying to find their way back to their father, an English commander. 

'Although he feared death, he could not stop. 'If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they'd call me an idiot!'

The narrative traces Jacob’s childhood in Cornwall and his education at Cambridge, culminating in an evocative portrait of his adult life in London and abroad.

'But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out suddenly, as if by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the tremendous sunshine.'

 In From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, Jules Verne turned the ancient fantasy of space flight into a believable technological possibility an engineering dream for the industrial age. 

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

Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.

 Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the...

Through wordplay, parody and logical and philosophical puzzles, Carroll engenders a variety of sub-texts, teasing, ominous or melancholy. For all the surface playfulness there is meaning everywhere. The author reveals himself in glimpses.