A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare

Wilde’s supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society.

A selection of Austen's dark and hilarious early writings - featuring murder, drunkenness, perjury, theft, poisoning, women breaking out of prison, men forging wills and babies biting off their mothers' fingers..

Epic and tragic in its scope, King Lear explores a king’s demise into madness and insanity when he is betrayed by two of his manipulative and scheming daughters. It is Cordelia, the third and only daughter who refuses to flatter her father to deceive, who is banished from the kingdom, leading to dramatic and tumultuous events.

The Shirley of the title is a woman of independent means; her friend Caroline is not. Both struggle with what a woman's role is and can be. Their male counterparts - Louis, the powerless tutor, and Robert, his cloth-manufacturing brother - also stand at odds to society's expectations. 

Disenchanted with her husband and seeking an escape from their dull marriage she is soon tempted into a brief romantic liaison with another man. Although short-lived, she remains desirous of passion and the finer things in life and embarks on another affair, destroying her reputation.

At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In the course of the essay, Tolstoy shows different attempts to find answers on the examples of science, philosophy, eastern wisdom, and the opinions of his fellow novelists. . . . finding no workable solution in any of these, Tolstoy recognizes the deep religious convictions of ordinary people as containing the key to true answers. 

‘Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.’

As he tries to free himself from their clutches he becomes immersed in the seedy underbelly of the Capital, amongst criminals, prostitutes and the homeless. Dickens scathing attack on the cruelness of Victorian Society features some of his most memorable and enduring characters, including innocent Oliver himself, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes and...

The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and dripping jaws" which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around the isolated Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry, the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this devilish spectre the manifestation of the family curse?

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.

When a strange, meteor-like object lands in the heart of England, the inhabitants of Earth find themselves victims of a terrible attack. A ruthless race of Martians, armed with heat rays and poisonous smoke, is intent on destroying everything that stands in its way. 

‘Three Guineas’, Woolf’s most impassioned polemic, came almost a decade later and broke new ground by challenging the very notions of war and masculinity.

 As Hamlet tries to find out the truth of the situation, his troubled relationship with his mother comes to the fore, as do the paradoxes in his personality. A play of carefully crafted conflict and tragedy, Shakespeare’s intricate dialogue continues to fascinate audiences to this day.

Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love.

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.